More than 300 people were showing up in City Park late Monday afternoon, and I was invited along. I really wanted to see this.
They were in a field adjacent to the large water fountain. A guy named Nick sang the national anthem, and not too badly, either.
The sides squared off, about 12 men and women per team. Some chose the outfield and the others took infield positions, but each participant — even the pitcher — held a plastic purple cup. It is the rule.
Some had water in their cups, but most had topped them off at the kegs down the third-base line. Either way, the play is always the same:
A big red ball is rifled into the infield. Players shuffle right or left, an eye on the ball, the other on the cup. A leg is extended when the ball arrives. The impact sends the liquids flying, usually atop the falling infielder.
Time to reload.
This seems the very point of the KIFAC Kickball League. It certainly is not about winning.
The acronym stands for Kick In For A Cause, which has everything to do with the league donating close to 70 percent of what it takes in to three charities.
The league was started eight years ago by a group of friends who could no longer stand the cleats-wearing, base-stealing overly competitive league they had been in. They divided themselves into six teams, banned base stealing and home runs and required kegs at every game.
Today, there are 1,700 men and women on 96 league teams that play every night except weekends. Twenty teams are on a waiting list. Donations to its charities will top at least $10,000 this summer, according to Patrick Brown, 39, who founded the league.
“This is exactly what my friends and I envisioned when we started,” he said as we watch one of the games, most players by now soaked from the flying beer and water. “It’s about people having fun. It’s why they keep coming back.”
Of the long waiting list, he said the firm intention of the league at the outset was never to play on weekends.
“The goal,” he said, “was never to turn this into some national event. You keep getting bigger, I think you knock the fun out of it.”
There is no sliding, no throwing the ball at anyone’s head. Most of all, there are no umpires.
“Now that would make this all rather serious, wouldn’t it?” Brown said.
The league provides free taxi rides home for any player who feels they cannot drive. Most teams, he said, police their own players. Taxis circle the park during the 90-minute games.
“We don’t really care who wins, honestly,” said Lacee Artist, 30, a Denver lobbyist and captain of Drunk Again and Looking to Score, which she said was behind 11-7 in the third inning.
“This is just a way to spend a Monday night out with a lot of fun people, while raising money to give to charity,” said Artist, now in her third year with the league.
As the games — which go six innings — progress, so does the level of play. Line drives are corralled one-handed, though the beer still flies. Grounders are kicked into the air, grabbed and flung to first.
The games fly. At the end, the playing area, like the players, is soaked with beer.
I ask Artist how Drunk Again fared. She looks at the score sheet she was supposed to keep, and back at me.
She shrugs.
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
