Osler's Razor

Baylor has long excelled at women's sports, dating back to the championship kittenball teams from between the wars.

There were, in fact, two versions of kittenball back in the 20’s, one referred to as “Wisconsin Kittenball” and the other sometimes called “College Kittenball,” and each evolved differently. Wisconsin Kittenball was an outdoor version of what was sometimes called “indoor baseball.” In short, people would play baseball in a gym with modified rules; the primary modification being that the ball was big and soft. In addition, everything was closer together, and the pitcher threw the ball underhand. This evolved, in turn, into mushball and then into modern softball.

College Kittenball, which Baylor dominated, was a much different sport. The sport was played on a 30’ x 60’ lawn with a net amidships and 12 buckets on either side. Teams of five girls on a side would attempt to toss a kitten into the buckets on the other side of the net. One key rule: no player could hold the kitten for more than two seconds. Eventually, at some Eastern schools, the buckets inevitably were filled with beer, and the rule was that the team scored upon would have to pluck out the soggy kitten and drink the beer immediately. As one might expect, there were variations; at Wellesley the buckets were filled with champagne, and at the University of Virginia the tradition was to have one bucket contain urine (frankly, given the agitated state of the kitten, many of the buckets in every match probably contained at least some urine). Princeton students developed “pocket kittenball,” which was played on a ping-pong table with beer cups and a tiny kitten. Eventually, at the insistence of animal rights groups, the kitten was removed and pocket kittenball morphed into the (somewhat) modern game of “beer pong.” Rumor has it that the feral cats now prowling the banks of the Brazos on and near campus are the descendants of those felines once kept by the championship kittenball teams.

A young lady from Houston named Ruth Cobb was Baylor’s best kittenball player. Well known as both an ace bucketstuffer and a good sport, Ruth would greet her classmates by heartily asking, “Is that a kitten in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?” In the case of her teammates, of course, it very often was a kitten in the pocket. Cobb’s teammate Katherine Carr was not only a star kittenballer, she invented the Baylor tradition of Spring Fling, which has now fallen into desuetude. Boys would line up on one side of the Brazos and girls on the other and throw distinctive personal objects (a balled-up shirt, a prized kitten, perhaps a nice ashtray) across the river to be caught by a member of the opposite sex, who would then seek to return it or thank the sender, depending. Kitty Carr was one of the few women with enough arm to get a large object over the river, and one freshman was lucky enough to catch her prize, which (oddly) was a small statuette enscribed “World’s Best Dad,” apparently purchased from a roadside Stuckey’s restaurant. Sadly, he caught it square on the noggin and was knocked cold, requiring hospitalization.

The site of that incident, I might add, is the precise spot where the law review office is today...