Tomorrow our Seattle Office League competes in its season championship — the ultimate playground tournament! Not content to leave the playoffs to a single game, we have KEXP, Bumbershoot, Easy Street Records and Seattle Weekly competing in three rounds of playground madness.

Round 1 - Four Square! This 15 minute lightning round of our favorite twee playground game will determine the order for the second battle which is…

Round 2 - JAZZ! It’s like HORSE but jazzier, like the Saucony Jazz of course.

And if there is a tie-breaker needed, or if everyone just can’t get enough, we’ll have a final Round 3 of DODGE BALL!

Bring your A-games Seattleites. Bumbershoot and Seattle Weekly may be in the lead right now, but tomorrow night we’ll see how it all comes down. 7pm at Cascade Playground - 333 Pontius Ave N. Celebratory tamales at Bandits after.

As the regular season starts to wind down for the Seattle SOSO league, the games get rougher. Two-hand touch football saw the Seattle Weeklings pitted against Easy Street Records on field #1, and 2 time champions Bumbershoot went toe to toe with the determined crew from KEXP on field #2.

Turnovers plagued both the Weeklings and Easy Street early on. On their first possession, a lazer beam of a pass from the Easy Street QB ricocheted off its intended target only to fall right into the hands of their opponent. It was going to be that kind of night. With each team scoring a single touchdown and failures to convert an extra point, the teams were tied 6-6 at half time.

Seattle Weekly holds on to the ball with everything they’ve got left.

Easy Street comes prepared with Easy Street Beverages ™.

The second half only brought more evidence that the caliber of these two teams matched play for play. Refusing to end the game in a tie, Easy Street and Seattle Weekly abandoned their short game and lobbed their passes into the end zone hoping to find their target. This happened maybe twice.

TOUCHDOWN.

Seattle Weekly maneuvers for the kill.

Easy Street’s one touchdown in the second half was answered in kind by a hail mary pass by the Weeklings. The 12-12 tie led to a sudden death match. Nobody scored.

Meanwhile, on field #2, Bumbershoot and KEXP scored touchdown after touchdown. With the taste of their first victory of the season so close to their grasp, KEXP defended their endzone against the ferocious Bumbershoot Hot Dogs. But alas, KEXP’s defense couldn’t withstand the evermounting pressure and the Hot Dogs’ last touchdown put them over the top 36-34 .

KEXP runs it down into Bumbershoot territory.

Bumbershoot about to get handsy with the ball.

At that point, Easy Street starting foaming at the mouth so we abandoned the field to quench their inner beasts with beer.

Good hustle out there, everyone.

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

My apologies, this will be mostly a picture post as I had to fill in as catcher for one of the teams and missed many end-of-the-year sports reel stats. But I can assure you, a grand time was had by all and I believe it was our cohesion as a Saucony league that kept the rain at bay.

The big W goes to the Seattle WeekLings, and the little w to Bumbershoot for defeating themselves.

On to the photographs!

WeekLings warm-up

Space Needle whiffle ball

Tandem batting

KEXP vs. Seattle Weekly

Bumbershoot teamwork

KEXP advancing bases

Seattle Weekly winners!

The delicious tamales at Bandits: consumed too fast to be photographed.

If someone wins, then someone must lose. Team KEXP once again has graciously filled that position.

First round saw us “borrow” a few fine folks from Seattle Weekly to compete against Bummershoot, oh, I mean, Bumbershoot. Cyrus’ scary side once again reared itself after a couple of questionable calls, all in Bumbershoot’s favor. I suspect he may have been right on a couple of them, too bad we don’t have instant replay. ((Really guys, how much did they pay ya?))

Round two was Seattle Weekly. We tried our best, really we did, but sometimes your best isn’t good enough.

It was a fun start. We are looking foward to Whiffle Ball and the additional team members that we’ve recruited. I won’t say ringers, but we may just win next time around.