Our e-mail inboxes here at the Transcript tend to get pretty jammed with spam. The forlorn Nigerian heiresses have us on the master list, the generic Viagra peddlers have us dead in their sights, the Danish lottery authorities are usually in touch and there's always the odd explicit offering which makes its way through our porous obscenity filter.

So, when a message with "Cornhole" in the subject line pops up, the tendency is to quickly hit the old delete button and move on with your life. The vast majority of the time, it's the right move. In this case, of course, it would have been a mistake.

This particular e-mail was from North Adams businessman/artist Keith Bona, and his greeting was in reference to a rather popular beanbag game known as Cornhole, and certainly not about anything your impure mind might have come up with. Bona's argument was twofold:

* Cornhole is an easy-to-learn, addictive game that's wildly popular in Ohio and Kentucky, and ...

* He was putting together a local Cornhole tournament as a fundraiser for Caleb Jacobbe, and I should write about it.

He was right on both counts. Upon hearing the news that Cornhole was coming to the Berkshires, recent Ohio Valley transplant and Transcript sports writer Ryan Holmes let out a neat little series of yelps and demanded to know what was going on. After we calmed him down a bit, he confirmed that the game — a cousin of horseshoes involving beanbags, platforms and friends — is extremely widespread around his old stomping grounds, and deservedly so.

And the event, needless to say, deserves all the support it can muster. Signups for the Cornhole Tournament for Caleb at the Elks on Jan. 28 have been in the works for a while, with information listed at eaglestreet.com. Bona is handling registrations at 664-0729, and is looking for teams of two willing to put up $20 apiece for the chance to win a $500 first prize.

Clearly, there's nothing not to like except the fact that a better spam filter might have prevented me from ever finding out about the event in the first place. Hence the saying — good game, bad name.

"You see everybody's eyes pop open, and they're like 'What's that?'" Bona laughed. "The point of it is to raise money for Caleb, but it's also a fun event."

The Cornhole concept is fairly straightforward. Players throw 6-inch beanbags (stuffed with corn, natch) from a distance of about 30 feet. The target is a raised rectangular box slanted upward from front to back, with a grapefruit-sized hole located near the far edge.

The goal is to sink a hole-in-one,

and the team gets three points for doing so. A shot that stays on the platform is worth one point, and the game is played to 21, with opponents having an opportunity to cancel out each other's shots by matching them in the same round.

Not much to it, but the whole thing is wildly popular in parts of the Midwest, with competitive leagues and tournaments and a national organization (the American Cornhole Association) dotting the landscape. It's taken on near-mythic proportions in Cincinnati, which takes credit for having invented the game contrary to the strong claims of its neighbors in the Kentucky foothills. There's also a strong social aspect to its appeal, and beer drinking may even have gotten involved at some point (Ryan nods his head wistfully).

Bona, though, has never witnessed Cornhole in its native environment, running into it for the first time last summer.

"I came across it at a local picnic, and I didn't realize what they had was this big thing," he said. "I thought it was bean toss, no different from Jarts. But I came home to look online, and the next thing you know, a week later, I see it on the Today Show. And that's when I realized how big it was. They were showing clips of it out there being installed in bowling alleys."

The sight of Matt Lauer and Katie Couric tossing bags in Rockefeller Center prompted Bona to extend his search. There, waiting for him to find, was the ACA website and an online version of the game sponsored by Nabisco. And the seed of a unique fundraiser was born.

"I don't know whether it's going to catch on," Bona said. "But it's different, for one thing, and that might help people become interested."

Those involved can arrive at the Elks Lodge at 2 p.m. on the Saturday of the event and take an hour to hone and/or acquire their beanbag-tossing skills. The tournament begins at 3 p.m., and it's straight Cornhole fever from there on out, only with pizza, T-shirts and trophies thrown in.

It's a no-brainer. Spam or not, e-mails and events don't get much better than this one.