For David Babkow, his first look at how intense corporate sports leagues can be came 13 years ago in a closely contested basketball game in a New York City league for lawyers.

With Babkow’s team leading in the final moments of the game, the opponents began fouling left and right in an attempt to keep the clock ticking and preserve the tiniest hope of tying the game up. Frustrated, one of his co-workers mouthed off to a big guy on the other team and then ran for the exit when the final whistle sounded. The big guy charged anyway, unloading his fist on the first person he saw, which unfortunately turned out to be Babkow’s roommate, whom he had persuaded to play at the last minute.

“The guy leveled my friend,” says Babkow, now the Associate General Counsel for Rémy Cointreau USA Inc. “He just had no clue that anything like this could have possibly happened.”

For anyone that’s ever played in a corporate sports league, it’s no surprise that the on-court action sometimes gets out of hand. After all, they’re the same competitive juices that spur one to succeed in the boardroom. Such instincts are rarely shut off on the playing field, despite the softer goals of corporate leagues to foster camaraderie and employee bonding.



“In our field, you get all these Type-A personalities who are probably ex-college or high school athletes, and they start getting that feeling of competition back in their veins,” says Phil DeLuca, a financial controller at an investment bank who has played in several different corporate sports leagues over the past 15 years. “One guy throws a punch, then another guy’s nose gets broken. You start to ask yourself, These guys wear ties to work?”

Corporate sports leagues are de rigueur in most big cities, where professionals from different companies meet on the field or court to duke it out. Teams are often formed by a few interested employees who ask their human resources department if the company will sponsor the team and pay the league’s sign-up fee, which typically ranges from $1,500 to $2,000 per team. Larger companies also sometimes set up intramural leagues with teams from different divisions and groups within the company to instigate team building and employee bonding. Whether among companies or within companies, however, the intense desire to win can sometimes get the better of the executive-players.

In some cases, for instance, players become so competitive they’re willing to risk workplace relationships in order to win.

Brendan Farley, a national account director at Yahoo’s offices in New York City and co-captain of the company’s soccer team, says he and other teammates once attempted to cut a co-worker from the team because he played such poor defense. Not all corporate team players are alike, however. Farley found that while his male teammates were quick to cut the weak player, the female players found the move too cutthroat.

“We had a crossroads early on, and it was like, What is this about? Is it about just trying to stay in shape and having fun? Or is it about winning?” says Farley, who played soccer in college. “We finally decided it was about winning.”

In the end, the weak player was excluded from the next season’s email thread detailing sign-ups. A few weeks later, the teammate figured out what had happened. “He was
really angry and frustrated—and he took it all out on the captain,” says Farley.  

According to Farley, the team player, whom he wouldn’t name, still works at Yahoo, although now in a different department.

Sometimes, participants take their company sports teams so seriously that they even make hiring decisions based on actions on the field or on the court. Rémy Cointreau’s Babkow says he may have landed his first job with the New York District Attorney’s office due to his skills on the softball diamond.

According to Babkow, the corporate softball league of the D.A.’s office is serious business. Each of the different trial bureaus is led by a chief who fields his or her own softball team. “There’s a real rivalry in these internal leagues, and the bureau chiefs take the games very, very personally,” he explains.

Babkow had just graduated from college when he interviewed there for a job as a paralegal. A college friend of his was already working there, and when she leaked the news of his athletic prowess, Babkow found himself with an in. “Honestly, that’s probably what sealed the deal on getting the job,” he says.

Babkow soon found out that the favoritism he received because of his sports skills was not uncommon. He noticed that other hiring decisions seemed to factor in athletic talent as well. “They kind of cast an eye toward how good an athlete they were” when hiring paralegals, says Babkow of the bureau chiefs.

And Babkow says his sports skills helped him forge a good relationship with his boss once he got the job: “Everyone was scared to death of this guy, but on game day, he’d drive me to the game himself.”