The (Slightly Fading) Allure of Beer League Sports

The author is in the dugout because, to round out this article, his editor wants a “narrative component,” meaning, he wants the author to participate in at least one beer league game. Which is fine, except that the author isn’t good at kickball and doesn’t drink anymore, and who wants to play a sport built around intoxicants while one is unintoxicated? Especially if one sucks?

So the author decides to try participating while using Colorado’s other legal intoxicant.

This is a journalistic first—never in the history of the world has recreational use of this particular intoxicant been legally sanctioned by statewide voters—and it will help answer the question: Will there ever be Weed League sports?

The author approaches it like a scientific experiment. By way of control, he plays half the game sober. This is fine and fun. He kicks the ball competently, runs the bases efficiently, and scores a run. Cheers all around from his new friends on Jurasskick Park.

But everything changes after the author sneaks off and gets high. On deck for his next at-bat, he instantly believes that a whole school bus full of spectators just pulled up to watch him, personally, kick. His whole team seems to be paying intensely close attention. All he wants in the world is either to fake a hernia and leave, or else to “PLEASE GOD PLEASE GOD CAN YOU MAKE THERE BE A TORNADO RIGHT NOW!?”

The pitcher rolls the ball toward him, and his brain issues a stern command to his legs, “We cannot whiff! So let’s work together and kick this ball!” And his legs shoot back an excited response: “Kick it where?!” And his brain, overwhelmed by all the variables —”Who’s on base? Where’re the defensemen? How many outs are there?”— attempts to organize an emergency meeting of all the higher functions of logic and rationale. But logic and rationale have been on coffee break, and they shout back “We have no idea what’s going on!”

By now, the ball has rolled ten yards behind him.

On the next pitch, rationale and logic instruct his body to “Just kick it anywhere.”

Otherwise our teammates will think we’re weird for being choosy about two pitches in kickball, like this is game seven of the ALCS, and they’ll be pissed that we’re acting weird. They already think we’re acting weird. Panicked, the author’s foot lunges at the next pitch with all the foot-eye coordination of a jellyfish whose central nervous system has been destroyed by radiation from Three Mile Island, and the ball pops up toward the shortstop with as much velocity as a paper airplane thrown by a toddler. He is out.

Fifteen thousand spectators groan.

Along with the fact that it’s still illegal to smoke outside, the author’s experience might explain why no one I asked had ever seen or smelled marijuana at the ball fields, why organizers like Megan Lohman say she’s never heard of a single instance in which weed has been present at a game, why Denver Police Department spokesman Sonny Jackson says he’s never heard of marijuana being “an issue” in casual outdoor sports.

Scientific conclusion: Weed League Sports are doomed.