Stinkmitt • June 19th, 2016
BROOKLYN – Far be it from me to scab-up on the rosy-lensed mores of masculinity, but most father-son traditions spun toward sacking up the marbles of the sucklings—whether it’s your tactless fishing trip or the botching and burning up a lasagna for mom—frankly fall full-flat. Maybe it’s the way that the yay-Daddy-day all-too-quickly reveals itself not to be invented by a front-hoser as sperm-ulous misfiring men cry through the grates of their grills during the only itch of alone time they’ve had since the “best day of their lives.” If we’re honest, at least as far as these strewn states united are concerned, the Day of Dads is more akin to the Day of the Dead, the first few attempts to sanctify such a sacrament spearheaded by slits in memoriam of massive male mortality brought on by southern mining disasters and the Civil War “minie ball” that dusted 620,000 daddy dicks in the dirt. But I’m not here just to pee on the peonies my less-than-father and father-ful friends alike—rather, I’m here to highlight the way the 5th Annual YFS Dads v Lads ever-reminds us that, when left to our own devices of sticks and balls, the Dads and Lads can’t help but get the wrong so damn right.
Of course, any holiday starts with a greeting card and one can look no further for such esteemed chivalrous accord to begin the affair than The Connoisseur Cain who fired immediately across the bow of the saplings who spray their glue clear of the soil. Complete with an alcoholic anonymous opening address and a Twain-twitch finish, the smack spewed the sewage to firehose the Lads and simultaneously rouse his fellow Dads, proclaiming that the YFS D-L fiver would be the day “that proves” fatherhood isn’t merely a loss of reflexes or a bowing down to vaginal and blow-job blackmail. “It felt essential to fire a flare from the get-go,” garbled Connie Smack before the game through a mouthful of grape nuts in breast milk, “especially when you’re dealing with players who more often wake from nightmares of having chosen the wrong curtain pattern rather than dreams of ‘olive-bowling’ the French foreign exchange student two doors down.”
But the stiff skiffs of the Ladly-crew were already at sea with a stack of suds and surrounded by ex-pat pit-bushed-cush with banana-scooped feelies by the time such slander spattered their inboxes. In what had to be the most fucking romantic ride to a stickball game since the bubble chopper of opening day to these here Groovy Times, the lads opted to exploit mutinous maritime law for their first swings before the feud. “Naturally, we decided to take the boat,” said the second-year-southpaw sensate The Shepherd after erasing a gash of Colombian from the navel of one of the American Apparel escorts aboard the ferry, “when you got sacks this chalked with tapioca, we lads are essentially walking on water everywhere we go.”
A miracle, though, wouldn’t be necessary—at least for the Lads. After getting a sundress bath of virginal sweat amongst the Arabian rugs and Brigitte Bardot 8-tracks of the DUMBO flea market, the sons-who-have-no-sons arrived to find a Dads team deep in a teethy and shaky-wrist batting practice, checking for a baby monitor between every foul-tip. “I felt like I kept flying open on my cuts in the box,” said newly-minted patriarch El Matador while digging for a mood ring in a box of Cracker Jacks at the Carson Daly Cotton Candy Condolences Family Funfest after the game, “which is ironic, because I have living and breathing evidence of my ability to stay in the box and finish up the middle.”
Such bitter irony, though, would rule this Dad’s day, as the most productive fathering was found on a Lad-side who raised $30 in bombs for iMentor, beginning with back-to-back opening inning jacks for the Lads by “Park That Yacht” Rizzo and The “North of the Wall” Surgeon, wobbling the Pops back to their Boggle and Scrabble boards for a game-night of a more “all ages” sort with their head-of-the-table seat unchallenged. Said R. “El Vagabundo” Link from the precipice of YFS legendry and while having his all-beef fajitas fed to him from the juiced lips of two topless and Brazilian bikini-bottomed Cubana waitresses as he straddled the throne at Pedro’s postgame Agave Apocalypse, “Since this is one of my last games at York as a resident of NYC, there’s been talk of erecting statues around town in my likeness to honor my time here. But it’s unnecessary, just check the park on the other side of the BQE and you’ll see thousands of little gold stars scattered throughout the hood, each a tiny memoriam quietly dreaming for a return of the mack. For now, just watch me bring the gold rush back to the West.”
And so, as swiftly as the shit-talk-tankard shuttled itself up to the shores of YFS Lad-land, the series tipped in the back-spillers favor—three games to two—and the bleary-eyed longing of unleaded pencils began as YFS Dads were scuttled back between their matching nightstands and throw pillows to solace only in the fallow fact of their spawnful-success as being above any stickball glory. But, I’d be terribly remiss, of course, to neglect the true triumph and wisdom of a father’s day done right. I grew up amidst gynecologically precise conversations of femme canals and panty-prize polyps over seafood soup all the while living next door to the man who invented the water weenie only to discover, as all of us Dads and Lads unalike, that everything we know about manhood comes from thieved dirty magazines and the ability to build a terror-watch-list quality pipe bomb from the scant materials of a safe-and-sane model rocket set. What the 5th Annual YFS Dads v. Lads game does more is remind us, however, that we’re not all winners on any given day and that, in the wisdom of Wilde, “a good friend”—be he a Dad or a Lad—“will always stab you in the front.”
From all and for all, thank you Wanderer and ever-thank you to the YFS.
DvL - Lads: 6, Dads: 4
HRs: M. Koepke 1 (43), C. Rizzo 1 (25), D. Brumleve 1 (10)
The Dads: The Secret Agent, Cobble Hill Kid, Le Grievance, El Matador, The Connoissewage, The Double Agent” Goldberg and Long Balls Leonard.
The Lads: The Wanderer, The Diamond, The Surgeon, Soy Peligroso” Brumleve, Rizz Everywhere, Swingin’ Mo, Not-So-Great Ball Kenedi, The Shepherd and Stinkmitt.