"On July 14, 2003, four bored teenagers from Quincy, Massachusetts met to do something. Having been turned away from the Shaw’s NBA Summer League at UMass Boston, where they had hoped to see a young LeBron James take the floor for the Cleveland Cavaliers, the gang regrouped back on the concrete tundra of Dayton Street in Quincy. The foursome, made up of Joe Griffin, Steve McDonagh, Andrew Potter, and Brandon Ranalli, would quickly find themselves down a man after Brandon’s mom made him come home for dinner. Steak dinner. Left with a treacherous trio, Griffin, McDonagh, and Potter, batted around ideas of how to enjoy themselves on a fine summer evening.

They thought about playing basketball, soccer, hockey, football, wiffleball, and pretty much everything else. None of these, however, seemed to satisfy the deep longing in their souls for something new and different. With the light growing dim and the mosquitoes fast approaching, the gang quickly improvised. Rooting through the McDonagh household’s basement and backyard, they came up with a soccer ball, a hockey net, and a lacrosse stick. Using their Quincy Public School-educated brains, they quickly brought together these seemingly unrelated weapons of fun into a new game that they played well into the night, only pausing to watch Garret Anderson defeat Albert Pujols to win the Home Run Derby."

And the result, six years later, something worth playing. Something that clearly started life as what some would refer to as your typical Junkyard Sport, and went beyond to become something worth watching. Something worth celebrating. Something known to those who know it, as Andyball.

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