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Humans of Oxford | Ben Baacke: The ‘golf ball boy’ of Emerson

By Audrey Davis, For The Miami Student

No matter the time of day, it's almost guaranteed that a bouncing noise can be heard coming from room 346 in Emerson Hall.

Everyone below the room has heard the sound, but no one questions what it is, they only complain about what they hear.

Residents on the second and third floor started to assume the noise was coming from a golf ball, so the mysterious person making the noise was given the name "Golf Ball Boy."

"Golf Ball Boy" lives with three of his best friends from high school and prefers to go by his real name - Ben Baacke. The residents on the floor below were right though, he was, and still probably is, bouncing a golf ball on the floor of his room.

Ben found the golf ball walking to Western Campus (he thinks), but his roommate, Josh, swears he brought it from home.

"No, no. I found it on the ground walking to Western," Ben laughed. "That's why it's so special."

"We should sacrifice the golf ball to the abyss!" one of his roommates yelled.

This started a whole other argument between the four of them.

"Wait, can we retrieve it after, or does that defeat the purpose?" Ben asked.

"No, that's like giving a blanket to the homeless and then taking it back because you're cold," another roommate said.

Constant, playful bickering between all four of the roommates is a given. But, usually, it's just about who is beating whom in Super Smash Bros.

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One of his roommates hands him a controller as they start a new game.

"Can't you see I'm in the middle of an interview here?" Ben asks.

He takes the controller anyway.

"Why is Ben playing this game right now?" a roommate asks as Ben's character struggles to stay alive.

Ben's attention left the interview completely, but later, inevitably, he returned to bouncing the golf ball.