Wow, That's Ballzee - May 3, 2006

While watching Stuart Appleby go wire-to-wire at the Shell Houston Open, I saw a product being advertised on television that may finally fill the hole in my soul left by the Oakland A's inability to win a Game 5 in an American League Divisional Series. When I was living in San Francisco, I thought I could fill that hole with the love of a good man. It turns out all I was missing was a pocket-sized ball wiper.

Confused?

I'm talking about the BALLZEE! It may look like the clam shell-shaped lovechild of a beer coozy and a case of birth control pills, but it's really so much more.

The BALLZEE is the "The Golf World's Revolutionary NEW Ball Cleaner." Here's how it works:

Step 1: Soak the shit out of this ridiculous thing

Step 2: Wring out the excess water so you don't look like you pissed yourself when you put the giant vinyl clam shell in your pocket

Step 3: Put the thing in your pocket since you're too stupid to remember your goddamn towel

Step 4: Whip it out and rub your balls

According to a recent Forbes article profiling the stumbling blocks that await inventors of useless golf trinkets, BALLZEE's creator, Ed Sprague, came up with the idea five years ago while standing on the teebox with his foursome.

Preparing to tee it up, one of his companions had to wipe his dirt-covered ball on the crotch of his pants to get it clean. The commercial depicts this moment in slow motion with a man bringing his hand down and creating a giant skidmark right next to the zipper of his well-pressed khakis. According to the commercial and the website, he had little choice.

At that moment, Sprague thought to himself, "there has to be a better way." His solution was to go home, huff some glue, and attach a swatch of terrycloth to the inside of a folded piece of vinyl he drunkenly cut from the spine of his kid's Trapper Keeper.

These were not, however, the final acts of desperate, glue-sniffing retard. These were the acts of an American patriot in the Andrew Carnegie mold. At the time, if you believed the commercial (and why wouldn't you?), your options were merely three: you could wipe the ball on your crotch. You could spit on your ball. Or you could lick your ball. Something had to be done. The introduction of the BALLZEE, the announcer boomed, meant an end to spitting on or licking your dirty balls.

Sprague was right. There is a better way.

And it's called a fucking towel. Don't have a towel? How about the ballwasher? No ballwasher on that hole? Why not wipe your ball on the short turf of the tee box? Grass usually works well for that sort of thing. If worse comes to worst, just ask one of the three mongoloids atanding behind you for their towel. I mean, there's no way they all forgot towels. No assisted living facility worth its salt would let a quartet of palsied retards out of their pens without something to wipe up the drool.

If Sprague's trio of mouthbreathing Special Olympians truly inspired this innovation in ball-dirt removal, then they will forever give me pause during those moments on the course when someone asks what everyone's handicap is.

What I really don't understand, though, is how this invention was not quashed in its infancy for its utter lack of necessity. Jesus, Sprague originally envisioned the BALLZEE "attached to a box of Titleists as a value-added extra." Of course it would have to be an extra! Who in their right mind would purchase this individually when there are already inexpensive, time-tested alternatives like Water and The Towel firmly entrenched in the ball-buffing market?

This is not Casey Martin or Michelle Wie. The Dirty Ball isn't a new problem. The towel has been a mainstay of the golfbag for as long as the ballwasher has been a fixture of the teebox.

Don't say that to the makers of the BALLZEE, though. Their product is more than simply a revolutionary ball cleaner. It's also a "Safe and effective way to clean golf course chemicals from your ball." I guess that's important. God knows, you don't want to start missing 4 foot putts because you let diazinon residue and Scott's Turf Builder accumulate on your balls.

I applaud you, Ed Sprague, for your entreprenuership and ingenuity. You are now the second-most famous Ed Sprague in the world of Sport. But don't expect me to bow before your golf shoes because stupid people lose their towels and you stapled a piece of old bathrobe to the inside of a folder. If the world needed another cheap, grit-filled pocket of moisture to clean its filthy, tainted balls in, we'd all just get back together with our ex-girlfriends.

Posted by nils at 5:25 AM

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