DGS Goes Out With a Bang, Wins House League Championship

(Patrick Curran/CQ Roll Call)

Sometimes, reality is stranger — and sweeter — than fiction.

Sixth-seeded DGS cruised to a 16-8 win over the ninth-seeded Liberty Square Sliders on Sunday afternoon, securing the House Softball League title in its 14th and final season.

The team — formerly known as Denny’s Grand Slam because of its origin in the office of former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) — was one of the founding members of the House league in 2006, largely because of the efforts of team captain and league Commissioner Anthony Reed.

However, Reed and his squad hadn’t won a championship in the league they founded until last weekend. The victory was sweetened by the fact that the players had decided at the beginning of this season that it would be their last.

“We were losing a lot of people, and we didn’t want to revamp the roster,” Reed said. “We wanted to do it one more time.” Full story

Bada Bings Take Home CSL Title

(Patrick Curran/CQ Roll Call)

After a month of blowouts, strikeouts and — most frustrating of all — rainouts, the Congressional Softball League has crowned a champion.

The No. 2 Bada Bings took home the coveted Paul Myers Trophy on Saturday evening, capping a successful season and dominant tournament run with a 13-5 victory over No. 36 Margin of Terror. Full story

The Season That Wouldn’t End

(Patrick Curran/CQ Roll Call)

After four months of play and three weeks of rain-shortened playoffs, the Congressional Softball League was supposed to finally crown a champion this past Saturday.

Instead, we’re in for one more week of waiting. Full story

House League Bracket Is Out

Just a quick update, as things have all but wrapped up on the Mall this season. Three games remain on the Congressional League schedule, and four of the six teams involved have already been knocked out of the playoffs. The league will wrap up its season this Saturday at Beulah Fields in Alexandria, Va.; check out our preview post from last week for more details.

The House League, meanwhile, released its tournament bracket over Labor Day weekend. No major surprises there — the final week of play resulted in some slight reshuffling and a few knockouts, but the top four seeds went to Texas Republic, the Mastodons, the Cap City Brewing Flyers and Owego Fire Dept., all of whom have been dominant all season.

The KGBs, Natural Disasters, Channel 4 News Team and Cold Hard Cash stayed on the right side of the bubble to snag the last four spots. The bracket won’t be finalized until Thursday, after the top 48 teams have either accepted or waived their bids, so teams like the No. 49 Not Rocket Scientists shouldn’t give up hope just yet.

Still, it appears that most teams will be accepting the invitation — many more than did in the Congressional League, in any case — so most wait-listed squads shouldn’t hold their breath.

It’ll be a light news week here with few games on tap, but be sure to check back this weekend for updates regarding the finalized HSL bracket and coverage of the CSL finals.

Roll Call Softball Awards: HSL Regular Season

In honor of the what’s essentially the last day of the House Softball League’s season (the Big Lebowskis play two isolated games in September, but most teams are done as of today), Roll Call Softball is here to hand out awards for the 2012 HSL season.* The accolades are based on the games we were able to cover — an admittedly small sample — but we’d like to think our awards are deserved regardless.

Without further ado, the honorees! Full story

CSL Finals Schedule Released; HSL Bracket Coming Friday

The Congressional Softball League kicked off a big news week in the D.C. softball scene by releasing the bracket and game schedule for its 2012 finals round Wednesday.

The 16 teams that survived group play will compete in a single-elimination tournament Sept. 8, the winner of which will hold the title of CSL champion until next year. Full story

Day Two of CSL Playoffs Cut Short by Rain

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose — and sometimes you get rained out.

The old maxim rang true for teams slated to play on Saturday, the second day of the Congressional Softball League’s tournament, as steady rain canceled all games from 3:15 p.m. onward.

Still, the action did feature a major upset, a few highlight-reel plays and the first glimpse of the league’s best team, the undefeated Injured Reserves.

Your correspondent couldn’t make the early games in the North Group, but thankfully didn’t miss any big upsets. The No. 11 All Vols and No. 13 Baltimore Oracles both went undefeated in group play, besting Pew’s Your Daddy, the Service Nationals and the SIGTARP Watchdogs for the group’s two bracket bids. The tightest match was the All Vols’ 7-5 victory over the Service Nationals, in which the Vols clinched a berth.

Recaps on the South and East groups after the jump.

Full story

Licensed to IL, WAM! Play to a Draw

(Patrick Curran/CQ Roll Call)

Everyone was expecting this week’s House Softball League showdown between No. 7 Licensed to IL and No. 25 WAM! to be close. But only the HSL website knew just how close.

Seven innings of hard-fought softball ended in a 9-9 tie Thursday night on the National Mall.

A what?

You read it right. In the heart of the nation’s capital, two softball teams agreed to end the game in a draw — a bizarre result actually predicted by the HSL website in its game preview. While some would argue this is a slap in the face to the Founding Fathers and the baseball gods themselves, Licensed to IL and WAM! didn’t have much of a choice. Unlike their professional counterparts, beer-league ballers don’t have the luxury of a lighted field after sundown. Full story

Thunderstorms and Playoff Softball … Must Be August in D.C.

A nasty storm cloud burst over Georgetown just as your correspondent was leaving for the day’s games, so we didn’t have any live coverage on a dreary Wednesday night. For those of you in need of a softball fix, here’s a quick update of what’s going on around the leagues:

• Congress’ August recess isn’t enough to keep softballers inside. The Congressional and House leagues are still in action, boasting several games on the schedule each night. Early evening thunderstorms are common, but they occasionally dissipate before reaching Southwest D.C., where most games take place. The weather has been much more tolerable lately when it’s not raining (remember the 100-degree streak of early July?), so right now is a prime time to crack open a *soda* or two and go enjoy some casual softball.

• Still, with Congress in recess and the Republican and Democratic conventions going off in the coming weeks, there are many more open fields than we’ve seen all summer. Teams who usually can’t reserve a field early enough might want to take advantage.

• The Congressional Softball League tournament is kicking into high gear, and we’ve got all the coverage you can ask for. You can find our recap of the first day of group play here, highlights of which include a bad sunburn, a couple of big upsets and a cat running for Congress. Check in later this week for a short preview of this weekend’s slate. If you can’t make it out to Beulah Fields to watch the action Saturday, D.C’s best softball Twitter account will once again provide a live feed.

• As we mentioned last night, the House league playoff field is beginning to crystallize. On the outside looking in? Keep an eye on the tournament projection page to see whether your team has a chance at sneaking into a playoff bid based on cancellation or a loss this week.

That’s all for now, softballers. If your game didn’t get rained out, be sure to tweet results and photos @CQRCSoftball.

House League Tourney Projections Are Up

The House Softball League’s website was already considerably more entertaining than either of its counterparts — if you need proof, just check out the trash-talk message boards — and the newest late-season feature has made it even better.

The league has created a tournament projections page, easily accessible via a link at the bottom of the homepage, with a regularly updated bracket that shows matchups were the season to end today. Full story

CSL Tourney Recap: Day One

The Congressional Softball League is essentially the “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” of the sporting world during the regular season — the rules are made up, and the points don’t matter.

But that’s not true when the playoffs roll around.

The CSL’s annual postseason tournament kicked off on a beautiful Saturday at Beulah Fields in Alexandria, Va. The strictly enforced one-hour time limit, called balls and strikes and full-sized diamond made this a decidedly different experience from the average Mall game. Thankfully, the conditions were (nearly) perfect for a day jam-packed with softball — your correspondent has the sunburn to prove it — and the CSL’s sluggers did not disappoint.

Red Group

The day kicked off at 9:15 a.m., when the Brookland Sluggers upset the Peace Corps Villagers in a competitive four-inning affair. It didn’t feature the big hits or diving catches of some of the day’s later games, but it was perhaps the most entertaining, because of a muddy infield that caused most batters to wipe out spectacularly coming out of the box.

On another amusing note, iced coffee replaced beer as the drink of choice in both dugouts. Either there’s a line even CSLers won’t cross, or everyone was simply hungover already (it was a Saturday morning, after all).

As the morning progressed, two clear favorites emerged in the six-team Red Group: The GSPM PoliTricks and the Fallen Angels. The PoliTricks, armed with a potent top-to-bottom lineup and all-star fielding, dispatched two opponents in quick succession by invoking the mercy rule (a 10-run gap after four innings means the game is over). The Angels, meanwhile, were one of only two teams on the day to record a 20-0 victory.

The favorites ended up taking the group’s two berths by going 2-0 each, but that didn’t mean the rest of the day wasn’t worth watching. The aforementioned Sluggers-Villagers game was highly entertaining, and the late-morning matchup between Read the Fine Print and Booze, Win or Lose featured enough fantastic catches to fill your average SportsCenter highlight reel.

Ultimately, the biggest takeaway from the Red Group is that the Fallen Angels and especially the PoliTricks — neither of which your correspondent saw before Saturday — will be serious contenders in September’s bracket round.

White Group

The White Group’s Saturday slate was disrupted by a couple of teams canceling at the last minute, but the early afternoon still brought some excitement to Beulah Fields. The second-ranked Microsoft Bada Bings took the field for two consecutive dominant performances, laying the groundwork for what could be a long playoff run.

It wasn’t a total cakewalk, though: Microsoft got an early scare from upset-minded Hudson Institute in the White Group opener. Hudson played impressive defense against a slugger-filled lineup and even managed to take a brief lead in the third inning. Then the Bada Bings woke up, knocked two balls out of the park and promptly took an 11-run lead.

The Bings cruised in their next game, a 20-run shutout of 33rd-ranked Big League Chu, and predictably sealed a bracket berth. Big League Chu quickly rebounded to pull out an epic comeback win over Hudson Institute, but the DOT Triskelions spoiled the rally by taking the group’s other bid on two forfeit wins.

The Rest

Your correspondent couldn’t stick around to watch the smaller Blue and Gray Groups play in the evening games. But we’ve got results anyway, and there was no shortage of excitement.

The No. 41 Fearless LEADers used a 7-5 upset win over No. 8 Agent Orange to secure the bid from the Blue Group, in which they were the third-best of four teams based on regular season ranking (though they did win 11 games, as good or better than most teams in the league).

The Gray Group featured three teams with nine-win resumes, so it wasn’t a huge surprise when the 17th-ranked Hank’s Hitters took home the bracket berth. The surprise came when Senate candidate Hank the Cat apparently showed up to cheer on his team. For those of you who haven’t been following Virginia politics this election season, Hank is a cat from Virginia running for one of the state’s Senate seats. Really.

That’s all for this week, folks. Tune in to @CQRCSoftball next Saturday for live updates from the second day of CSL tournament group play.

Naked Shorts Win Intra-SEC Battle

(Patrick Curran/CQ Roll Call)

Civil war has descended upon the Securities and Exchange Commission! Well, sort of.

The Naked Shorts (10-2) beat fellow SEC squad the Red Stocks (6-5), 13-6, at Monument Field No. 4 on Wednesday night, solidifying their position in the Congressional Softball League’s top 10 heading into the postseason.

The Naked Shorts have been competing in the National Mall’s most casual conference for years. But the Shorts could only field so many players at a time, and in 2011, demand for a second team reached critical mass at the SEC. The result was the Red Stocks, who are unaffiliated with Boston but who — unlike the Sox — are above average this year, holding steady at No. 42.

Wednesday’s game was the first meeting between the two squads. Full story

No Happy Ending for Brockschmidt, Whiskey Caucus

(Patrick Curran/CQ Roll Call)

Sometimes, pure adrenaline can lift an average team over a far superior one — particularly at the end of the season. But most of the time, not even an emotional high can make up for pure talent on the diamond.

The latter was the case Wednesday night on the National Mall, as I Hit That Last Year (11-3) soundly defeated Whiskey Caucus (7-11), 26-16, in a late-season battle of mixed House Softball League teams.

I Hit That Last Year, coming in ranked No. 22 in the league and armed with two former college baseball players, didn’t waste any time showing off its guns. The favorites knocked home seven runs in the top of the first, and it looked like a blowout before Whiskey Caucus, a bipartisan team with a compelling history, even stepped to the plate. Full story

Naughty Fingers Upsets Uncle John’s Band

(Patrick Curran/CQ Roll Call)

As any seasoned sports bettor knows, records don’t always tell a team’s whole story.

That reality was thrown into stark relief in the Congressional Softball League on Thursday night, as the 71st-ranked Naughty Fingers walloped 15th-ranked Uncle John’s Band, 18-8, on the National Mall.

A group of college friends, the Naughty Fingers are listed on the CSL website as 0-3 on the season — hardly an intimidating mark. But according to captain A.J. Board, the Fingers simply never get around to reporting game results and in fact haven’t lost since Roll Call last covered the team in early June. Full story

One Hitters Edge Booze, Win or Lose in Top-10 Battle

(Patrick Curran/CQ Roll Call)

Pot-smoking athletes, when caught, insist that marijuana isn’t a performance-enhancing drug — a point that is rarely challenged, even by opponents. Whether that translates in the Congressional Softball League is less clear.

The marijuana lobby’s One Hitters (10-2) smoked Booze, Win or Lose (9-3), 22-11, in a battle of CSL vice squads Wednesday night at 21st Street and Constitution Avenue. Full story