Central Indiana players turn pro in Big League Wiffle expansion
Will Smithey, Reid Werner and Brendan Dudas are taking the jump from Central Indiana’s backyard and tournament scene to Big League WIFFLE Ball, the league that calls itself America’s first professional wiffle ball league. Their move into the New York Green Apples puts three local names into a national pro structure that is now far beyond one-off summer games.
BLW was founded during the COVID-19 pandemic and has built the kind of organization backyard wiffle never had. The league says it now features 10 city-based teams, and its 2026 season will include an All-Star Game in St. Louis on Friday, July 24. BLW’s 2026 draft class also includes 16 players from 13 different states, a sign that the player pool is widening as the league puts more weight on roster spots, honors and season-long competition.
That framework matters in part because the Indiana wiffle scene was already established before BLW’s pro ladder arrived. IndianaRBI’s 2020 coverage put the state at four National Wiffle-affiliated leagues, and Indianapolis’ Circle City Wiffle bills itself as the city’s premier competitive league. Circle City says it is built around The Dirtyard, which it describes as the world’s best backyard Wiffle field, a useful shorthand for how the sport has long grown in Central Indiana: from private fields and local leagues into a more formal competitive network.
BLW’s awards page shows how quickly that network has begun to mirror traditional pro sports. Konner Jaso was listed as the league’s 2025 Most Valuable Player, giving the circuit an individual honor system that rewards production, not just participation. That kind of visibility is part of what makes the Central Indiana jump meaningful. Smithey, Werner and Dudas are not just joining another rec league. They are stepping into a league with city identities, a draft, an All-Star Game and a national footprint that now reaches from Indiana to St. Louis and beyond.
For players developed in a region that already understood how to treat Wiffle as a competition, BLW has turned that local talent into a pipeline. The next stage is no longer hypothetical. It is on the 2026 schedule.