Quick story from my younger days. I was at a two-week tennis camp once back before 7th grade, but for whatever reason I was a good two years older than all the other kids there. It was just beginner-level stuff, even for me, so nobody was any good at all, just zero talent on the court. Anyway, one of the kids there was this simply dour ball of sadness. He seemed allergic to things like the sun, using his legs, and smiling. One day, some kid hits a tennis ball toward him, it bounces a couple times, then hits him in his prodigious stomach. He runs off crying, as if it hurt (again, it was hit by a 9-year-old), and we all had a good laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all. We then spent the next 15 minutes hitting tennis balls at each other’s backs and laughing because it never really hurt. Then I - again, by far the oldest one there - unloaded a point-blank shot at this little kid, got him square in the back, and he actually started crying for realsies. I felt kind of bad.

(YELL YELL YELL I AM JOHN MCENROE I AM CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGATED TO LOSE MY MARBLES AM I TOO CLOSE FOR YOUR LIKING ACTUALLY I DON’T CARE HOW CLOSE I AM YELL YELL)

I tell that story because it’s how I learned that it can actually hurt to get hit by a properly whacked tennis ball - it just takes a concerted amount of effort to do so, and there’s just about no way it can happen by accident. In World Team Tennis’s Eastern Conference (whatever the hell that is), the Washington Kastles and New York Sportimes decided to get into the “hit tennis balls at each other” game. During a match. Not for the purposes of entertainment. And with John McEnroe in attendance as a coach. Commence high-decibel madness in 3… 2…

The world-famous D.C. SPORTS BOG has a truly surreal, giggle-worthy recap of the match:

During the men’s doubles, Kastles star Leander Paes tagged Robert Kendrick with a volley at the net. A furious McEnroe crossed the net and got in Paes’s face (although there’s some dispute about this–the Sportimes owner said McEnroe was “an oasis of calm in the chaos”), while New York Coach Chuck Adams started yelling at Paes’s partner, Scott Oudsema. Kastles Coach Murphy Jensen also came out and started yelling. Fans got into it, too.

So, uh, that’s it? One guy hits another with a volley? I mean, these are professional players, so that would probably sting a bit, but it’s just a volley. Now, serves, on the other hand, those could do some damage. Oh, fighting teams, you weren’t done? By all means, continue with the foolishness:

Everyone calmed down, and no penalties were issued, but Kendrick then served a ball into Paes, who was at the net and wasn’t receiving the serve.

“All hell breaks loose again,” someone with the Kastles told me.

So players on both benches got up and start yelling at each other and at the chair umpire; the Kastles allege that a member of the Sportimes cursed at Olga Puchkova, and her teammate Rennae Stubbs then lost it and was assessed a one-point penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct. The Kastles went on to lose the match in a super tiebreaker.

You have no idea how much I wish there were video of this, because tennis balls are arguably the single funniest projectile that can be used as a weapon. I mean, you’re never going to break somebody’s bone with one, ever. Plus, if you serve one right off someone’s dome, you know that thing’s just going to go flying like 200 feet. I’m genuinely surprised the “Jackass” guys haven’t done a skit where they play dodgeball with 10 tennis balls and rackets.

But back to that tennis camp. The counselors didn’t really give a crap what we did, and after the first week, I was more concerned with playing “home run derby” and launching shots over the fence around the court (I would later find out that I was hardly original in that endeavor; see Tom Hanks‘ transcendent tennis scene in Bachelor Party). Even that got boring after a little while, since it takes a comically small amount of power to send a tennis ball over a 10-foot wall from like 90 feet away, and I think I skipped the last 2 or 3 days of that camp. The end.