Your Quest: Slay the Dragon

Which Traitors are riding the Dragon?

On Friday, August 10, the last day of the regular season, we will have an All-Star Game. Sorta.

The Traitors, the fire-breathing, undefeated wa7sh of the season, will have a new team to contend with: All-Stars selected from the other seven teams. The game will be an unofficial exhibition only, and it will not count towards the Tournament seedings in any way. But if the All-Stars can slay the dragon, it sure will be nice dining on Traitor flesh.

Selection of the All-Star team will begin this Friday, August 3. In order to be selected, you have to be good and you have to be available to play on Friday, August 10 at 3:00 PM.

Talk trash in the comments. (Commenting restrictions have been eased a bit for this purpose. I'm a humanitarian, after all.)

NOTE: I'll need a place to crash after the game, as my wife, Traitor Brooke, will not be very accommodating after her team loses.

SlogsCenter Epic: Nomads-Traitors

I wouldn't leave y'all hangin'--now that the offending parties have vowed to change their ways. Here's the extended version of SlogsCenter, and it's all about the Nomads and Traitors. Even if you're not a fan of either team, you should check out the clip. Lots of great defense. Congrats to the Traitors on a great win. I have a feeling they may run into the Nomads again soon. Special thanks to Melissa Manning for the terrific pics and Maher "Zambrano" Abu-Arja for crawling out of bed to shoot some video. Enjoy.

To enhance your viewing experience, let the clip load all the way before watching. You'll enjoy the soundtrack more.

Traitors Whup Nomads, Clinch Tourney's Top Seed

There's your highlight reel.

The Traitors beat the Nomads on Friday, 15-7. After the top of the 3rd inning, the score was Nomads 6, Traitors 5. But the rest of the game was all Orange, all the time.

The win, when combined with their defeat of the Sluggos later in the day, gives the undefeated Traitors (8-0) the Long Division title and the #1 seed for the tournament. The Nomads are a half-game up on the Eagles for the lead in the Division of Labor, with the top team there taking the #2 seed.

I had planned on posting a whole mess of pics and video highlights from this game, but deleting rude messages took too much time. I will not reward those who cannot win with class, and I will not allow anyone to destroy with negativity and divisiveness what we've worked hard to build. Talk to your captain, Traitors.

End of post.

UPDATE:

From Kevin Rowlson, Captain of the Traitors:

I would like to take this time to publicly apologize to my teammates and everyone else for the comments I made. (Mude has already deleted the post.)

Sometimes I act without thinking of what the consequences will be as long as it makes me feel better at the time, and I am sorry for that. I sincerely hope that if anyone who saw the post and took any offence to it can find it in their hearts to forgive me.

SO: We'll have SlogsCenter highlights and some of Melissa Manning's excellent game pics later today some day soon. -Mude

Traitor Nation Is Born, Quickly Rejected By Own Mother

Dennis Merdian has an ouchie. That ball is evil...and hungry.

In Jeff Coupe's last game as a Traitor, he helped his team beat the Stars and fathered "Traitor Nation." No word on who the mother is, though, as she apparently wants nothing to do with the whole ordeal. Here's Jeff and his daughter Hannah, setting things straight and saying goodbye...



Dennis Merdian, pitcher for the Stars, took a bullet off his shin, courtesy of Justin "Get Some" Hiester. Dennis is a tough man, and he wouldn't give any Traitor the satisfaction of seeing him hurt. He stayed in the game and played well. (But I have the feeling his wife had to hear a lot of whining later that night.) To his credit, Justin felt awful about the whole thing and offered to pay all of Dennis' tuition fees for grad school.

The bruise on Dennis' shin had barely turned purple before Kevin and Brooke began trading small arms fire with Omar Massarweh of the Nomads, with whom they have a breakfast date next Friday to determine which of the two teams truly rules the regular season. Ziggy and Schwa will be all over that preview. In the meantime, have at each other right here.

The Traitors: Lonely At The Top

"I'm smart! Not like everybody says, like dumb. I'm smart and I want respect!" -Fredo Corelone, The Godfather: Part II "...or I'll tear his arms off." -Jeff Coupe, Traitors Shortstop, July 13, 2007 The Traitors rose up to a major challenge and established themselves as the team to beat this season. Schwa the Boycat predicted a tight, low-scoring game with lots of fly balls becoming martyrs in the stiff breeze. He was correct. Justin Hiester, Jeff Coupe and Ash Samawi each scored twice for the Gatorades, and Brooke Sartawi chipped in another. On the Eagles side, Tom Manning and Andrea Brusseau crossed the plate in the 7-2 Traitors win. Here are a couple of highlights, including a hello to New Zealand from the Eagles' Matthew Perry...and a worm-burnin' round trip by the Traitors' Justin Hiester. BREAKING NEWS: You can tell which Traitors are new to winning by looking in the comments section of this post. Some just are not satisfied with having a stacked team and simply being undefeated. They want everyone to worship them, too. Why not? There will be a Traitors Worship Service held at 8:30 AM every Friday, as long as they are on top. After entering the clubhouse, take the hallway on your right, then enter through the second door on your right. (You can "drop off" your donation there at any time.)

My Wife Beans Me (And Bling Crushes The Traitors)

Last Friday, some of the Polyphonic Blingtones joined half the Nomads and Slackers to watch Tessio beg to be let off the hook. (You know, for old times’ sake.) The Gatoradin’ Traitors were in town, so a game had to be played. Orrince, YAM, Kristin, Gunny and I jumped over to BlingNation. The battle was afoot.

I’ll spare you the suspense. Bling Bling won this game. Were it not for the small technicality of Bling’s forfeit, you would all see a big fat “1” in the Traitors’ loss column. It was a blowout. We stopped keeping score after it was 27-0 in the 3rd inning.

Kinzi over at "my treasure" is digging up ideas on “how playing sports together can enhance your marriage.” She was kind enough to link to the thrilling, back-to-back Taweel homers, but I’m here today to speak the truth—not some four bag fantasy.

My wife plays for the Traitors, and she was patrolling second base during this game. I hit a grounder and Brooke tried to turn two. She threw one of her laser throws that went wide and hit me in the leg…five feet after I was safe at first. It left a nasty bruise. How’s that for an enhanced marriage?

Perhaps Brooke did this in retaliation for an incident that occurred during the previous inning. She hit what looked to be a single to left, but being a Traitor, she tried to take the extra base against a weaker opponent. Manning first base in my manly manner, I stopped her. She put up a fight. I carried her back to first. (Told ya I'm manly.)

You see, Brooke’s family has entrusted me with her safety. Second base is dangerous. It’s out there in the middle of nothing, all square and white and dusty. I did not want my wife to fall victim to some nefarious plot. So I saved her and brought her back to the taupe-level security of first base. See what a good guy I am?

Not only did I get rewarded for my heroic deed with a beaning, but one of Brooke’s teammates later added insult to my injury. Traitor Dwaine Childs mustered all his strength and rolled a soft grounder to YAM at third, who made a perfect throw. Knowing he was meat at first, Dwaine, channeling A-Rod, actually slapped the ball out of my hand, earning the nickname Slappy McDwaineRod. Of course, Brooke thought it was funny.

So what do I do to enhance my marriage now, people? Drawing on my threat to exercise my right to simultaneously keep four wives, Brooke came up with an idea for a bumper sticker. The words are hers, and the design is mine. If sports don’t bring you closer, try making fun of each other. It works for us.

Don’t mess with the bull, young lady. You’ll get the jalapenos.

This wasn’t the game anyone thought it would be. After an inning-and-a-half, the score was tied at one. One Traitor was then heard saying, “We’ve got ourselves a game.” But another Traitor dug deep into the Rules of Softball and discovered that the object of the game is to score runs while preventing the other team from doing the same.

Close game early: Ali Lejlic nails Ash Samawi at home.

And so an eight-run 2nd inning, followed by six in the 3rd (with nothing much in between for the Sluggos) was pretty much all it took for the Traitors to snap up an unexpectedly easy win. With it, the Gatorades took early control of the Long Division.

Swing-and-a-miss: Orrince's hat is cool.

Oh yeah, the call. Prior to the game, the ump (Note: ‘twas I) gave pre-game instructions to the pitchers and captains of both teams. He told them to yell and scream all they wanted, to ridicule the ump as they saw fit, and not to hold back their emotions. The only line in the sand was to not interfere with calls made by the umps. Just don’t make calls, not from the dugout, defense or base coaches. Those calls will be overturned and will go against you for interfering.

Wouldn’t you know, in the bottom of the 4th, your Uncle Mude found himself leaning against Dante’s Furnace. Brooke Sartawi (Note: my wife) failed to get back to first in time and was doubled up on a fly ball. That should have been the third out of the inning, but someone (I’m not saying it was Orrince) yelled “Out!” from the Sluggos dugout before the base ump could make the call.

Not even close: Brooke Sartawi would have been out at first.

Why me? Anyway, the inning went on. (But it would’ve been nice had the Traitors been good sports and just given up an easy out.) The three runs the Traitors put up in that inning had no effect on the game, as the Sluggos themselves stated. Later that night, however, I could hear a bunch of guys at a poker game insulting every member of my family, in vivid detail, from clear across town. Guys, leave my maternal great-great-uncle out of this, eh? The only thing he associated with “soft ball” was labaneh.

After the game, but before the Mude Haters Poker Club convened, I witnessed an event that changed me forever. Sluggo Orrince fed his baby daughter a jalapeno. She cried and cried. He laughed and laughed. Why would he do this to his own adorable baby? Because he can. I will never cross him again.

On a lighter note, here's Kevin Rowlson, taking his punishment like a, um...man...sorta:

Umm…Somebody wanna go get that ball?

In his first game back with the Beats, Javier “Gunny” Diaz went Quadrangular. And it wasn’t one of those cheap, single-and-advance-to-home-on-errors home runs, either.

No, it was a Roy Hobbsian light-buster that forced ASL to tear away a bunch of old ladies from their sewing machines. They kindly laid out all of their tape measures end to end to give us a distance of 330 feet. That’s the longest in ASL history.

Ball Go Far

Eiad Zoubi, outfielder for the Traitors, didn’t even bother putting out his cigarette* to give chase.

Your footnote: Kevin “Orange Shoelius” Rowlson, victimized pitcher. At least his team won the game. Traitors 21, Beats 12.

* With Eiad as our inspiration, we proudly announce Argilahs in the Outfield Café. If you’d like some coffee, tea or ice-cold beverage to go with your smokes while playing the outfield, just give us a holler. And of course, argilahs come in a variety of flavors. Note: An argilah is a shishah, or hubbly bubbly, or (tobacco) hookah.