It's the 2022 Charity Softball Finals!

If you’ve sensed something missing from the last two summers – besides a social life, holidays, hope – it might be the absence of softball updates here on the Harris Hill Blog. It might also not be, perhaps the more likely scenario, but it's too hot to start splitting hairs.

Either way, there's good news: while Covid did stop play in 2020, by the following year it was clear that even a major global pandemic would ultimately prove no match for the mighty London Charity Softball League!

So after a slightly scaled-down season last summer, the league's been back in full swing for 2022, bringing London’s green spaces alive with the sound of respectable charity professionals thwacking balls around with enormous enthusiasm. And bats.

They’ve valiantly played on through the summer’s sweltering heatwaves, whittling nearly 60 teams (representing well over 80 charities) down to just six, who’ll battle it out this very Thursday in Hyde Park for the Bluestep Cup, the Shield, and the much-coveted Harris Hill Plate! Which I should clarify is an actual trophy, not a leftover from our recent office move*.

*That said, anyone with the space and an interest in winning the prestigious Harris Hill Lever Arch Files or the Harris Hill Mismatched Tupperware Items Of Unknown Origin is warmly invited to get in touch.

So who's made it all the way?

Readers - if that’s not an over-optimistic use of the plural - behold the 2022 finalists!

Three teams are making their first finals appearance, namely Versus Arthritis, Wellcome Trustand Independent (R)age, who’ll be playing 2018 Shield-winners RNLI for the literally unimaginable glory of hoisting the Harris Hill Plate.

All eyes will then be on the big cup final, between two teams who’ve certainly played this game before. Exactly this game, in fact, against each other in last year’s final, when 2019 cup-winners Mind were denied the double by the Mighty CRUKs of Cancer Research UK, chalking up their fifth league victory of the last fifteen years.

As for us, with temperatures set to sizzle it's just as well we're sticking with Harris Hill tradition and supplying the liquid refreshments, while there'll be plenty of support from our fellow sponsors too.

So it just remains to wish the very best of luck to all the finalists, may the best team/s win, and whether you're playing or just sipping a (possibly) cold beer on the sidelines: have a fantastic time at the finals!

Team HH x