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Website Got something to say? If you have a comment about something you've read here, or if you'd like to contribute something of your own, please let us know! Have a personal kickball anecdote, a question, or a comment about last week's game? We want to hear from you. You can drop us a line anytime.
Tip Of The Week Winter field grass and mud is hazardous for basic tennis shoes. Do your ankles a favor and invest in some softball or soccer cleats. They need to be rubber cleats, not metal. For $20-35, your ankles will thank you for thinking of them! |
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Tie Games Knot Up The Standings by Chris Hutchings (if I got your name wrong, let me know) Week two was downright ripe with bell-curve inducing games that quickly cooked our division standings into nice neat layers of tasty cake-like strata! There's still some surprises, but this humble reporter expects major shifts in the weeks ahead. Do you see them too? Good! E-mail them off to us so we can let you put your money where your mouth is! Let's start with the bottom layers of the standings and work our way up. If you take a peek at our standings bracket, you'll see one expected team and one not-so-expected team hanging on. The Turtle Wranglers are not a bad team. They're new, which may mean something, but they're coming off a forfeit from last week, so they're climbing their way out of negative numbers. I think we'll see more production from them in the weeks to come now that half the team is back from their travels. Keep an eye on TJ who belted a first-pitch solo home run to open their game Wednesday night and the steady pitching arm of Mario that helped keep the lead for most of the game and delivered a nail-biting 1-1 tie with the McCool Town JV Knockers - raising them out of the basement of their negative point forfeit limbo. Then we have Tang. Now, Tang is a good team. They have four-season and five-season vets spread liberally around their rotation, they have a solid workhorse of a pitcher in Zubin, and a stately mix of small ball (like co-captain Christiana and speedster Rick) that consistently gets on base backed up by deep field cannons. The only reason they're on the bottom of the heap is because of a week one upset from unknown quantity "Team 8" (aka Rusty Trombones until the name change is decided upon) and the fact that they faced one of the division powerhouses, the Pregnant Cheerleaders this week. So any of you teams out there in the middle rungs that think Tang is another win notch on the bedpost better scope out the talented Tang team that held the #1 Preggos to just two runs! Moving up out of the oh-fers, we see the first points on the board from the steady McCool Town JV Knockers. They're another victim of the Cheerleaders, and might be a bit higher in the rankings if they could've grabbed one more run before their game ended Wednesday night. They trailed for four and half innings 1-0 until they were able to get runners on 2nd and 3rd with two outs. Then, on a magical clutch-bunt, Knocker Catherine was able to send a run in to tie the game up. The two teams agreed to play out a tie-breaker inning, so only they know who came out on top. I left to get a beer at Brennan's. In the middle of the heap in a two-way tie for 3rd, we have Greenorhea and the Westside Whackers. Both teams met out in the deep dark rough of field two. If Greenorhea could win this game, they'd be tied for first. If the Whackers win, they keep themselves out of a three way tie for fourth. Well, the standings don't lie, the Whackers won confidently with a 6-3 game that was nearly a shut-out if not for a very late 5th inning rally by the Greens. The first three innings were very tight and resulted in no score, but in the top of the 4th, the Whackers opened up on the throttle and powered 4 runs in. Greenorhea couldn't close the gap in the bottom of the 4th and hope was flagging when the Westside capped their score with 2 more runs in the 5th. Greenorhea had one inning to come back from a 6-run deficit. After getting runners advanced to 2nd, your humble web monkey was able to reach 1st on an infield error and the first run came in. A mix of small ball and heads-up base running got 2 more across, but the Green Machine was shut down before they could cross the half-way point. This brings us up to the next surprise rankings. The two-way tie for second is proof that the yet-to-be-renamed Trombones are the real deal and it will behoove teams to treat them as vets. They upset veteran team Tang in their season opener and hung on to a 3-3 tie with returning champion team Ace Of Base. The delicious irony of all this is that the returning champs (who were a rookie team last season) were held out of first place by the new upstart rookie team! Both teams have strong offense and defense and your newer players will be well served by keeping an eye on their base-running. And then this brings us to the Pregnant Cheerleaders at the top of the heap. Their offensive legs are matched with defensive arms. Of the three undefeated teams, they're the only one with two wins under their purple belts. Their staggering ability to zip 3rd base grounders to 1st for the out seems insurmountable, but they have a weakness. Keep an eye on their standings to drop when Pat ends his alcohol fast in about a month. And that'll do it for our week two round-up. Three additional teams makes for more variety in our sophomore season. Good luck with your future games, everyone!
Freedom of the press 
This web space, kindly provided by WAKA and lackadaisically maintained by the Dogtown Web Collective & Brain Trust (that would be Chris Hutchings) is the center of our demanding information distribution process. Everything we know and wish to share with you, the ever truth-seeking WAKA kickballer, is digitally logged for your examination, pontification and amusement (bemusement?). But this site is so much better when it's filled to server capacity with that sultry harlot known as content. Chris' noble attempts at bending the odd three syllable word around a dangling participle rarely bears much food for thought once the after dinner mints have been polished off... and his literary allusions hecka suck. So much happens in a single week of kickball that we could fill almost TWENTY KILOBYTES of text each week! But alas, with family, work and that beer quota he has to fill each waking hour, Chris doesn't have much time to squeeze entertaining stuff into the page after updating scores and key kickball news. So that's why we're calling on you. You the average kickball player. The one that's on the field and sees a teammate catch an infield fly and turns it into a double play. We want to hear from you. We want to know how your game went. We want to know how cold the beer was after your game. We want to know why your team is going to downright SCHOOL the rest of the division. We'll even post your stupid jokes about naughty parrots and their titillating and candid observations about infidelity. People in the division want to hear from you. Chris started doing this because he was unpopular. But now he has brokered this web gig into an opportunity to take abuse from Pat Sattler about how he wrote "February 22th" again. (At least somebody talks to him now.) Developing content for the division is fun and we all like to see regular features. Here's a few ideas to get your brains churning: Weekly prognostications, game recaps, kicking/fielding advice, a personals or classified section, photo of the week, home-made comics, team bios, featured player bios, editorials on kickball, stat crunchers... whatever! We want it. It doesn't need to be long. Just whip up a simple email now and then and whip it off to Chris for inclusion. Take pictures, draw pictures, include pictures with some text. If you want to post something regularly and want a fancy graphic, we'll make one for you. We want you to be our friend too. So get cracking out there. Let's make the web site something better than a place to just check the standings. If you have submissions or questions, contact the webmonkey and include "Dogtown Press" in the header of your email.
Registration Now Closed Registration is closed and the teams are locked in. If you missed the deadline, check back with us in a couple months when we fire up the Dogtown '06 Spring Season. Thanks to everyone who registered and a hearty welcome to all our new players! Play ball!
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| Next Game Night: Mar 1st, 2006 @ 7:00pm
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Oakwood Recreation Center - Diamond 1/2
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Division Bar - It's official!
Our WAKA Division Bar, Brennan's of Marina Del Rey, is even more important than our home field. It's the heart and center of the division's social aspect. The field is a place for team solidarity, but the division bar is where you learn that the people in the other dugout are just as good-natured and fun loving as yourselves! If that doesn't sell you on it, then how about happy hour deals for WAKA players all night, every game night!? In addition to their $2.50 burgers (2 for 1 pricing), we also get $2.50 domestic tap beers (Bud & Bud Light)! What other bar can you drop $10 and get 3 beers and a burger? Nowhere, that's where. So make an effort to come out after every game and let the division know that there's no ill-feelings. What happens on the field, stays on the field. What happens at the division bar are the memories we keep for many seasons to come! Brennan's has welcomed us with open arms! We have a new home for the post-game Dogtown celebrations and libations! Once you're done with your game or cheering on other team favorites, get those cleats on over to Brennan's for some food and drink. They have a wide selection of games and live music as well as a large patio where they host turtle races every Thursday night! If nothing else, come by for a game of flip-cup and reclaim any tarnished glory you may have lost on the field by displaying your finely honed drinking-dexterity. We'll see you there! |
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