Sunday(s) in the Park Where we once thought "the fertile crescent" was a hand salve.

I meant to put this up before the season, after the ref clinic.

I wish I had a better reason for missing my own deadline, but I don’t. I was waiting for a response from the MLB in regards to my written request to use its logo. Request ignored. Bud Selig might or might not hate kickball – he might or might not see it as direct competition to the baseball fan base. Or I might have sent my request to the wrong Bud Selig.

No need to memorize all those annoying little rules now (except for the ones that I excluded).

Moving on.

Big picture, I’m not sure if week 2 is an anomaly or a transition into a new phase of the league – better defense resulting in lower scores. It was windy, but there have been weeks like that before, and it never seemed to affect the games like last week.

I’m going to whip out some third grade graphing skills for a sec.

The league scored 264 runs last week. That would have been the lowest total on a Sunday for all of last year. The lowest scoring weekend last season was 285 runs on week 6. This is the main reason the over/unders were so off the mark last week. (That and bad intel.)

I expect the total runs to climb back up this week.

Now that the season is in full swing, how about all the new jerseys? Nothing like a fresh design in the summer time! I’ve got a few nominations for best new jersey: The Ghosts wrap around Ghost/Pac Man design (don’t forget the PBR can); the Matadores tanks because who is gonna see the guns if you’re wearing sleeves; and the shall we say, subtle, design of $P@C3Pu$$y!’s new shirts. Let me know if you’ve got any other favorites. We’ll vote next week for the best new jersey!!

Here are my “Week’s Best” for Week 2:

Best ensemble: Liberty Hall, hands down! Any team that plays in tuxedo shirts and dresses… need I say more.

Best facial hair: Dan from Tellerdactyles; do you think he uses mustache wax?

Cutest dog: Hank, the lab puppy from Red Lyon; who wouldn’t want to take him home with you

Shortest shorts: Nicole from Tellerdactyles; cuh-caw! The ‘dactyles represented this week

Best sportsmanship: We all win this week! No outstanding squabbles reported so everyone gets a pat on the back. Let’s keep this up guys!! Its a long season so keep things amicable.

Least sportsmanship: Any one that yelled at a ref. These are VOLUNTEERS, people. They are giving up their free time to help out. Let’s remember that its their call and as much as you might disagree, just swallow it and move on.

GOTW proved to be an exciting match up. Granted I am a little biased (GO GHOSTS!!!), it was a fun game to play. The Ghosts took an early lead, but after a few lead changes, the Liberty Hall Late Fees pulled it out, winning 17-16. Props to the Fees for their well placed kicks. Good game guys!!

And in case you missed it, Cougar was crowned the official Prom King of the 2013 KVKL Season. As if there was any competition, right?! You look lovely in that sash, Cougs! It really brings out the color of your eyes.

If you were paying attention, there were some important takeaways from Week 1. For the sake of succinctness, I will harp on one, discuss another, and mention a third. How can one harp and be succinct at the same time? I just don’t know, but I’ll try my best.

1)     The favorites swept.

There won’t be very many upsets this season, at least not until the tournament. This is the norm every year though. Dirty Mike and Los Matadores have both been involved in upsets the past couple of seasons. Two years ago, Dirty Mike resembled Buster Douglas when they shocked Los Luchadores – defending champs – at GOTW. And like Buster Douglas, they faded just as fast.

And last year:

During Rivalry Week (week 11) Sacred Sword beat Slowride, Chalmersiz beat Goats, Love Garden beat Das Boot, Corksuckers beat Free State, Brew Ballers beat the Rockets, Toe Pokes beat West Coast, Gang Green beat Asteroid Head, Screamers beat Shaolin, Ghosts beat Balls Deep, and Los Mats beat Hurtz.

These were all lower seeded teams winning against higher seeded foes. All good games, not upsets though. Some of the lower seeds were possibly even favored before the games were played.

What about unexpected outcomes between teams in pool play? Is Das Boot over Pita Pit an upset? Hurtz over Wildman?

Although the outcomes may have been a surprise, I don’t think games between teams in the same pool can be considered upsets. And some kickball pundits probably did predict DB or Hurtz would win, though I’m not sure whom.

Looking at lower seeds beating higher seeds in division play – Brew Ballers beat Liberty Hall in 7-4 in week 3, Liberty Hall beat Los Mat 14-9 in week 4, Dirty Mike beat Slowride 11-10 in week 5, Red Lyon beat the Goats 8-6 in week 6. Also, there was the vacated win by Los Mat over Das Boot in week 1.

The only true upsets (lower seeds winning and the outcome surprised me) were Liberty over Los Mats and to a lesser degree Dirty Mike over Slowride.

Will there be more than two upsets in the regular season this year? Will they involve Dirty Mike and Los Mats? Will I stop asking rhetorical questions? (No. No. Yes!)

There are at least two teams in each division that could pull off at least one: Corksuckers and Rockets in Nation, Brew Ballers and Dirty Mike in Brown, Liberty Hall and Ghosts in Burroughs, Channel 6 and Bullet Proof Tigers in Hughes.

2)     Scoring first is important.

I put the line scores below to show why. Nineteen teams scored in the first inning, which is crazy. I will be keeping an eye on this trend. I expect this percentage to drop a bit during pool play.

Teams that scored in the first inning were 14-5.

Sixteen of those teams scored multiple runs in the first inning. Teams that scored multiple runs in the first inning were 14-2.

Teams that scored first in the game were 12-4.

3)      Game of the Weeks are going to be a little more exciting this year. The first one was a good one (full disclosure, I wasn’t there) with Reign of Terror making a comeback after the Toe Pokes strong start. The rest of the GOTWs look evenly matched as well, and to me that is the most important thing because blowouts are boring.

The games for this week are going to be difficult to predict. The first week is a good indicator of how teams will perform for the rest of the season, but a few of those games were closer than I expected. So I don’t know if I over or under shooting the mark on some of these – I’m looking at you, Langston Hughes.

I am planning on posting betting lines each week as part of the weekly previews, but I don’t want to end up like these guys. Just to be clear, I will say “fake” as many times as possible until I am confident I won’t be mistaken for a bookie.

Each week I will pull the fake betting lines from the fake AP newswire.

It will look like this:

In addition to the fake favorite, fake underdog, and fake point spread, I will include the fake over/under total runs for each game.

I encourage people to make predictions in the comments and/or discuss what games they are looking forward to watching/playing.

Predict if teams will cover the fake spread, take the fake points, or just ignore the fake table all together and pick a fake winner and a fake loser. Will it be a high-scoring battle or low-scoring grind?

Oh, and here are the fake over/unders for wins, runs scored, and runs allowed for the season:

I won’t post this second fake table every fake week, but these are the fake numbers that fake teams fake hovered around last fake year.

Call your fake bookies, place your fake bets. For the sanctity of the game, please refrain from fake betting on your own team.

This is all in fun, but for all you hardcore gamblers out there, I do accept Bitcoin. (Just a joke.)

I hope I said “fake” enough.