Saturday was my annual opportunity to embarrass myself in front of 40+ other “manly men” in this year’s summer Man Day. For the 99.99999% of you who have never heard of it, it’s a little event (run by Sean Wright and Greg Austermann) that occurs twice a year (one summer and one winter) where 50+ men gather to compete in a series of sporting events that I have to assume are manly in some way.
The day starts with a round of par 3 golf. At this stage, you’re “randomly” paired up with another guy and you two play a scramble (each player hits and you play the best ball). Each pair travels with another to prevent cheating. I quoted the word randomly because, this year, my foursome included my only three friends that I knew at this thing. What a coincidence. We also are the four worst golfers so our day didn’t start off so well. I had a blast because I got to play 9 holes with people I knew, but I’m pretty sure both pairs finished dead last in that event.
After golf comes a rigorous tournament of dodgeball where you get to see a clear division between the people who are there to win, the people who are there to get drunk, and those there just to participate (like myself). There’s always tons of posturing, cheating, and arguing at this point.
Following dodgeball, they bring in like 30 pizzas and everyone pigs out before continuing on to kickball and then whiffle-ball on a full stomach. As an added bonus, all tie breakers are decided with a five man beer chug. Good times! Some of those guys can throw a whiffle-ball so fast, you can’t even really see it. A guy on my team this year was actually knocked out for a second when he took a pitch to the temple. He literally dropped like a sack of potatoes…in whiffle-ball. Man Day indeed.
After all of that craziness we cool things down with washers. The winner is then calculated by individual scores for the day:
- Golf pairing’s score based on ranking
- Dodgeball team’s score
- Kickball team’s score
- Whiffleball team’s score
- Washers pairing’s score based on ranking
The winner gets some cash I believe. I wouldn’t know. I believe my best finish was a tie with three other people for 15th place last summer. The loser gets the most dreaded trophy: the golden vagina. It’s a heavy gold plated chain with, what appears to be, a gold plated die-cut vagina as the pendant.
My first year, my friend Gabe and I entered together and Gabe won the Golden V. This year, he brought his friend, Shane, with him and Shane went home with the V this time. Our little circle of friends seems to have a lock on that thing. I can only dread when it’s my turn.
And now, for a visual record of how bad we are at golf, I recorded a few holes to demonstrate our “mad skillz”. Enjoy.