La Kickaracha

First Place

Summer Rookie/Softcore Kickball at Peninsula Park Sundays

All I heard around the diamond all day was "Nobody's gonna beat La Kickeracha." "We're all playing for second" and other sentiments like that. They had just won the Mid-Core tournament at the Red Rubber Showdown. They have won their league over and over again. Sometimes though, those types of expectations can get to be too much for a team: just ask the 2014-15 Kentucky Wildcats, the 1990-91 UNLV Runnin Rebels, or the 1980 USSR hockey team about expectations entering a tournament. There would be no "Miracle" on Sunday at Peninsula Park though. La Kickeracha lived up to the hype all afternoon. They had an answer in all phases of the game whether it be Kieran booming kicks to the garbage cans set up in CF (kicks further than I've ever seen in Underdog kickball before), their powerful third baseman delivering perfect throw after perfect throw all the way across the diamond to first, or their smooth moving pitcher looking like a 300 bowler with his pitching form, then slickly fielding bunts out in front of home plate. Gym Class Heroes stayed in the game against them in the semi-final but you never got the sense that La Kickeracha was ever in trouble. Like Iceman in Top Gun, they are just a focused, error-free group that doesn't offer their opponent's any opportunity. A drubbing of Kicks & Pitches 11-0 (who said they were just happy to be there) in the championship game capped a dominant performance worthy of the hype and worthy of their Red Rubber jerseys with the crown on a kickball. La Kickeracha is the king of Underdog Portland Kickball. They announced their retirement "at least for now" from Underdog kickball but I have a feeling, much like Sugar Ray Leonard or Floyd Money Mayweather, that they will be back when they feel there is a worthy adversary to dethrone. We'll anxiously await their return. Long live the king!