Week 3 of kickball has come and gone and we’ve already been kickballing for a whole month this summer. It’s hard to believe, but as the saying goes time flies when you’re having fun. One of the beautiful components of this league is that win or lose almost everyone is enjoying themselves and making new friends in the process.
Props to West Coast and Balls Deep for providing us with the first semi-competitive GOTW. I know everyone deserves their chance to play under the lights, but it gets a bit challenging to follow some of the games where the game is effectively over after nine outs or so. I especially enjoyed the delicious jello shots that were incorporated into the game. Bill Cosby would have been in hog heaven.
Week 3 played out just about the way I saw it on paper with a couple exceptions. My game for one, the Barracudas vs. Channel 6 News, was a fairly close match up. We came out flat and played that way for most of the game. I’m not saying that Channel 6 didn’t play a good game. We basically provided them fly ball practice for the majority of the evening. I definitely credit Channel 6 for playing tough defense and putting up a good fight the whole way through. I can’t really recall what innings our sputtering offense managed to put up runs, but I don’t think we scored more than two in any inning until the 9th inning. We were winning for nearly the whole game (if not all) and I want to say the score was something like 7-3 going into the bottom of the 8th inning. In the bottom of the 8th we made a few costly mistakes resulting in three runs for Channel 6, bringing the score to 7-6 going into the 9th inning. In the top of the 9th our offense came to life and we scored 9 runs to go up 16-6 and that was the final tally.
We played Channel 6 last year and I have to say that they are a much better and more focused team. They have several new additions and their girls can crush a kickball. I’m calling a homerun from one of these ladies before the season is over, especially if the defense carelessly drops in too far.
I really wish I could have seen the Goats vs. the Rockets this week as well. From what I hear the Rockets jumped out to a 5-0 lead in the very beginning of the game (1st inning?) and the Goats had to fight their way back to pull off the 8-5 victory. I’m not sure how long it took them to take lead, but what a fun game that would have been to watch.
The Rockets should be a solid kickball team as the season progresses. They still have a difficult match up in the week 4 GOTW vs. Red Lyon, but they seem to be getting better and better every week. Will week 4 be the breakout week for the Rockets? We’ll find out soon enough. Regardless, look out for this kickball team. They could make a push down the stretch and make a lot of noise come pool play and playoff time.
We are now down to 10 teams out of 32 who are undefeated and 10 teams who have gone defeated. As this league grows more and more competitive every year it’s hard to say what these stats even mean. I think there are several very dangerous teams with early losses including the Screamers and Los Matadores, and I’ve heard that Party! is a totally capable squad. I’m not here to suggest that the top half of the league is good at kickball and the bottom half doesn’t know what they are doing, but I do know that each year it seems the idea of a Cinderella story is fading fast because there are so many competitive teams.
The last thing that stands out to me after three weeks of play are the division standings. The William Burroughs, John Brown, and Carrie Nation division all have the same records down the list, two teams each at: 3-0, 2-1, 1-2, 0-3. The Langston Hughes division however is split directly down the middle with four teams at 3-0 and four teams at 0-3. I’m excited to find out (and hopefully watch) how this division shakes out because depending where these teams end up pool play could be a walk in the park or a total nightmare for opposing teams.
Ice those hammies,
Captain Cuda