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The North American Punch Buggy League (NAPBL) is a professional league for Punch Buggy players. Each year the league drafts only thirty players from inter-collegiate leagues and various free-agents. The Punch Buggy season begins in November each year and culminates in July with the two-week world tournament between the two top players.

The North American Punch Buggy League was formed in 1972 following the merger of the Slug Bug Association of America (SBAA) and the Professional Punch Buggy League (PPBL). The merger followed a 1972 Cambridge study that found that saying "Punch Buggy" rolled off the tongue .032 seconds faster than "Slug Bug." While this may not seem like a significant amount of time, it certainly adds up over a two-week period. Consequently, in the 1972 World Championship series between "Punch Buggy" Pete Sullivan and "Slug Bug" Sam Masterson, Masterson was defeated by Sullivan by a combined score of 1,273 to 587, in which Sullivan took fourteen straight sets. Since the '72 championship, there have been some contenders who stay with the traditional "Slug Bug" but the odds-on favorites are usually "Punch Buggy" players.

In 2007, the two players vying for this year's top honors are Bret "Bruiser" Walker and his wife, "Eagle-Eye" Erin Walker. This is not the first time husband and wife competed in the world championship. Forty years ago, in the '67 PPBL championship, George "Fist of Fury" Timmons and his wife, "Damaging" Greta Timmons, competed to a near stalemate with Damaging Greta inching out the more experienced Fist of Fury by a combined score of 897 to 892. In fact, the score wasn't as close as it seemed. George Timmons started strong taking the first four sets with a combined score of 245 to 160, before Greta found her groove and began pummeling George with abandon. She took the overall lead with five hours to go, and although the last five hours may have been the fiercest in the history of Punch Buggy competition, Greta edged out George by five and was crowned the Punch Buggy champ. George Timmons, ever the gracious loser, crowned his wife the champ himself. It must be said, however, that George Timmons had won five of the previous seven championships, so there were no hard feelings. Just raised welts.

This year's championship is the 35th NAPBL World Championship. It begins on July 13th in New Jersey, and carries west through Chicago, north to Fargo, then west out to Tacoma, WA, where the competition will remain local in the Seattle/Tacoma area for six days. Then the competition continues south-east through Utah, then easterly through Arkansas, up through Memphis and Virginia, finally arriving back in New Jersey on July 27th.

Fourteen days. 8,000 miles. Two huge bruises. That's what we've come to expect from the NAPBL championship each year and this year promises to be one of the best in recent years. As of this writing, the Vegas odds-makers have "Eagle-Eye" Erin Walker as the odds-on favorite at 3:2. Her youth and tenacity are matched only by her sharp eyesight, which is what earned her nickname for her. However, Bret "Bruiser" Walker has experience on his side. He's been a fierce competitor ever since his amateur days back in 1975 when he began competing in pick-up games with his younger sister. This is his first time to the big dance, but some are calling him the dark horse of the competition.

So follow along as we chart this year's championship. Since the NAPBL has not yet been televised on ESPN (although we have been talking with Vs, the former OLN, to have next year's championship televised with in-car cameras and a full computerized map and leaderboard), you'll just have to read the updates at the end of each day of competition. Check back on July 12th for pre-tournament coverage and kickoff, and then daily for end-of-day tallies and overall stats.

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