The History of Clarkball
The Early Years (2006 - 2009)
Little is known about the first Clarkball Tournament back in 2006. For those who were not in attendance it may feel like more of a myth than an actual event. If any photos from that night exist, we’re definitely not aware of them.
Flood lights, mangled plywood, and lawn chairs surrounded the field. It was one last gathering of friends before the end of the summer. No winner was declared because we just played through the night until the last person went home. We just played ball, but the seeds of an idea were born that night.
Founders Clark Thomas and Mike Kuzminski started the game with a bag of dodgeballs and a plastic bat playing against each other and having pitching battles in Thomas‘ parents‘ backyard. Soon they began inviting their friends to play and that’s how Kuzminski coined the name Clarkball… since everyone was coming over to Clark’s house to play ball. After a summer of backyard games the 2006 tournament came to life on a muggy day in late August.
The second year in 2007 will always be remembered for the heavy rain, but it was the first year that we took a swing at building an actual field. it started by building the outfield wall and backstop out of tarps and making it brighter with more flood lights. One of the most unique features of the field was the 15 foot tall tarped wall in left field mimicking Fenway Park. We included food, opening ceremonies, and an announcer’s booth.
As the 3rd year approached, no major additions were made to the field, other than the wall in left got a little higher, the scoreboard was moved to right field, and the iconic “Polish Porch“ was created as a lounge and dining area. It seemed like another quiet year, and then the Warren Times Observer got wind of the event and asked to do an article featuring it, so we invited their sports department to the tournament to play a ceremonial first game against the Jamestown Old Timers in a game dubbed… ”The Legends VS. The Press”. When the article was published a few days later, popularity with the game soared, Headlining the sports section of the newspaper was the 2008 version of going viral.
With momentum on our side for the 2009 tournament we went for a bigger challenge and had businesses from the local community sponsor the tournament. Some of our early sponsors helped us get creative too, with a giant 3D Big Mac for McDonald‘s as a homerun target and a big tire man on the outfield for Warren Tire Center. We played through the rain again, but it was a massive turnout, so big that we knew it had outgrown its original home.
Starbrick’s Last Call (2011)
This is one of the shortest chapters you will ever read, but after taking a year off in 2010, we came back in 2011 with what was essentially an 8 team invite only tournament. We knew that if we advertised and opened it to the public we would have too many people in the backyard, even back in 2009 there were so many parked cars that the neighbors couldn’t get to their houses. So we kept it small with the vibe of a backyard BBQ and had one last tournament in Starbrick.
Clarkball The Business (2013 - 2017)
In 2013 Thomas started Clarkball LLC, opened an office in downtown Warren, and grew Clarkball into a profitable event played at city parks. The 2013 event was the first one with multiple fields and a festival vibe with live music, food vendors, and people hanging out all day. Each event had advertising partners and clarkball.com was utilized for marketing and advertising.
Clarkball also came to life in schools, youth programs, and at the local YMCA. In between the big yearly tournament we did many smaller events and worked to promote other local businesses and their events. In 2015 Thomas started PlayBall! The Magazine
And began speaking about entrepreneurship at schools and career days.
2017 capped off a great four year run of planning fun events and learning how to run a business. The 2017 tournament was at Betts Park and brought together a diverse group of people. We parked a taco truck next to the left field line and put a stage beyond center field for three punk rock bands to jam into the night. This tournament parlayed into Clarkball’s last event from that era, which was the Warren Wine Walk. We placed wineries or vendors in 15 businesses stretched across the town and had around 300 people go on the walk.
Along with Clarkball, Thomas always had a day job too, including traveling around the southeast working at college football games and working a lot of larger events in Las Vegas, so Clarkball stopped in 2017.
Legends Never Die (2024 and beyond)
Fast Forward seven years and here we are. The perfect blend of timing and demand has fueled the revival, so we’re going to do this event on October 19 and work towards doing more of them. We’ll be branching out into events like the wine walk again and continuing to grow the website.
For this tournament we have some really special things planned with the opening ceremonies. The layout and construction of the fields will be unique and fun to play on, so if you’re checking it out for the first or if you’re a season veteran we’d love to see you at the field.
