As you walk to and from work in the sweltering heat this week, be glad that you’re not Andy Roddick.  The tennis pro, and former boyfriend of Mandy Moore, is here in town for the Legg Mason Tennis Classic—DC’s annual professional tennis tournament.  Catch up on what you missed last weekend here.

Summer is supposed to be a quiet time in professional sports.  A time to spend your lazy evenings at the baseball field.  A time to go for long runs in the park. A time to catch the occasional WNBA game or tennis tournament, prepare your fantasy football team, and read the occasional news story about a hot off-season move. 

Not so this summer.  From the grizzly Chris Benoit family murder saga, to Michael Vick’s dogfight indictments (and who could forget über-controversial Barry Bonds), the sports world has been rocked by a series of scandals.  And this past Friday, as most of us were grinding out the end of a busy work week and looking forward to another fun weekend, the NBA had no choice but to drop perhaps the biggest bomb of all.

For those of you who have been following my series of kickball posts, and for anyone who wants to be inspired, I'm pleased to share the DC area's biggest Cinderella story since GMU made it to the Final Four in 2006. 

Logan's Heroes, my DCKickball team, fought through two back-to-back games last night at Walter Pierce Park as the mosquitoes swarmed and the dust put tears in our eyes. Or maybe that was the emotion.

Sports writer Dave Zirin is at the forefront of a cross-cultural phenomena: the intersection between sports and politics.  He writes a weekly column on his website that is widely syndicated, and appears frequently on ESPN and other sports venues.   

He will be in town tomorrow night, speaking at Politics & Prose at 7:00 p.m. Zirin will be reading selections from his newest book, Welcome to the Terrordome, about what resulted when thousands of poor African Americans had to flee their homes during Hurricane Katrina, and head for the New Orleans Superdome.   I've seen Zirin speak before, and I will be there again tomorrow. Last time he spoke at Politics & Prose, it was a Saturday night and not nearly enough people came to see him/buy his books!  You know you don’t have anything to do tomorrow night, and seeing someone like Dave Zirin is always a treat for those of us who love the worlds of sports and politics! 

(After the jump, more links to articles by him and commentary about him…my favorites are, admittedly, biased towards my Detroit roots.)

It was a hot one last night, and I'm not just talking about the weather!  As the first round playoffs of the Adams-Morgan division of DCKickball commenced, my team, Logan’s Heroes, wiped the sweat off our brows and psyched ourselves up with the gritty determination that had grown to be our trademark.

It’s almost the end of the work-week, but from what I can tell through my window the weather looks a little less than ideal.  Here’s a thought—why not stay home tonight, rent a movie, order some pizza, and make a night of it?

Truth be told, I have been waiting all month long for the opportunity to make this relevant: ladies and gentlemen, I hope you will enjoy this exercise in listing, and feel free to add, suggest, or critique in the comments!

I’m sure that like me, many of you can recall the many moments of summers gone by, as punctuated by who your favorite basketball team drafted in the NBA Draft.  For me, such highlights include 1993, when my ten-year-old self sat on my parents bed as the Detroit Pistons drafted Lindsey Hunter and Allen Houston in back-to-back first round picks (they were 10th and 11th, consecutively).  Also in Detroit draft-day folklore, Joe Dumars’ auspicious 2003 pick of Darko Milicic, when he could have had Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony, or Chris Bosh.  But he’ll redeem himself tonight, we hope, and I’ll be watching.

Here in the greater DC area, it promises to be an exciting evening.  University of Texas star Kevin Durant is almost assured of going to Seattle with the second overall pick.  Why should we care about this Longhorn?  Well, he happens to be a DC native, born in the district and educated in nearby Rockville, MD. 

It was the classic DC night at the ballpark—free tickets from my friend’s boss, the air a balmy 90 degrees, and the after-effects of fried happy hour appetizers from Recessions processing through my digestive system.  And the defending American league champion Detroit Tigers were in town!  Huzzah for the orange and blue!  Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks!  Everything fell into place at the old ball game.

I’m a pretty competitive person—love to play, love to talk trash, and definitely hate to lose.  Here in the District, I’d imagine my kind is a dime a dozen.  So, last night, I decided to host a game night among my friends—an evening when we could bicker, fight, connive, and stab each other in the backs without even leaving the comfort of my own apartment!  Delivery pizza and freshly baked brownies were enjoyed by all.  For an inexpensive, highly entertaining evening in, I strongly recommend you give Game Night a shot.

I set a tentative agenda of three games: Apples to Apples, Taboo, and Charades.  If you don’t have any board games, they can be easily replaced by any number of options!  Much to my chagrin, Charades was voted out and replaced with Mafia.  Overgrown drama kid that I am, I get very upset when people rain on my charades!  (Terrible, Jenny, just terrible.)

Stay tuned for the play-by-play, after the jump:

It’s possible that I am the Washington Mystics’ good luck charm.  After beginning this season with an eight-game losing streak, the ladies in blue handily beat the visiting Phoenix Mercury 86-69.  And yes, I was there to see it.

I’m a huge NBA fan, and I enjoy watching men’s college basketball as well.  But outside of the occasional pass-by while flipping channels, I had not yet forayed into the world of women’s professional basketball, until last night.  And while the WNBA has its share of skeptics, I developed a healthy admiration for the league as the night progressed.

When it comes to picking his ideal DC celebrity kickball team, Carter Rabasa is an equal opportunity offender.  “Definitely not Nancy Pelosi,” he says. “But not George W. Bush either—he’s too incompetent.”  James Carville is out, Dick Cheney, definitely in – “he’s ruthless.”  Rabasa wants DC United’s Freddy Adu (note: Adu was actually traded to Real Salt Lake in ’06), and opts for Wizards forward Caron Butler over superstar Gilbert Arenas, because “he’s more of a team player.”

On a warm Monday night, fresh off of my team’s second big victory of the season, I sat down with Carter Rabasa, founder and president of DCK Sports, LLC.  A youthful 29, Rabasa founded DC’s first independent adult kickball league back in 2005.  This year, it boasts over 1600 players in five different divisions, who kick, bunt, and catch on fields from Adams Morgan to the National Mall.  Managing DCKickball is Rabasa’s full-time job, one that he sees himself continuing for the next four to five years.  Don’t worry though, kickballers, Rabasa wants the DCK brand to stick around long after he’s gone.  “This might sound cheesy,” he tells me, “but I want DCKickball to go on forever.  I hope it becomes an engrained fixture of an organization in DC, with or without me at the helm.”

In my last post, I (hopefully) helped you feel a bit more at home in the world of local spectator sports.  This time around, I’ve got the goods for those of you who prefer to get into the game yourselves.  If you can handle the heat, Washington, DC offers quite the array of athletic leagues and events.  Details after the jump.

Hey there, Sportsfans!  My name is Jenny Nathan, and I am absolutely thrilled to be providing you with all the ins, outs, hot catches and fly balls of the DC sports scene all summer long. I know, that last sentence was terribly cheesy.  I promise to keep my sports puns to a minimum, whenever possible. 

Here in the nation’s capital, it may be true that we’re known more for our politics than for our athletic prowess.  With a sizeable population hailing from out-of-town, many of the district’s residents stick with their hometown teams, at least as far as loyalties go.  And let’s face it—DC’s professional sports teams aren’t exactly worthy of awe.  But that doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy the warm summer nights at the old ball field, hot summer days in the soccer stadium, and air-conditioned summer evenings rooting for whoever on the flat-screens of DC’s many sports bars.  Plenty of details, after the jump.