The Shepard • June 17th, 2018
BROOKLYN – Let’s begin with Stickball Dad himself. Begin at the beginning and all that. . . . .
An old hand at cutting Farmer John ding-dogs and rubbery Tyson chicken cutlets into safe, bite-size pieces for his brood and their besties, the Minister swore off the practice in favor of more appealing fare for DADS-LADS.
We speak, of course, of the Wrencher’s much-preferred, one-item menu of fat, uncut meatballs, dripping with the baby batter of a pater familias who can advertise a couple healthy notches; the fat, uncut meatballs prepared for delivery to the jaws of the swings of the fathers-in-sticks, of the dads-in-common-also, of the Phelpsian-Sperm-alumnus, of the league members who’ve gone and learned the Hard Way that blowie currency rates fluctuate like you don’t even know before, during and always and forever after the better half’s popped out a couple dewy-eyed ballers of the future of the utopia-ever-in-the-making that is the YFS.
THESE are for whom the meatballs were meant, and THESE were to whom the Wrench’s wettest meatballs were delivered for DADS-LADS VII.
But only just, only just my friends, did these meatballs yield an overloaded plate of salty-sweet victory for the Dad squad. Only just did the dads slip their is-this-really-love handles through the crack of this annual battle.
Look, being a dad playing lads on Dad Day must be the day a dad’s gotta think about his own vitality. Vitality, or whatever it is those damn lads have over there which, the dads surely thought, our progeny somehow sapped from us and which them untested sperm-renters are still dealing out in spades. So we gotta get the jump. We gotta jump them lad bastards with a fuck-all early one.
And indeed, somehow – and likely through some sort of international meddling – the Lads rigged themselves to an 11:05AM start for this Dad Bod Royale, and it’s hard not to say now that the mescaline dust might not still have been rusting up the various canals of at least a few of these steel-cut laddies. All of which is to say Lad Captain 8-Ball, the personage playing liaison with the Dad politburo re the decision to have a fuck-all-early start, is a complicated figure in DADS-LADS VII. And when, really, is Quad D not a complicated figure in annual games X, Y and Z?
Your dear writer is not one for dead-on-arrival statistical reviews here within the no- salt- seeds-littered annex of the glistening Mothership, but Ya Jeans! was 5 for 6 – 5 for 6! – for the Lads whilst the rest of these baby-batter hoarders were, uh, less than. . . . Why? Why was this non-dad so goddamn hot during the dawn-reminiscent wee hour of 11? Was it because, as well all know, New York is overrun with so many young Ya Jeans! Juniors that surely, by now, Not-So-Gr8 Ball has finally begun looking perplexingly into the familiar-appearing eyes of young men and women riding the subway whilst listening to podcasts about What to Do When Your Dad Is the President of the 8-Ball School of Hitting University? Is that why he could hit like he did so early? Is 8 a dad in disguise? And if he is, then why hit like a whorehouse on fire for the Lads? Shouldn’t Ya Jeans! have pulled off his best Shoeless Joe?
A complicated figure indeed.
All this is to says the Dads pulled off a close one, with the Game Playpen Ball going to Sugardoll and his go-ahead tripoli Snapple-Factchecking all over the high hard-left wall of the Slut. Chin chin, Dads, with an extra croaking cheers to their newest squad-member, the Stink One and his young Sonny Stink.
DADs: The Secret Agent, El Wrencher, Soy Peligroso, Stinkmitt, Cobble Hill Kid, J. Cole & the Sugardoll 5
LADs: Eight Ball, Shepherd, Cobra, Deadbeat, Big Sex, Local Boy
G1: D 5, L 4
HRs: El Wrencher, 2 (20); Stinkmitt, 1 (14)
Dads hold the series edge, 4-3.