Papa Stephen's Babies - TX Live

Of course we deliver on the field, but did you know we can deliver for your team as well? Babies delivering babies: talk to your friendly Baby agent to learn more about distracting opposing pitchers at affordable rates! More nudity guaranteed in our version.

Large Hardon Collider - TX Live

I believe it was the great Steve Shubin who once said, "Necessity is the mother of invention." He then immediately went on to create the Fleshlight, because that's what innovators DO.

I'll call it THE FLESH...LIGHT.

Thanks Steve, I'll take it from here.

Like Dr.Von Shubin, we are innovators. We single-dongedly changed the way the city of Austin thinks about kickball. In a league shattered by a severe lack of partying, and lack of fun, we dressed up like 6th street hookers and got all of the competitive teams' deadbeat Dads to come back home and tell them he loves them.

You're welcome, Slumpbusters

And this season, being the true innovators that we are, we set out to revolutionize the way GMOT posts are consumed. Cold hard facts: Nobody is reading them. They're boring. TL;DR. And most importantly, much like our giant, inflatable penises, we were pouring our heart and soul into something that just wasn't penetrating the way we needed it to. Our ideas were just too big, too risky, and our humor too dry for the standardized reader to easily welcome into their bodies.

Here. This should help.

Thus, the short, random GMOT post was born. So immediate and awe-inspiring was its impact that teams from all over the zip code began copying us.

Just kidding. Keeps copies me.

Oh man, this must be what it feels like to be Steve Jobs, yet another Steve-based innovator!

Short. Masterful. HILARIOUS.

So don't fret if the beauty and consummate genius of our posts haven't quite sunk in yet. Like your deadbeat Dads, it'll come around eventually. Especially if we're dressed like hookers. ...Which we will be.

Pitch Please - TX Live

What's it like inside the Pitch Please Huddle? It's a formidable scent... It stings the nostrils. In a good way. I'm gonna be honest with you, it smells like pure gasoline. According to our rankings, 60% of the time, it works every time.

Papa Stephen's Babies - TX Live

This is a post about callin' folks on their BS.

#1 A lot of talk about someone else on the team sending in GMOT writeups, but no action. Looks like Papa's gotta take care of this shit himself! 

#2 Of course, I can't really be too mad. Not posting anything is just a SLIGHT step above the effort behind most of the posts below this one.  Here's my impression of a Winter 2016 GMOT post:

Hope y'all didn't hurt yourselves stretching your creative capacities to the limit there, I probably spent more time posting that picture to the blog than you did emailing me the link.

#3 I don't know if it's something in the water this Winter, but much like that alcoholic racist uncle at Thanksgiving there's something in the room we're just not talking about. There is an epidemic of loose butthole in the league.

Don't get me wrong, the vast VAST majority of folks in the league are the tightest of tight butthole. So tight. Unfortunately, there are a few folks who just get so loose butthole that they loosen all the buttholes around them, and the game devolves into one, big, gaping, loose butthole.  Nobody wants that. Typically it's about something silly that happened in the game that people get too competitive about and somehow people lose track of the fact that they're playing KICKBALL and devolve into alpha male apes hurling their feces at each other.

I just don't get it. Anaheim Ducks goalkeeper Ilya Bryzgalov expressed my confusion eloquently:

Some of the insults and yelling and name-calling I've heard this season make it seem like we're on stage at a Republic primary debate instead of on a kickball field. Come on people! It's time to Make Kickball Great Again and we need only look to the immortal words of two of the greatest Americans I've ever known: Bill S. Preston, Esq., and Ted "Theodore" Logan. 

I beseech you: heed these words! Live this credo! Only then can we have truly non-bogus kickball.

*AND*

Large Hardon Collider - TX Live

At Least We're Having Fun - TX Live

Kickballs are red,

Our t-shirts are blue,

We really like butt stuff,

THE HAVING FUN CREW!

~~ Happy Valentines Day to All Our Fellow Teams!

    

          From: At Least We're Having Fun!

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Mid-Season Survey Highlights

You asked, I'm answering! Questions are from the anonymous comments in the mid-season surveys, answers are from Stephen.

Q: Sandbox scores are a joke.
A: Ok, kinda harsh. But you're right, they weren't working the way we intended, and we've done away with Sandbox Scores as of last week. Still be nice to each other though!

Q: "1st to 3rd line rule is stupid and dangerous if you have to wait until the ball is kicked to move. One should be able to approach once the ball leaves the pitcher's hand. This eliminates the play that happened last game where I (3B) ran full speed into our catcher. We could both have been seriously injured."
A: Without the encroachment line, a defender could begin running forward as soon as the ball is released and just stand directly in front of the kicker and block anything they kick, which is entirely game breaking. Bunting would be eliminated entirely by a good defense. The solution here is simply to communicate with each other and call each other off, no different from a pop fly between two players where communication is necessary to prevent the defenders from colliding.

Q: "While I love Corner Bar (especially the staff), I feel that for the Thursday night league it is just too small. There isn't a ton of room for the bar game and you usually have to ask people to move to participate."
A: I feel the same conflicting emotions. While there's certainly much more to partnering with a bar than just picking one and showing up, I'm always open to suggestions for more suitable solutions! Corner Bar is great in that we essentially own the place on Thursdays, the staff love us and treat us well, and they've got really great prices. Obviously it's small and parking is limited. What I look for in a bar partner is Size, Atmosphere, Prices, Parking, Location. Unfortunately it tends to be a "pick three" situation. Right now we've got atmosphere, location, and prices. Email me at stephen@kickball.com if you have suggestions!

Q: "i'd like to see less, but larger teams. For the past few seasons, its been a ride on the struggle bus to get people to show up. I get its kind of the nature of social sports to run off new players, epsc girls, but we have two girls on our team who have never showed, and that makes things difficult to field."
A: I have to advise changing the way you look at things on this. It is by no means the nature of social sports to run off new players, look at teams like Pitch Please or At Least We're Having Fun! Big teams with tons of women on them that have a great time every week and come back for more. If you put the focus on winning and then don't win, it's not fun. If you put the focus on having fun, then losing doesn't have to be a negative experience that turns people off! Big teams are big because a lot of people want to play with that group, not because they need a bigger pool of players to churn through as people not having a good time leave. We've struck at the 16 player minimum with 6 of each gender minimum to be the right balance over hundreds of seasons of experimenting. Looking for more players for next season's team? Come out to the pick up games before each season to recruit new players! (Side note: Stannis doesn't approve of your grammatical choices. Sorry can't help myself!)

Q: "The start times aren't guaranteed, the cones and bases remind me of PE ... the refs are just there to keep score ... , and the lack of uniforms during cold weather makes it hard to differentiate a teammate next to a base versus a bystander standing nearby."
A:

• Start times can be delayed up to a 15 minute grace period for late arrivals per WAKA policy, but if games are starting later than this please notify me directly at stephen@kickball.com so I can take care of it. Your game should NEVER start later than 15 past the hour so that you can get the full 45 minutes without cutting into the next game's time slot.
• It should remind you of P.E., that's kind of the point. We're playing kickball! While the baselines always start out straight, throw down bases tend to move around a little during play. Don't be shy about fixing them if you notice one has gotten knocked askew!
• All of your refs have passed the Rules Certification exam with a 100% score, and generally speaking are the most knowledgeable people about the rules in the league. This of course doesn't guarantee they'll get every single call right, but talk to them if you have questions!
• Uniforms under jackets are just part of the game in cold weather. It would be unfeasible to require players to wear their WAKA shirts on top of jackets, and prohibitively expensive to produce cold gear uniforms. Fortunately, March is just around the corner!

Q: "Bar games seem to happen too late."
A: Bar Games happen when our Social Coordinator arrives at the bar, and while she's super awesome about everything sometimes her team has a 9 PM game and they can't get there until 10:15 or so. Easy guideline: check to see when Pitch Please is playing, and count on bar games starting an hour and a half after their game starts!

Q: "Stephen got me pregnant too. He jacked me, big time, and now there's a baby growing in my belly. (Is that how it works?)"
A:

Sportsmanship!

Hello boys and girls! Wanted to take a minute to give a shout out to the whole league for how awesome y'all have been so far this season with treating each other and the refs with respect. There have been a few moments of bristling, but on the whole this has been a great first half of the season with a really positive vibe.

As the season goes on, it's totally natural to get a little competitive. Even when it's something as silly as kickball it's still a competition, and winning is fun! Tight plays are going to happen, and here's the tidbit that we all really need to come to accept: Refs are going to get calls wrong sometimes, and that's OK. 

Until such time as we raise registration costs 44327784% to pay for high speed multi angle cameras and instant replay booths, we're going to be relying on the human element to make calls, and mistakes happen, and it's gonna feel like it's not fair when it's not in your favor. I'm not immune to that feeling, I got called out at home last week after sacrificing my body on a sweet corgi-kigurmi-clad slide and immediately got hot with the ref, because

But after a few seconds I calmed right down and shook hands with everyone and hugged it out with the ref, because he called it like he saw it and that's the most you can ask of a ref! A couple hours later I was reffing a game, made an out call at first base on a close play, and I'm ashamed to say the guy I called out handled it way better than me:

So take it easy out there, be respectful to the refs, and buy them a beer after the game to thank them for volunteering their time to improve your kickball experience! Plus you get 25 social points if you take a pic and post it on the Facebook Group with a #reflove hashtag and your team name in the caption!

Pitch Please - TX Live

List of 2016 Nobel Peace Prizes Candidates:

Pope Francis

Donald Trump

Edward Snowden

Women's Cycling Team from Afghanistan

Greek Island Groups Welcoming Syrian Refugees

Pitch Please

Large Hardon Collider - TX Live