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.

25 Bold (stupid) Predictions

With the season about to kick off next week, I thought I'd share my first list of the seasons. I've labelled it, "Bold Predictions" but you could label is stupid, ridiculous, random, irrelevant or any number of other things. So let's get started:

1 - There won't be any ringers at the tournament this year. (ha...ha ha...ha)

2 - A team ranked 100 or higher from last year, will make the tournament this year.

3 - Alex Rodriguez will hit at least one home run without needing to stick a needle in his ass.

4 - DGS will win the tournament (ok, not THAT outrageous).

5 - The Dude will hit the under on his Smack Board posts at 11,000.

6 - The Game of the Week voting numbers will be higher than the voting on The Voice.

7 - My blog will add one new follower (riiiiiighhht).

8 - The Nationals will go to the playoffs - wait a minute...

9 - More than 3 teams will keep track of their stats (right now you're all curious who the 3 are).

Right about now you've stopped reading, or you're about to ask yourself why you're still reading, but if you had stopped reading before now, you'd miss this little nugget about how the other day, I was walking down the street and I found a penny, it was a 1992 penny, yep, 20 years ago. I'm not sure what makes me older, that I remember that year distinctly, or that I still think a penny has some value and stopped to pick one up.

10 - Anyone reading this entry has now stopped reading this entry.

11 - RPIologist will finish last in tournament predictions.

12 - The Liberty Square Sliders won't make the Sweet 16 (I almost couldn't type that).

13 - It will be revealed that Potomac Fever has bugged the opposing teams dugouts during last years tournament, and was able to notify their defense every time a male or a female was up to bat.

14 - Jose Canseco will announce that he's agreed to play for an unnamed USHSL team, unnamed because the team hasn't agreed to have Jose Canseco play for them.

15 - Jose Canseco will be banned from the USHSL for just being creepy.

16 - At least one of ABC, CBS or NBC will air a TV show that's actually worth watching.

17 - No games will be rained out all year.

18 - The Congressional League will have a higher rating on the Fun-Meter than the House League (baahahahahaha).

19 - A bill will be passed by both chambers of Congress.

20 - This list will only be 20 long because I ran out of things to say. Later.

We're Baaack!!!

You know what I realized last week, on Monday April 2nd to be exact? NEVER USE YOUR PERSONAL EMAIL FOR SCHEDULING. Sorry readers (all 1.5 of you) that it's taken me this long to enter my first post of the year (I know, you were waiting on the edge of your seat). I've spent the last 9 days deleting 763,000 scheduling emails, oh, and my team still has dates to schedule, nonsense.

So just what kind of an offseason has it been? Weeeellll, from what I understand, Tom Brady can't beat Eli Manning, Newt Gingrich still has not actual voters, Obamacare is currently in the holden-pen in Guatanamo Bay awaiting trial (apparently they didn't close that place down after all), and Tim Tebow is trying to come up with the best way to convince Rex Ryan that he can still accept Jesus into his heart and have a foot fetish at the same time. Yup, it's been busy this winter.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch, the United States House Softball League weathered one of the most tumultuous endings of any season and is about to roar back for what is shaping up to be another great season. I've heard there has been some new additions to the leadership team for the league and that everyone is energized and engaged, good stuff. On the field, we're less than 3 weeks from opening day and while that's great, the league does face one giant hurdle: where's everyone gonna play?

Glad you asked. The National Mall currently looks more like the set of Mad Max than the wonderfully cramped fields that have hosted so many softball games, and there's no sign of it being fixed in time for this season. In fact, rumor has it there will be a curb added around the grassy area where teams once played (I'd like to meet the genius who thought that one up). On top of that, at some point this season it's expected that Anacostia will be dug up, effectively crippling the two largest squatting rights chunks of land in the greater DC area. With that in mind, DC kindly offered up their usual fields at rates ranging from $500-$1500, and the Feds cut back on the fields they offered up. I've heard that Ohio Drive will be a squatters, first come first serve set of fields, but that's only because there's supposed to be construction down there too at some point. Seriously, who in DC thought they needed to "doll" the place up? We liked it just fine how it was. So, if you get in a bind, grab a tennis ball, some sneakers and go find a nice big parking lot for stick ball, that's about the only option you'll have.

OK, that's enough candy and sunshine from me for now, I'll circle back around when the season is about to kick off and offer up my predictions for the year (I know, back on the edge of your seat).