Manu'a Flag Day - Let's Play Sloshball

Friday was Manu'a Flag Day. Meaning that 110 years ago, this was the day that the Manu'a Islands cession to American Samoa and thus the US. Nobody here on Tutuila makes a big deal about it. The Manu'a Islands are pretty small, remote and difficult to get to, only Ta'u is large enough to get commercial flights. Next year we may try and get there for the holdiay and see if the population of 800 people gets up and does anything special to celebrate. The one things that gets anyone's interested in Manu'a Flag Day on our island is the government gets the day off work. With most of the Palagi community off, one of our coworkers hosted a wiffleball sloshball game.

The game was hosted at the other large government housing facility, Lion's Park. We showed up on time, which was about an hour before everyone else. Oh, Island Time. The version of sloshball played here is team pitch wiffleball and is played on a pretty small field. No gloves or cleats are used and pegging a runner gets the fielding team an out. Runners must open a beer at second-base, which conveniently is a cooler. The beer cannot be put down until the runner finishes the beer, this includes after the runner gets out, takes the field or even comes up to bat again, otherwise it's normal softball rules.

We were blessed with some excellent weather. The unprecedented dry spell that's been lingering over the island gave us blue skies and a dry field, other than a pregame squall that rolled over the nearby lagooon. The experienced players had stories about deep mud, rain outs and brutal humidity marring past sloshball games.

We played a little over seven innings. With our team staging a comeback from being down big early in the game before the it was called due to darkness. This was fortunate, since the game was tied when it was called and neither team could claim bragging rights for this competition of skill and beer drinking.

Once the game was done the event turned into a barbecue and party. Most people had a good time hanging out after the game. A few of the World Teach Teachers stopped by after their orientation. Most of them were being prepared to be shipped off to outlying islands in a few weeks. That would make for an interesting experience for a year.

Overall it was an unexpected success. We had a great time hanging out, and outside of some late night antics by some uninvited Samoan guests that ended the evening on a poor note it was a fun time for all. Hopefully we won't have to wait 5 months until someone plans another sloshball game.