Tournament of Tournaments

So, in DC, there are a myriad of softball leagues for which you can play and they all have tournaments. For the purposes of this exercise, I've selected six leagues/tournaments that I have played in or seen and will compare them in a bracket style tournament of their own. The scoring will depend on three categories: talent level, organization, extra credit.

The Bracket:

3. Mid Town
v.
6. National Confederation of State Society Tournament

4. Senate Softball League
v.
5. Congressional Softball League

Byes: House Softball League and Arlington Men's League

Round 1

Mid Town v. NCSS - The Mid Town softball league is one I've only seen part of but I happen to know a ton of people who play in it. I think the highlight of this tournament isn't necessarily the talent level of the league, though it tends to be very high, but the free food and beer. I mean, it's hard to top that. Plus the seeding is based on tangible records and quantifiable data. It gets 8 out of 10 for talent, 9 out of 10 for organization and 10 out of 10 for extra credit (i.e. food and beer).

The NCSS in fairness is only a year old, but if it wants to live to see its second birthday, it needs a serious overhaul. It lacks coherent organization, clear cut guidelines, defined rules, and most of all, talent and participation. It checks in with a score of 4 out of 10 for talent, 1 out of 10 for organization, but you get free coffee, water and donuts so it scores a healthy 7 out of 10 for extra credit.

The Result: Mid Town wins 27-12 in a route.

Senate League v. Congressional League - The Senate League is mostly an organized ringer-fest with bizarre rules. For instance, you can't play for two different teams during the regular season for fear of being Pete Rosed from the league, but there's no rule on games played for your playoff team, and the lack of organization regularly allows teams to submit tourney rosters as late as Tuesday before the tournament. On top of this, along with it's opponent in this match up, the SL is one of THE WORST offenders for stacked seeding. Using no coherent principle, the league simply picks who they want in what bracket and frequently stacks up power houses in the same bracket. They provide some water I believe, but outside of that do little to earn extra credit and the talent level generally falls to one or two good teams and three or five other ringer laden teams. It gets a 6 out of 10 for talent, 2 out of 10 for organization and 4 out of 10 for extra credit.

The CSL might be the worst offender when it comes to gerrymandering seeds and brackets. The league commissioner is a joke and his blatant rigging of the tournament was the catalyst that prompted the formation of the House Softball League. The tourney regularly lumps the good teams in one bracket and the bad teams in another (including the commissioners team) and the overall talent level to begin with is lacking. The CSL gets a 3 of 10 for talent, 2 of 10 for organization and a 0-10 for extra credit.

The Result: Senate League 12, CSL 5 in a low-scoring, pathetic affair.

ROUND 2

Mid Town v. House League - The House league earned the #2 seed based on a storied history of success and participation. With 48 teams taking part every year, the HSL has rapidly gained traction since it's inception in 2006. That said, there is still a lot left to do. The large field of teams makes it a single elimination tournament, but the 16 first round byes do tend to give teams a fair shot at winning at least one game. The rules are in place to make bringing ringers illegal, but the enforcement is lacking without serious overhaul. The one thing it does well is notify people well in advance of the brackets and the seeding is the most intricate with an actual RPI. The talent level is some of the best coed ball you'll see around when you get into the later rounds. The HSL gets a 8 out of 10 for organization, 9 out of 10 for talent, and a 5 out of 10 for extra credit (you get T-shirt for the Sweet 16 and there's at least one great meltdown every year).

The Result: Mid Town checks in with it's 27 and tops the House Leagues 22 to advance to the Finals.

Senate League v. Arlington Men's League - This is a bit unfair because it is a men's league, but the Arlington leagues are run extremely well. It's a perfect blend of simple best record seeding and double elimination. The talent level is hard to compare to a coed league, but for the most part it's pretty darn good for men's leagues, plus there are varying levels of competition which further elevates it's organizational structure. It has an added advantage of being funded by a city, and it does cost a lot more. It gets a 9 out of 10 for talent, 10 out 10 for organization, and a 4 out of 10 for extra credit (big ass trophy but not much else).

The Result: Arlington Men's League checks in with a stout 23 to topple the Senate Leagues 12.

CHAMPIONSHIP

The Arlington Men's league edged the Mid Town league in talent, 9-8 and organization 10-9. But when it came to extra credit, the cost levels of men's league, and the lack of free food and beer led to a route in favor of Mid Town, 10-4.

The Result: Mid-Town pulls away 27-23 with a late rally.

TOURNAMENT CHAMPS: Mid Town Tournament

10 Trade Deadline Predictions

Today is the MLB trade deadline and so I decided to take this opportunity to write about it. All the pointless predictions you never wanted to know and were always afraid to ask for. I like lists so I'll do this in list form so it's easy for everyone to keep up.

Here we go...

1. Zach Greinke will not be traded.

... wait, he was traded already? To who? The Angels? Nuts, let's start over.



Top 10 Trade Deadline Predictions

1. The New York Yankees will shock the world by swooping in to trade for some middle tier arm that they had not been linked to before.

2. The Cubs and Dodgers agree to a deal involving both Ryan Dempster and Alfonso Soriano, but the intern in charge of fedexing the paperwork will get drunk on his way to the post office and forget to put the agreement in the mail until tomorrow, making the deal null and void.

3. The same intern will be given the newly vacated Boston Red Sox head coaching job.

4. Cliff Lee gets traded... back to the Mariners who couldn't get him to sign a ridiculously bad long term deal, so they let Philly do it knowing they could buy him back this year for a years supply of Starbucks coffee and free ferry rides to the San Juan Islands every summer.

5. Cincinatti and Pittsburgh duel it out with Philly for Shane Victorino, but it's all a head game and the Bucs trade for Justin Morneau while the Reds land Juan Pierre, making the two players combined age of 135 the oldest pair of bats acquired by the same division in one year since the Holy Rollers and Heavenly Flood landed Noah and Methesulah in July of 1697 BC.

6. The second great flood comes before Arizona trades Justin Upton.

7. Arizona trades Justin Upton to the Seattle Mariners for Felix Hernandez amid reports that the polar ice-caps are melting.

8. The Nationals trade Bryce Harper to Potomac Fever for Rob Walter as insurance for Steven Strasburg who is set to be shut down some time after setting the record for the most innings ever thrown by a pitcher that was limited to 160 IP.

9. Bryce Harper goes 0-5 in Pot Fever's playoff opener and is promptly cut and replaced by Mario World.

10. Jamie Moyer trades his arm ligaments to the Nationals to be implanted in Strasburg in an effort to add innings to his season. The move allows Moyer to continue his pursuit of 300 wins while sitting on his couch.

Critical Messaging

I'm a big fan of lurking on the message boards and watching people pick and snipe at each other, a true American pass-time. So imagine my sadness at the entirely absent and apathetic posting that's taken over the boards this year.

Aside from some sniping about the "quality" of the newsletter, and a few failed posts on ranking teams or defenses, there's been no activity to speak of at all. Why is that? Where did the pithy back and forth go? What did we do to be stuck with the likes of LetsGoCommando and thehammer as our entertainment centerpieces and an occasional diatribe from the Dude?

For the love of office boredom people, kick it into gear. Some of us need a distraction from the evil world of overflowing Outlook inboxes, excell spreadsheets, word documents and Facebook Angry Birds... I think I'm gonna win my tournament this week, 6 of each power up, score!

Did You See That?!?

Doing my morning peruse through the scores from yesterday, a couple jumped out at me for various reasons. I mean, determining exactly how good a softball game was based on scores alone is a touchy business, but based on common knowledge of some of these teams, there's some real intrigue out there:

Scared Hitless 22, Insliders 21 (excuse me, Libert Square Sliders) - talk about a big win for SH. They really needed this one after sliding in the rankings as far as the upper 40's. This certainly puts a nice feather in their cap going forward.

Two Drink Minimum 20, Showboats 0 - this was back on Tuesday but I swear I thought this was a typo. 20-0? I mean, for a team like the Showboats that only lost 12-10 to Pot Fever, that's embarrassing. The kicker? Boats are still ranked 4 spots higher than 2 Drink minimum.

Milwaukees Best 12, Hired Guns 8 - my how the mighty have fallen. Hired Guns wrapped last year as a Top 10 team, now at 6-5 there's sitting in the 30's. No doubt the Guns are a good team, but this has not been the ideal return to greatness they might have envisioned after last years whirlwind tour.

Beeriffic Game of The Day

My age old calling, promote the little guy. I know, most of you guys into softball enough to read this don't care, but I do like looking at some of the "just for shits and giggles" teams out there and giving some props. So with that I like to call out the most beeriffic teams and games from time to time and today, I'm zoning in on the dynamite match up between Yogi's Harddrivers and Channel 4 News Team.

Channel 4 News Team was a regular on my Most Beeriffic rankings when I was a little more on the ball. They're a california based group and really just in it if for the fun and the beer. That said, they've actually been turning their program around under the radar. They went from 106 in 2009 to 83rd in 2010 and then 54th in 2011. They're 58th now but that's a healthy and steady climb for team just in it for fun.

Yogi's Hard Drivers are another laid back team. I had the pleasure of playing them earlier in the season and they're one of the nicer groups I've come across. They're a group that hails from the House IT world, but Yogi is actually their coach and like all good coaches, took the option of adopting his name to the team name for the royalty commissions. They have staked claim to the #95 ranking each of the past two seasons, consistency many teams dream of.

Keepin It Real

I'm currently 30,000 feet over what looks like Kansas... but then again, I have no idea what Kansas looks like from 30,000 feet in the air. Why am I posting on here then, you might ask? Well, I've been absent so long, since I'm rolling again I should keep rolling to keep my readers happy. Hey, I know you're out there cuz I got 5 page views yesterday! (technically that doesn't mean you read it I guess, so much as clicked the link accidentally and then left super fast.)

This is totally not softball related, but I love the MLB trade deadline. Hanley Ramirez just got traded and while that means nothing to most of us, it's certainly a bit of a big deal. I can't help but refresh my twitter feeds to see who will go next. Zach Greinke? One of my Mariners? Who knows... gets me to thinking, maybe we should introduce trading into the House League. I can see it now, the twitter account for Scared Hitless blowing up with the news that they've received 2 minor league prospects and a 1st round pick from the Big Lebowskis in exchange for LetsGoCommando who is in the last year of his 3 year contract.

Yeah yeah, totally ridiculous, I know. But hey, we already have a Free Agent market. Don't believe me? Why don't you ask Texas Republic how hard it is to keep there players with the New York Sliders coming in with their deep pockets, or talk to the perm-rent-a-player Super Mario World and see what he got from the Dragon Slayers and Pot Fever. I thought about testing the market myself last year, but decided the offers wouldn't be piling up for a 30 year old fat guy with less than marginal softball skills, go figure. I wound up just giving myself and extension with my current team and called it a day.

Later.

Where did everybody go?

Yeah, I know, I've been unforgivably absent this year and I'm sure the price for that is that no one will be reading this post. Serves me right. Fact is, I took on the task of helping get the House Softball League newsletter and GOTW articles on and between that and work, well, let's just say I became very lazy when it came to updating this site.

But hey, it's July and all over the city the recreational softball leagues are beginning to wrap up and sort out who will be in position to claim the glory of a championship and who will be claiming the glory of the guy in this photo.

In the Senate League, the regular season ends on Friday and the tournament starts August 4th. Yeah, I hear ya, what the crazy earliness?!? It snuck up on a lot of us who play on teams, but at the end of the day, let's face it, we just use this as a tune up for the big show... the House League tournament. I honestly couldn't tell you who the teams to beat are in the senate other than Hawk N Dove and I hear IoWins, but I haven't seen that first hand. I do happen to no the Dammed Salmon, who have had a dramatically fall back regular season from when they took the league by storm last year, are likely going to be much better in the tournament. I would also imagine Born to Home Run makes a run at it again and rumor has it the RBI's will be beefing up with borrowed players from the HSL Texas Republic, but that's all rumors.

Meanwhile in the Congressional League... oh yeah, no one cares. Moving on.

I'll slide a side note in here about the Arlington Mens league, just because I play out there along with a large population of other hill softball guys. Apparently the Texas Republic version of a mens team beat the Insliders/et al version in the B League (top league) championship. In one C League tournament the Vito Power/Raucus Caucus mens team is the highest seed left undefeated into the Semi-Finals (yeah, my team, free ink, we also have like 15 championships in the last 4 seasons, we're moving to B League soon so that TR and the Sliders can drub us, should be fun). All this to say, all things are connected and there is a plethora of talented players in the HSL.

Speaking of which, it's almost August and the cream of the crop are rising to the top. I'll circle back a little more in depth on this in my next post. I'm hoping to finish strong, but we'll see. Sorry for the let down this year to all who care.