Pickup Artist
Finding Pickup Games on Your Phone

In life, there’re winners, losers and those who forfeit because their co-ed softball squad is constantly short a center fielder.

The secret to never losing: practice, practice and umpire bribing.

The secret to never forfeiting... your phone.

Presenting Sportaneous, a location-based iPhone app that lets you crowdsource the city for pickup games and potential free agents, just launched in beta in New York.

So yes, this is basically a Craigslist for piecing together spur-of-the-moment flag football rosters. Or finding that 6'4" point guard your company basketball team so dearly needs.

Now before entering into the massive Sportaneous farm system, you’ll need to download the app and create a profile (think of this like the back of your Topps card). Once that’s out of the way, you’ll begin browsing through a database of nearby public parks to find pickup games, workouts, yoga sessions and bike rides that could use the addition of a playground legend (your freeze tag records: still untoppled).

Of course, if you find yourself more comfortable in the role of captain, you can always set up games of your own. With skill level restrictions, player maximums and unique rules.

Because really, volleyball should only be played in sombreros.