It was a clash of kickball titans on Sunday, with top-ranked Brooklyn United striking the final blow over third-place Crucial Taunt, before the lights went dark.
Brooklyn United, which has emerged as the best and most-hated team in the league, dispatched two more bitter rivals on Sunday, clipping fifth-ranked Majesty, 4-3, in an error-filled game, and upending Crucial Taunt, 6-3, in a contest curtailed to four innings due to darkness.
With its midseason win over Never Scared , the men in black have beaten back the league’s most competitive teams, putting them in excellent position to secure the top seed in the playoffs.
Brooklyn United captain Justin “Thomas” Taylor acknowledged sloppy fielding in both games, but singled out league commissioner Kevin “Commish” Dailey for his role in officiating the game for the close score against Majesty.
“We were handicapped by terrible umping by the Commish, who showed a clear bias against us,” said Taylor. “It was not one of our better games.”
Dailey fired back, noting that Brooklyn United argued with him over nearly every call.
“They’re the slowest team in the league,” said Dailey, who has refused to umpire future United games.
In other matches, second-ranked Never Scared shook down Regression Aggression, 8-4, and mercy-ruled Licensed to Thunder, which changed its line-up yet again and met disastrous results.
Majesty, meanwhile, lost another tough game to the Bacon Bits, 1-0, accumulating four losses after an undefeated start.
Team captain Rochelle “Lady Gaga” Fainstein compared her team’s up-and-down performance to Eddie Murphy in the movie “Flubber,” which, ironically, also received mixed reviews.
It was a good weekend for Zeus’ Beard, which picked up two wins drinking up Booze on First and devouring Taco Taco Taco, after tying People’s Court last week.
Not so for the Pirates, who lost to Ram Rod, a Tuesday-league team, despite the presence of its all-star Sarah “Jellyvision” Koniarski, who occasionally plays for Ram Rod. The Pirates’ strategy of “getting on base moving the runners, arrrrrr…” failed to spur the team to victory.
Regression Aggression also took a step backwards, losing to the Mathletes, 6-3, after a pair of errors undid a close game.
Regression’s Rob “Rights of Man” Burke said his team changed its name this year to the Recession Aggression in order to give players a more positive mindset, but that appears to have stalled.
“We try to play hard and have fun,” said Burke. “Depending on the nature of the game, we do a bear market or a bull market cheer. Today was a bear market.”
But it was surely a bull market for the last-place Hot Mess, who triumphed over Dolls Kicking Balls, 7-5, despite having a scheduled bye.
Hot Mess’ Randal “Leave Off the Last ‘L’ for Lover” Mixon, a veteran kicker widely known for his stint on the Commitments, said his team has come together in recent weeks after getting to know each other off the field.
“This is a real fun team, with a drink in one hand and a kickball in the other,” said Mixon This is the real way to play kickball.”
Brooklyn Kickball at McCarren Park ball fields (Bedford Street at N. 14th Street), Sundays 1–11 pm.
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