August 8, 2012
For a lot of the afternoon, the skies got progressively darker. There were periods of rain, but all updates on the Chicago Sport & Social Club site said that games were on. In the two years we’ve been playing, never have they cancelled a game due to weather. Today was the first day where we had rainy conditions on a game day, so it looked dicey.
But… when game time rolled around, we all got dressed and made our way to Skinner Park. Despite some dreary looking clouds overhead, the rain held off and we were good to go.
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July 25, 2012
It was a pretty hot day outside, for our fifth game. There was some speculation whether the game would actually happen, given the heat… but I remembered an even hotter day from last year – and if we played that time, I figured we’d play today.
Luckily for all of us, our game was later in the evening… so we hopped over to Union Park and had some dinner/drinks, prior to our game.
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July 19, 2012
So something happened near the 5th innning. The other team had tow people on base, and the person up at the plate just belted the crap out of the ball. It was a harder kick than we’d seen the entire game, and got further to the outfield than expected. By the time we got the ball back in our hands, they were already rounding the bases.
Bringing the score in their favor, 5-6. We held on for the next two innings, and I think it was in the bottom of the 7th when something absolutely amazing happened.
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July 11, 2012
After the game, several of us opted to stick around and hang out on the bleachers. We had some more beers to sink, and just took in the other game that started after ours ended. A nice, relaxing way to ease into dusk.
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June 27, 2012
It’s been a year since our first ever kickball game as a company, and a lot has changed in that time. We’ve got a new team, a new name… and some awesome new shirts, courtesy of Jane.
Our name this year is Mandatory Fun, which is a play off of a phrase used by Chris C in one of his company-wide emails. I forget the original context, but the email spoke about some required function, and his phrasing was something like: “This will be a fun (mandatory) event.”
When we took submissions for names and the votes tallied out, this is the name that won.
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June 14, 2012
When everyone got together, we did several runs of people practicing their kicks… and then split up into two groups, practicing a lot of catching and throwing the ball around. Tim had the section I was in doing several drills, and by the end of it I think we all felt pretty comfortable.
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August 18, 2011
Our company kickball team, Emmis the Menace, walking down the Jackson Tunnel to the Blue Line stop. Today, we entered the Tournament mode, where it’s single elimination – on loss, and you’re out of the bracket. Our opponents this time were Straight Kickin’ It (Game 2). They had beaten us 10-6 last time around, but we played them early on…
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August 12, 2011
We showed up to our last season game to find Skinner Park taken over with a lot of people. Near Left Center, there was a small hot dog stand that had set up shop. Near Right Field, there were a ton of people and kids more or less camped out. When I was in the outfield, I swear I was…
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August 4, 2011
Emmis the Menace got another win last night! We defeated Mike Tyson’s Tigers with a final score to 9-7. We got an early lead with two runs in the first few innings, but then the other team got on a stream and took over for a while. We were able to close the gap and pulled in even at 7-7…
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July 28, 2011
We played our fifth game last night, against a team called Average Joe’s. They got some runs on us early on, but we ended up rallying and held the lead for a good while (from about Inning 2 to Inning 7). We were up at the top of the 7th, and with two outs… the ball got kicked my way….
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July 21, 2011
Emmis the Menace played its fourth kickball game yesterday, despite the temperatures outside going as high as 98 (with a heat index of 108). Our game was on a different field, at a later time (7:30 instead of 6:30)… and while the later time took a bit of the edge off, it was still freaking hot. Everybody was constantly sipping…
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July 14, 2011
For our kickball team, it’s a good thing we have a large team list. Each week it seems to fluctuate as to who’s in town, and who’s able to attend a game. Today, for our third kickball game, we had a few new faces: Nisha joined us for the first time, Brad was in town, and our newest hire Chris…
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July 7, 2011
We played our second official kickball game yesterday, on a day that wasn’t a scorcher. This is a shot before the game officially began, with folks milling about the bench (and conferring with Tim on the batting order, in the background). We had a few less folks than last time, and lost Al partway through the game (due to an…
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June 30, 2011
Emmis Interactive officially joined the Chicago Social Kickball League, and we had our first game yesterday, after work. The original signup process was actually many weeks ago, and by the time the season started… I think a few of us were caught off guard. The game’s when? Tomorrow? A group of us took the Blue Line to Racine, and walked…
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