Frenemies

So I saw Smirnoff the other day and he goes "I got caught up on your dodgeball blog the other day and saw that you haven't made any mention of the best game I've ever had in my long and storied dodgeball career!"

Well Smirnoff, here it is.

My Thursday night game was at Huron Street Public School, near Spadina and Bloor. More importantly, it is just one block east, and one block north, of the Madison Avenue Pub. We'd never played there before, but I knew it was a small gym because it had been my local polling station for two years.

Our opponents, Dodgebull2, were also familiar, since they're led by former Evil Empire member Helen. That's right Helen, you don't get a clever nickname. Dodgebull also has a few other players we've been on tournament teams with. They know us and our style well, and we know how they roll pretty well too.

This season, TCSSC has introduced new rules that many of the teams, including the Evil Empire, have not been impressed with. However, one team Shouldice, has been insistent on playing by the new rules. Helen's team had played Shouldice the week before and had really struggled with playing under these rules. Since we are playing Shouldice next week, and Helen wanted her team to get more accustomed to the rules, she and I agreed that we'd abide by the new rules.

I had hoped that we'd be able to keep it light and friendly by issuing warnings to the each other if we broke these new by-laws.

No such luck.

Almost right off the bat we were getting into some heated exchanges over line disputes, ball control, and head shots. It's shitty to see two friendly teams get into chirp-fests over what amounts to very little. We used to have a phrase on earlier versions of the Empire... "If you can hit them once, you can hit them twice." I think we're going to have to get back to that philosophy.

We did try to keep it light on our bench with the Reg Dunlop Award. This week, it was all about who could stay in rounds the longest. If you survived a round, you got a point. If you were our last player on the court in a losing effort, you got a point. While I got one measly point, largely because my teammates refused to dive in front of balls thrown at me, Smirnoff was dominate. If memory serves, he got eight points. If I may say, his performance was sublime, all while looking good in his stylish new glasses. But Smirnoff wasn't just styling and profiling, the glasses apparently really helped his vision. He made great catches, swept the ball, and was throwing a sweet curve.

As you can tell from the photo, Smirnoff was nothing short of ecstatic to get the prize, which was a backpack including a Tide stain stick and golf ball shaped breath mints all provided, as always, by Mr. Jimmers. We be ballin', yo.

Also, not to rub it in our peers' faces, but we did win the game, quite handedly, 12-6.