Chris Mackie – Quickball Co-Founder
Since co-founding Quickball or “Quick Baseball” 25 years ago, I’ve been asked “why Quickball?” many times. The complete answer is split into two parts — simple in one respect but complex in another.
The first part of the answer is simple. Quickball is a third diamond sport that answers a need — more playing opportunities for more people. It is inclusive, active, and engaging for all skill levels. It also delivers a true hardball-like experience for all players, regardless of their age, size, or socioeconomic status. In a nutshell, Quickball is real baseball, at 2X speed, in half the space for a fraction of the cost.
The second part of the answer, however, spans more than 50 years and is not as easy to explain. Quickball began in earnest in 1968. That was the summer when I became mesmerized while watching my older brother Keith (also a Quickball co-founder) play Little League Majors for the first time. For reasons that I can’t fully explain, I had an epiphany while taking in the sights and sounds of his first game. The crack of the bat, the pop of a fastball landing in the catcher’s mitt, and, of course, the unforgettable sound and vision of a long fly ball leaving the yard. All of it struck me as athletic artistry. As a result, my involvement with the game became continuous over the next five decades. First as a player. Then as a fan. Finally, as an inventor and founder.
I helped organize my first neighborhood sandlot-style league (complete with an all-star game!) at age nine. I repeated and added to that process each year from elementary school to college, creating game equipment constructing homemade fences (with the help of my future wife, Julie), and learning basic groundskeeping skills. Following a brief interlude to do other things — like starting a career and getting married — I recruited a collection of like-minded friends who joined me in our self-managed adult rec leagues and tournaments. I was 30 years old by the time Julie agreed to let me build a Fenway Park replica in our backyard.
Little did I know that all of this would lead to a working partnership with the Cal Ripken, Sr. Foundation, multiple trips to participate in MLB All-Star week activities, and Quickball grassroots programming throughout the U.S. and abroad. So, to provide a second-part answer to that first-sentence question, the inspiration of that original epiphany has been a major factor. The game action and undeniable excitement of watching my first live baseball game obviously made an impact. But the fact that I took in that game while seated next to my dad made it unforgettably perfect.
Russell Mackie was always the most influential baseball person in my life. He introduced Keith and me to the Big Leagues by taking us on annual road trips to see the Atlanta Braves play. He was also our go-to source for baseball history — especially in the Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, and Willie Mays era. Moreover, some 30 years after that memorable trip to the Little League field, he coined the name “Quickball.” It was the ideal term needed to capture the spirit of a formalized program that Keith and I were beginning to work on.
Sadly, Russell passed away in 2008 at the age of 80. In the last week of his life, he was bedridden and often disoriented at a Veteran’s home in Salisbury, NC. Yet even with his mind fading, he somehow knew which day Tom Glavine was scheduled to pitch. It was an amazing and final reminder of just how connected he was to the game that bonded us.
Clearly, that bond serves as a major source of motivation to this day. It has been shared with my son, Sam Mackie, and will hopefully be shared with his kids and grandkids in the future. It’s a bond that I hope Quickball fosters for others as well. That’s ‘why Quickball’.
