The Summer Saucony O’s Office League comes to a close in the Windy City next Tuesday with the Kick Ball Championship game! Venus Zine has led the series in Chicago with 4 wins for the season. My Open Bar is close behind with 3 wins, followed by WXRT with 2 and Mr Design with 1.

Venus Zine may have the championship in the bag, but we’ll still pit them against My Open Bar on the kick ball field to see if MOB can beat the ladies (well, mostly ladies) in yellow for one last “in your face” moment of the season.

Meanwhile we’ll see if underdogs Mr Design — the tallest team in the league, if not the winningest — can score one more win against WXRT to close out the season. Good luck Chicago!

The Saucony O’s summer office sports league is in full swing, and we have a game lineup next week that’s gonna knock your socks right out of your Jazz Lo-Pros.

Monday August 3rd & Tuesday August 4th - NYC teams plays Kubb in Central Park.

Tuesday August 4th - Chicago teams play wiffle ball in Humboldt Park and our Boston teams play steal the bacon at Boston Common (pray for no rain this time!)

Wednesday August 5th - Seattle teams play touch football under the Space Needle while our SF teams play field crumpets at Draves Field.

Now what the eff is field crumpets, you ask? Field Crumpets is a game played with two teams of players which try to score points by hitting the “crumpet” (generally one of those squishy playground balls) into the opposing team’s goal using their crumpet sticks (big fat wiffle bats). Field Crumpets is highly related to the games Field Hockey and Soccer, though it references several other sports. The game also includes various unique rules, many of which reflect the founders’ desire to emphasize fun and silliness over competition.

We look forward to the silliness!

Field Crumpets photo courtesy of fieldcrumpets.com

Although kickball was canceled due to some cold drizzle, Venus Zine made it rain on the other teams as we won again — this time in a game of Trivial Pursuit. VZ displayed serious team effort — under Tighe’s oddly competitive leadership, we used our collective useless knowledge to talk through questions we couldn’t possibly know the answer to.

Happy to not be outside in the crappy weather, the four teams sat around a giant table at Crocodile Lounge on Milwaukee Avenue, sipping beers and Crispin Brut Apple Cider (amazing!), struggling to hear over the happy hour crowd. The Trivial Pursuit questions were often poorly worded (twelve is not a ‘tender age,’ especially in the time of Charles Dickens!) and completely obscure, but even with a smaller team this time around, we managed to muster up the correct answers to questions about Aspen, Edgar Allen Poe, and even the Stanley Cup. Venus Zine and Pitchfork/Mr. Design were neck in neck for most of the game, but the other teams caught up near the end. The game went for so long that our bar tab reached its max, naturally causing the My Open Bar team to forfeit (tsk, tsk), and we went into a round of sudden death which resulted in another win for VZ.

Shall we say “Booyah?” We’ll respectfully refrain, for now.

With one summer game under our belts, last week’s SPUD face-off where Venus Zine triumphed, Chicago’s office teams return to the field on Wednesday July 8th to play Kick Ball. Basically like baseball with cooler outfits, no bats and you know, kicking, it’s sure to be a good time. Get ready Chicago!

Thanks to Venus Zine for the Wheaties Box-ready photo.

Yesterday’s game of SPUD took place in a grassy, mosquito-infested knoll in Humboldt Park on one of the hottest days of the year. If you’re following us on Twitter, you already know that the Venus Zine Office Team schooled everyone at SPUD, setting the bar high at the start of this summer tournament.

As the VZ team sized up the other teams from MyOpenBar.com, Mr. Design/Pitchfork, and WXRT, we realized we kinda had it in the bag. The other teams each had between four and six players, which paled in comparison to our team, which consisted of 11 all-star players, including our EIC, K. Tighe, publisher Anne Brindle, art director Denise Gibson, and a whole slew of staff and interns — all of us reluctantly anxious to get down and dirty.

In the end, we’re not quite sure if it was because our team was the biggest, or if it was because we kick serious ass at SPUD, (or maybe it was all the Miller High Life we downed) but Venus Zine won the first game of the season, and that’s all that matters.

Game on, guys — show us what you got!