Nope, you people can go read blogs in which the people spend all of their time describing what they bought while shopping or you could read blogs that are nothing but link after link of newsstories you'lll never have time to read. But what do you get here?

Kickball Playoffs, baby!

(Keep in mind, these are highlights only. I tried to start writing about the day's events but had already gotten up to six pages without even gettomg to the ultimate Kickball
Showdown between Good and Evil, let alone the party afterwards in which the guy whose apartment it was had a crap's table in the middle of his living room).

-First game starts at 12, against what turns out is our archrival. They're the one's that said they were okay with us being down a player, then protested when we beat them. The same issue that went all the way to League HQ in D.C. The same issue in which my Captain's fairly snippy e-mail that he sent only to the other team's captain and few other league Captain's managed to be passed around to everyone in the league.

I forgot about all that, but got pissed off about a few plays they did. During the game, with the bases loaded, their pitcher intentionally drops a flyball and doubles up two people on third. It takes us ten minutes to figure out whether it's legal or not, whether there's an Infield Fly rule, and to explain to the poor girl at third why she's out even if she didn't move. It's all perfectly legal, but still kind of cheesy.

-Game ends when the very-same woman accidentally (for real) drops the ball and winds up doubling up someone on second. The other team protests the play. Or those who weren't trying to start a fight with my captain were. I look over after the game and a couple of team-members are holding back my captain and a few other people were holding back the other team's captain. I have no idea what the hell it was all about as I did what I usually do in situations like that- go very far away from what's going down- but it took about ten minutes for everyone's tempers to cool.

-We win and have to wait an hour before our next game. We start drinking beer. It's about 90 degree's outside and the team that's playing (the Gray team) starts bbq'ing. The Grey team is down a run in the last inning with two outs when one of their women players gets called safe on a controversial play at 2nd. There's an argument. A couple of minutes later, she does a headfirst dive into third, but gets beaned by a thrown ball in mid-dive.

Now, technically you're allowed to throw at someone. This, after all, is kickball. However, you are not supposed to throw at anyone's head and if you do, they're called safe. She was hit in the head, but hit while diving. The rule's do not specifically say what happens if someone dives headfirst into a base. An other argument breaks out. And out. And out. For twenty minutes it went on. At one point, I look over at the argument going on and see someone on the Orange Team lying on the grass, prone like Superman, trying to explain the Magic Kickball Theory. I start a chant for a do-over, realizing that a do-over is what people did when something like this happened in 2nd grade, the last time we've all played kickball. Ten minutes later, the Head of the League says she's safe and the game resumes.

-The team that lost was so pissed off at the team that beat them that they decided to hang out by the bench and root for us. And also drink way too much beer. They tell us that the other team is made up of a bunch of big boppers who can kick over everyone's head and that they trash talked through the entire game. They also brought a megaphone and used it to make sure everyone heard their trash talk. Not to mention get play-by-plays account of the game or hear their bad imitations of your typical baseball organ songs. We decide that we're gonna kick some Major League Kickball Ass.

The game starts and we're already in a foul-mood. The team we play is made up of a bunch of guys all over 6 feet (the pitcher, who is injured and kept on going over the pitching line is 6' 7"), all buffed out (as we can tell since half of them took their shirts off at various times of the game). The women, of course, are all blonde. They do the megaphone bit, even blasting the siren sound anytime someone scores. When someone on my team goes out to ask why the 6' 7" pitcher was taken out for a pinch-runner yet continued to pitch, he was told "I have a pulled Quad and you can rub it out for me if you want."

But even worse, they were all a bunch of Man-bunters. Yes, a bunch of guys all buff and over 6 feet spent the entire game "bunting" (lightly tapping the ball so it goes about five feet in front of the catcher and forces someone to have to get it and throw the ball- something not as easy as it sounds). It's clever, it works, and it's lame. It's like when pitchers always intentionally walk Barry Bonds, but worse. It's like when the Argentinean soccer team spends the entire game falling down, hoping to get penalty kicks, but worse. It's worse because IT'S KICKBALL. And not only that, they drank Keystone.

We get pissed, frazzled even. Especially since they score a bunch of runs yet never kick the ball out of the infield. Our captain protests the megaphone and they finally stop using it, albeit after a bunch of snide comments brought on by the fact that they were completely unable to see why a megaphone could be considered lame. My team-mates spend half the time on D yelling at someone to move up to take the bunt and whine at the other team when they get on base. Finally, they crack the game open when, in frustration, our outfield finally creeps into the infield and a woman kicks it over our head for a three-run home run. The worst part about it was that one of the guys on my team actually could have caught it, but he was too taken aback at the smack he was thrown at him by the gun on 2nd. When the guy on my team complained about the man-bunting, the guy on 2nd just looked over at him and said "have you ever played competitive sports?" Gobsmacked by the comment, the guy on my team was unable to pick up his jaw long enough to go after the ball, let alone explain to the guy that one doesn't usually associate kickball with competitive sports.

They beat us, of course, and go onto win the whole thing. Teams like that always do, they always win. It's the Way of the World, how the Universe Works.

Or, in the mighty words of Bill Murray: And even if we win, if we win, HAH! Even if we play so far above our heads that our noses bleed for a week to ten days; even if God in Heaven above points his hand at our side of the field; even if every man woman and child joined hands together and prayed for us to win, it just wouldn't matter because all the really good looking girls would still go out with the guys from Mohawk because they've got all the money! It just doesn't matter if we win or if we lose. IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER!