You’ve heard of walking and running for breast cancer, but how about playing wiffleball for breast cancer?

That’s precisely what the Pink Ribbon Girls, a Cincinnati-based, breast cancer survivor advocacy organization will be offering for the eighth consecutive year at a neighborhood park in Cincinnati.

“I had a friend who played it with his high school friends, and he suggested to me that it would make a great fundraiser,” said Tracie Metzger, founder of the Pink Ribbon Girls. “The first year was in a friend’s backyard, which was a farmhouse property. We had about 30-40 families and raised about $2,500. The next year, we doubled in size.”

This year, the Family Wiffleball Event expects 200 families to participate in a 64-team, bracketed tournament that will last well into the evening hours. When families walk up to the park diamonds that afternoon, they will find re-creations of Major League ballparks, including the Boston Red Sox’s Fenway Park with its Green Monster, the Chicago Cubs’ Wrigley Field with its brick and ivory, and naturally, the Reds’ Great American Ball Park, including the tall stacks. Participants sign up as families to compete on six-on-six teams. There’s even a home run derby.

“We have kids who play that are 3-4 years old, and we have grandparents, too,” Metzger said. “(When we draw up the bracket), we try to make it as fair as possible, but it’s really not that competitive.”

The inspiration for the Pink Ribbon Girls came about when Metzger was diagnosed, at 30 years old, with breast cancer in 2000. One of the things she realized while enduring the larger picture of doctors’ visits and treatments was that the smaller, routine issues added up, too.

“Our foundation is the only one I know of that offers direct services to members such as transportation, babysitting, and housecleaning,” she said. “Members get 3-6 months’ worth of services with no fee. I really could’ve benefited from something like that.”

Metzger’s experience naturally informs the Pink Ribbon Girls’ emphasis on young survivors, though she points out there really is no age limit.

“We typically serve women aged 25-45,” she said. “Some organizations focus on 40 and under, but obviously you can be above 40 and still have young children. There is no age restriction. We say we’re for the young and the young at heart.”

A few years ago, the Pink Ribbon Girls expanded to Dayton when Metzger met Heather Salazar, a young woman who, like Metzger, was a mother in her early 30s when she was diagnosed. Metzger said the expansion has not finished.

“We’re moving into Columbus and hopefully Cleveland soon,” she said. “We’d like to have Ohio covered north to south in 2013. We’re also looking at Kentucky, Indiana and Tennessee.”

Besides playing wiffleball at the event, families can enjoy games, face painting, live music, a silent auction and raffles. Refreshment-wise, there will be pizza, hot dogs, brats, sausages, snow-cones and pop. People can buy beer but also pack their own in a cooler, though no glass bottles are permitted. At night, when the championship wiffleball games are being played, a big-screen TV will be set up, broadcasting the college football game between Notre Dame and Michigan State.

Yet perhaps the most important moment of the event has nothing to do with entertainment. Every year, the Family Wiffleball Event honors a particular member of the Pink Ribbon Girls, who will get up on stage with her family and tell her story.

“The first time we did it, it was to remember someone who has passed away shortly before the event,” Metzger said. “Now, we do it to honor a member, so we can show the reality of breast cancer, that it’s a part of our lives, but it doesn’t have to define us. For some people, it’s their favorite part. It just wraps peoples’ minds around why we’re really there.”