wtf

On a cold, drizzly, November morning in 1984, I woke to the sound of helicopter rotors and the vibrating sheet rock walls of the Pilot House Motel in Santa Barbara, California. In my memory, the sound was so loud, the rotor wash so pervasive, I would have sworn the motel was actually on the tarmac, but across the room Pat King slept right through it. Who could blame him? Getting up would only mean the beginning of another exhausting day dragging our marginally talented team on his back in vain pursuit of our impossible quest, a national title. Another day of playing every point, touching the disc every other pass, drawing the other team’s best defender, and knowing that no matter how well he played it probably wouldn’t be enough. I’d have stayed in bed too.

Pat’s team, KABOOM!, was a dog and pony show whose bulldog was lost for the season to a freak kidney injury. That left the rest of the team riding the pony, Pat, as far as he could carry them. In the past I may have slighted some of my former teammates by suggesting that we weren’t a very good team, but we really weren’t. We were tough and fearless, and we played a slogging, plodding, northeast style that was brutal on the eyes. When we won, we won ugly. Come to think of it, when we lost it was pretty ugly too.

KABOOM! was a ragtag hodgepodge of players who weren’t especially fast, couldn’t throw especially well, and were named after a toasted oat cereal with marshmallow stars. But we had two legitimate star players, and when they were in form we could play with anybody. Alas, when one of them went down with an injury, it was a different story, or so it looked from the sideline where I was standing in November of 1984. I have no idea what it looked like from where Pat was standing. I never found myself in that position because Pat never got injured. Except for that one time…

Back in the day, my brother had an urban landscaping business and he got a job putting a backyard garden in behind an upper west side brownstone. He hired Pat and me, and then told us that our fist job was to remove a sidewalk that ran the perimeter of the yard and was four inches thick. Oh, and we had to do the whole job with a pickaxe and sledgehammer, then haul the pieces out by hand in milk crates. By the time we finished the job Pat had sustained nerve damage in his right wrist from hitting a concrete sidewalk with a pickaxe several thousand times. Being Pat, he didn’t let the cast keep him from playing, although he did play with a tennis ball nestled in the fingers of his right hand to keep him from involuntarily lunging for the disc and causing further damage. It surprised no one that within days Pat could throw better lefty than most of the guys on the team, but I digress.

The average annual rainfall in Santa Barbara is about 15 inches, but on the last day of pool play in 1984 they got about half of that. The wind whipped, the rain came in sheets, and we wrapped ourselves in plastic to stave off hypothermia. But with the game to go to semis being a matchup of the high flying Condors against slogging KABOOM!, the rain was our best friend. With Pat leading the way and me wrapped in plastic, we were leading at half. Sadly, all good things, even miserably cold, driving southern California monsoons, must come to an end. When the sun came out for the second half the Condors came to life, and despite Pat’s efforts, for the second straight year KABOOM!’s season ended one game short of the semi’s.

1985 saw the return of the bulldog, and with the dog and pony show in full swing, KABOOM! finally made it to the semifinals. A hard-fought victory over Windy City earned us a trip to the finals, and earned Pat another brutal job. Having blown my ACL on game point, I was reduced to a sideshow in the finals. It again fell to Pat to carry the team on his back, and did he ever.

If you can stand watching grainy footage of guys wearing short shorts, making a bunch of turnovers, and sliding around on a brutally bad field, get a hold of the 1985 Finals. You will be treated to two delightful treasures.

The first is the commentary of the Condors’ Keay Nakae, a great player who happened to also be a colorful commentator. Late in the second half, with KABOOM! in the midst of an improbable comeback against the Flying Circus, he offers up this gem: “Circus looked like they had this game in the refrigerator, but they left the door open and KABOOM!’s been snacking.”

The second is the play of Pat King. He literally takes over the game. With everybody knowing he has to touch the disc every other pass, he still gets open at will. Point after point he throws a 30 yarder, catches a dump from the receiver, throws another 30 yarder, catches the next dump, and throws a goal. He goes up in a crowd and gets a block, throws a bomb to the goal line, then sprints downfield and catches the goal from the receiver he threw the bomb to. He plays every single point and never seems to tire. And when the game is over and Circus has won, he reacts not with resignation but fury, because he fully expected to win.

So why am I telling this story, and why now? Well, I told it once before, to the UPA Hall of Fame selection committee, several years ago when Pat was first eligible. I added in the details of Pat’s importance to New York, as well as the plain truth that he is quite simply the greatest player I ever played with and absolutely deserving of election into the Hall. I’ll save you the trouble of looking and tell you that the selection committee didn’t see it that way. Not that year, nor in any of the subsequent years when his application for admittance was still eligible for consideration. Initially I was dumbfounded. Now I think I understand. Sadly, my understanding is significantly more troubling than my dumbfoundation (not a word, but should be).

If you do some looking around on the HOF section of the UPA web site you’ll learn a few things. One is that the HOF vetting subcommittee has a distinctly Boston flavor. In 2005, three of the five members were former Boston players. In subsequent years that number drops all the way down to two. Another thing you’ll learn is that five of the past ten players voted into the Hall played all or some of their careers in Boston. A little more pointing and clicking and you’ll learn that of the 18 championships awarded in the Open and Women’s divisions from 1979 to 1988, 3 were won by Boston teams. Imagine that. Half of the players who make it past a committee that is 40-60% Boston players come from….Boston. And yet only one sixth (roughly 17%) of the championships from the early era were won by Boston teams.

By contrast consider that 7 of those early titles were won by California teams (about 40%) and three of the past ten players voted in played in California. Hard to argue with those numbers. But then you see that during those early years Windy City won two titles and lost in the finals twice, but no one from those great teams has been named to the Hall. Is it possible that certain members of the selection process are treating the Hall like their private, restricted club?

Which brings us back to Pat King. On page 70 of the Ultimate History book there’s a full page picture of Pat holding a disc aloft above Brent Russell of the San Diego/LA Iguanas. The caption tells you that Pat spiked the disc wrathfully. For the record, he didn’t. He flicked it backwards away from Brent, and it fell softly to the ground. Did this image and its attendant misinformation hurt Pat’s candidacy? How about the fact that several of the members of the vetting subcommittee had their seasons ended by Pat’s team year after year? Did they let that cloud their judgment? Who knows? What I do know is that Pat had all the skills, played both ways all day long, was a leader on and off the field, and played with great success at the pinnacle of the sport for over a decade. Sounds like a hall of famer to me.

So my question is, What the fuck?

In the interests of journalistic integrity, I should probably point out that although I was eligible for election to the HOF this year I was not selected. Seems the committee didn’t know I was old enough, which serves as a nice reminder that, pretensions to the contrary, we’re still a marginal hobby sport run by a bunch of erstwhile stoners who struggle to get their acts together. By way of explanation cum defense, Jim Parinella said I shouldn’t be offended because they also overlooked Paul Greff. Sadly, the admission didn’t have the desired effect. Pat King has been eligible for years, has applied, and has been rejected. But I’m supposed to feel better because they failed to consider Paul Greff? Sorry.

But I can allay Jim’s concerns about the matter. After all, who would want to belong to any club that doesn’t want somebody like Pat King as a member?