Intrigue Surrounds Softball Playoffs

August 20, 10:33 am by jpfinlay

Controversies regularly occur in Washington, D.C., particularly on Capitol Hill. The Congressional Softball League is no exception. The seedings for the annual championship tournament were announced this week, leading to a flurry of e-mails, message board activity and conspiracy theories.

The debate stems from the tournament seeding granted to the league’s top-ranked team, the BALCO Bombers, who dominated the regular season with a 20-0 record. In the point system that determines the Congressional League rankings, BALCO ended the regular season with 300 points. The second-place team finished nearly 100 points behind.

The opening round of the tournament pits BALCO against the two-time defending champions, the No Talent AZ Clowns. Last year, the Clowns entered the tournament as the No. 19 seed; in 2007, they won as the No. 9 seed. This year, they are seeded 18th.

“We focus on having fun in the season, and then winning in the tournament,” the Clowns’ Becky Tallent said.

Considering these two league heavyweights play in the same first-round grouping, it is certain one tournament favorite will not advance beyond the opening weekend.

The teams are not pleased with the pairing. “Gary is stacking the deck against the best team,” said Teddy Schlanger, BALCO’s captain. “The draws are in no way even.”

Gary would be Gary Caruso, the longtime commissioner of the Congressional Softball League.

No Talent AZ Clowns captain Stephen Burns said in an e-mail: “Placing the two-time defending champ in the same pod as a team that went 20-0 this year, with only one team having the ability to advance out of the pod, is going to make for some very unhappy folks.”

Caruso contends the matchup of BALCO and the Clowns owes to a combination of factors, though the pairings are “totally random.” Because of field availability, first-round play is broken up into two weekends. Teams were given the option to play Saturday, Aug. 22, or Saturday, Aug. 29. From there, teams specified if they needed to play at a certain time.

“It is partially luck of the draw by the day and time you want to play,” Caruso said. “This is the way it fell.”
Asked if he believes the Clowns were intentionally matched up against BALCO, Burns said, “Because there is no clarity into the determination of the pods, one can only assume that each matchup is at the discretion of the league commissioner. In other words, absolutely.”
“We can’t see how Gary could overlook the fact that the two best teams are playing each other in the first round,” Schlanger said.
The prevailing theory, according to many of the players interviewed, is that Caruso schedules the best teams against each other to ensure his team faces weaker competition.

Caruso is the captain of the 18th-ranked Yellow Journalists. The high seed in Caruso’s pod is the No. 4 team, seven (Microsoft).

“He put his team in a bracket with the weakest high-ranked team,” Schlanger said. “Microsoft has an 11-2-1 record, but they haven’t played anyone good, and have in fact lost to some bad teams.”
Caruso makes no apologies for the playoff system, insisting the league is designed to be casual. “Everybody has fun with it,” Caruso said, “except for a couple of the crybabies.”

The Congressional League playoff system has long been a contentious issue, eventually leading to a split in the Capitol Hill softball world. In 2006, a number of teams left the Congressional League and started the House Softball League.

Among the original teams to split off was the 2004 champs, Potomac Fever. “The lack of rational seeding is why 90 percent of the teams left,” captain Rob Walter said. “Gary seeds [the tournament] however he wants to seed it.”

Caruso “is the Wizard of Oz, sitting behind a curtain, making the brackets,” said Matt Anthes, captain of the Insliders, another team that played in the Congressional League before defecting to the House League. Unlike the Congressional League, in which playoff teams are assigned to first-round groupings, playoff teams in the House League are seeded according to their regular season rankings.

The Congressional League uses a fairly straightforward points system based on wins and losses to determine the standings, which are used purely for regular season fun. In the House League, all rankings and seedings are transparent, laid out through complex formulas displayed on the league Web site.

When Nick Falvo, another previous Congressional League player now in the House League, found out about the first-round pairing, he let out a shriek. “Without a doubt,” Falvo said, “it was scheduled on purpose. Without a doubt.”

Not every team is upset with the seeding process. Rob Myers is captain of Rob’s Beltway Ballers, the No. 11 seed with a 6-0 regular season record. “We are happy with our seeding,” Myers said. “Good teams are going to win regardless of their seeding.”

“The rankings are really artificial,” Caruso said. “You’ve got to play the best, and beat them, to be the best.”

BALCO is confident they will finish as the best. Schlanger said, “We’ll beat the AZ Clowns, take their trophy, and not return next year.”

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