I'm not quite sure what I expected, but with apologies to those who took the time to respond, I was a little disappointed with the stories. When the Call to the Community went out there were more than 50 responses which, if I'm to believe what I was told, were passionately vocal in their expressions of either support or disgust at my potential inclusion in the hallowed (virtual) halls of the HoF. In fact, so polarizing a figure am I (again, as I was told), that it is probably not much of a stretch to suggest that the stories ranged from "Kenny Dobyns cured cancer" to "Kenny Dobyns is responsible for the Holocaust." Given their track record, one can imagine the HoF powers would no doubt have dismissed the first for straining the bounds of credibility, while taking the latter into consideration without formally vouching for its accuracy.
Sadly, all that anonymous storytelling seems to have completely tapped out the creative reservoirs of the ultimate community, for when I asked for stories all I got were brief reminiscences of a few snide comments I might have made at some point in time, and one aggrieved husband's lament that his wife thought it prudent to step between a runaway refrigerator and his destination. Quel dommage.
So, without further ado I bring back to you the one thoroughly entertaining post in the bunch, a true gem that manages to accomplish the rarest of trifectas: it is funny, it is (quite possibly slightly) offensive, and it is totally accurate (although it seems likely that a couple of small details might have been lost in translation).
Enjoy.
Anonymous says...
I play on team Japan at Worlds 1990. We all excited to play against team USA/NYNY (team Canada no good back then because Furious George boys still in middle school).
We hear about Kenny Dobyns from stories tell by Americans visit Japan and by Japanese who play against in other Worlds. We hear that like Japanese, Dobyns short, brave and willing to crash self into ship for good of team. Unlike Japanese, Dobyns stick knife into stomach for fun; not to regain honor.
When big game against USA come, we surprise by one thing: many player on team USA can do things Dobyns no can do! Cribber and Blau sky higher. Pat King more well-rounded. Walter and Benji no throw frisbee away. Jon Gerwertz and Skippy play better defense on tall player, even though they not tall. Bob DiMann throw flat huck; not blade huck like Dobyns.
Still, when team USA not play well or enemy play very well, other team USA player look to Dobyns because Dobyns face round and have scary glow like carved pumpkin with candle inside used by Americans as decoration at harvest celebration.
Some player anger make teammate upset and no play better, but Dobyns have special anger that somehow make teammate play better and win close game. Pit bull with head like pumpkin have rare ability to motivate cannot be explained.
After game, when we bow to Dobyns, he looking at Japanese girls on sideline. We offended, but we forgive.
It OK to put scary offensive man in hall of fame, even if no like.
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27 comments:
me likey (long time)
Instant classic.
"Pit bull with head like pumpkin"
That's some good stuff
I always wondered where the inspiration for those scary pumpkin face (jack o' lantern) orange shirts that we wore for finals at Worlds 1993 in Madison came from.
Thanks for solving the mystery
Matty J
100% guaranteed to be some jackass pretending to be japanese. fake.
You figure that out all by yourself?
Admittedly, I nearly peed my pants when I read this.
I especially like the veiled Pearl Harbor reference.
MJ
The bad, the good and the geeky:
1. Ultimate Affair, 1988? KD: "Dennis, if you throw that shit again I'm going to get a fucking gun and blow your fucking head off!"
2. Hingham, 1995? KD gets sick, clean block, poking disc out from space between offensive player's hands. Foul called, presumably just because he's KD. No fair!
3. Shift to math briefly. In 1994-5 Andrew Wiles (with Richard Taylor) prove Fermat's Last Theorem, unsolved for 358 years. Awesome feat, but the top prize, the Fields Medal, is chartered for under-40 mathematicians. Wiles was 42. What to do? They made a special prize for him.
The Fields Medal is lessened for not being able to include Wiles. The separate award helps a bit. Likewise, how can you have any collection of frisbee greats without KD? But what if he doesn't fit the bill, or simply is not voted in by the committee? (Okay, not exactly a hypothetical.) Clearly, the legitimacy of the hall is threatened by not including him ("you"? --- not sure which voice to use here), so he shouldn't wring his hands too much about it. If he doesn't fit in the (virtual) hall, the UPA should at least add a "Dobyns Nook."
Already a "Dobyns nook." Called "you momma's mouth".
I make America-style joke on you, Eric.
Dan Powers posting on HOF exclusion, no need to hide identity.
1st off let me say you should have been 1st one in hall - I have never played againt a tougher player in my life. Yes sometimes you seemed to be a total jerk on the field, but always fair, and never cheating.
I didn't like the move you patented of catching a goal with two hands with a 1 second pancake, thought it was juvenile and beneath such a great player....but hey you were always wide open for those goals, and certainly you couldn't debate you caught the disc...just wish you had been more like a Jerry Rice, or a Walter Payton - but hey that wasn't you.
Also, two fun stories I remember vividly of you...both @ a Ithaca/Cornell tourney on the lake. I was very young in my career when I was playing deep postion with Fuschia Shock out of Rochester:
1) Jim O'brien throws a monster backhand to me streaking deep...Dave Blau is coming over to cover me from left, I am on right....I make the best diving catch of my life right in front of Blau who did not dive, I remember that catch like yesterday, and remember you screaming @ Blau "What is the (I am sure some expletive) matter with you? How can he want that disc more than you?"...and then you preceded to chew him out for another few minutes. I do know Dave played great D on me the rest of the game :-)
2) At the party on Saturday night, we were in kitchen - me, you, Jim O'Brien and Chris Karalles. Chris was commenting to you on what knee braces you preferred, he had an ACL surgeries, and I think you had one @ the time. You said "I don't wear braces, braces are for pussies"...Kris, Jim and I still laugh @ that line years later
Anyway, miss seeing you out on field - Grand Masters could use you back running around and dominating again!
Hope you are well, and hope to see you in Hall of Fame soon - if players had final vote you would already be there.
I know it's more fun to bash and ridicule some sort of faceless institution, but in the interest of bringing in some accuracy here: the HOF voters are NOT equal to the institution of the UPA. In fact, the HOF voters are a bunch of great former players (and contributors) who care about the sport we all share. According to the rules posted on the UPA website it looks like at least 40% of this group of folks did NOT vote for KD this year. That's the cold hard math, which seems to trump any number of impassioned, but misguided and overly dramatic statements like: "KD is definitely a first ballot HOFer or the entire HOF is a sham". Are these PEOPLE list below (not a single UPA institution) a sham or are they deserving of disrespect for their voting decisions:
Tom Kennedy
Irv Kalb
Stork Roddick
Suzanne Fields
Larry Schindel
Kelly Green
Sholom Simon
Jon Cohn
Jim Herrick
Ann Orders
Heather Raker
Nob Rauch
Timba D'Urso
Steve Mooney
Christine Dunlap
Brian Murphy
Harvey Edwards
Dan Weiss
Gloria Phillips
Carney Foy
Frank Bono
John Schmechel
Finlay Waugh
Catherine Greenwald
yes on both counts
"yes on both counts"
Well that's pretty compelling writing. I guess I'm now convinced that this is a group of people that deserve disrepect simply because the last anonymous poster disagrees with them.
But that's a problem, isn't it. Now that we're convinced that this is a sham group, do we still want to write words to try to convince others that our hero should be a first ballot entry into a sham group ??
Luckily I'm guessing our last anonymous poster probably needs only 4, maybe 5 or 6 words to resolve things again and we can go back to fighting the righteous keyboard fight railing against that big bad UPA.
"Are these PEOPLE list below (not a single UPA institution) a sham or are they deserving of disrespect for their voting decisions[?]"
1) Take it easy on the caps.
2) Those of us who disagree with the exclusion of Dobyns are not "bashing and ridiculing," merely stating the obvious. If we have "fun" doing so, just consider that a bonus.
3) Those of us who disagree with the exclusion of Dobyns are well aware that we are criticizing people (or "PEOPLE" as you feel the need to call them), well aware of the terrible humanity of this travesty.
4) You list the entire group of (pre-2010) hall of fame members and suggest that they all voted on 2010 inductees ("at least 40% of this group of folks did NOT vote for KD this year ... Are these PEOPLE list below ... deserving of disrespect for their voting decisions[?]"). However, it works like this: "Each member of the Hall of Fame Committee (Vetting Subcommittee plus voting Inaugural, Player, and Contributor members of the Hall) may cast votes." Note the words "voting" and "may." While the general notion you put forward (Dobyns did not get enough votes, and a large chunk of the needed votes came from hall of famers)is accurate, it is unclear how many (or which) hall of famers actually participated here. It also appears that some of the voters are non-hall of famers (hence the possibility of having inducted the inaugural class) ... "which [are] appointed by the UPA Board." You may want to read more clearly in the future before you call others "misguided" or seek to "trump" their arguments with "cold hard math ... in the interest of bringing in some accuracy."
5) Regardless of a hall of famer's accomplishments, if they relied partly on anonymous negative feedback, their judgment is poor.
6) Your list here omits a very important member of the hall of fame: The "80 mold" frisbee; from the inaugural class of 2004. This is like the basketball hall of fame deciding that inducting the original Spalding was more important that inducting Bill Russell. So yes, we are comfortable calling this a sham. By the way, do you think the 80 mold voted for Dobyns?
Jacob: we seem to have some misinformation here or maybe I missed something.
What "anonymous negative feedback" are you referring to ? As I understand it, 100% of the Call to the Community feedback was NOT anonymous. People who responded did have a choice as to whether they revealed their identity, linked to their comments, to the HOF voters, but even if they choose only to reveal a non-personally-identifiable background bio to the HOF voters, they did have to fully reveal who they were to some UPA administrator who compiled all the input. So nothing anonymous.
So, it seems the gist of your thoughts seems to net down to: you disagree with the majority opinion of these HOF voters and for that reason the HOF is a sham. That's quite a logic leap. Laughable.
There was something posted recently by Ken saying that he'd heard that the HOF voters spent a lot of time considering his candidacy this year. I would guess that these people probably took their voting responsibilities and their responsibility to the greater ultimate community pretty seriously. You would probably do the same thing, if you ever got the chance to vote on something like this.)
But it's pretty straightforward. Per the UPA website you need 60% of voters to say yes to get in. Fact is, as a group, the tally simply ended up that your hero didn't make the cut.
We don't get to inteview the jurors -- this isn't a jury or a trial anyway. But the best info we have about how these presumably good people reached their opinions comes from Henry's earlier posts.
He's just one voter, of course, but it's probably still useful to look at his reasoning and *guess* that other people probably were going through similar thought processes. KD scores strongly on on-field achievement, athleticism and commitment to winning etc and probably nobody disagrees with that ... so it had to be the sportsmanship component, right?
Again, there's no real conspiracy here, with some "anonymous negative feedback" felling our favorite candidate. There's probably just a bunch of good people wishing their voting job could be easier, if only Kenny hadn't chosen to be such a bullying unsportsmanlike asshole. He could have been just as intense and just as irreverent etc and probably still have achieved close to the same level of success on the field (maybe even exactly the same level of success).
But you gotta sleep in the bed you make and KD made the bed himself. His choices. His actions.
And probably there just aren't enough HOF voters who were willing to overlook the piss poor sportsmanship in a sport that places such a high value on sportmanship and spirit, and they decided HOF membership is for great players who ALSO display laudable attributes beyond just winning and individual prowess.
Jacob: go ahead and disagree with whether that last sentence is the majority opinion of the entire ultimate community or disagree with whether the HOF should even bother with worrying
about sportsmanship (just elect whoever won the most championships), but please do not loosely and inaccurately call the HOF voters a bunch of people who do not deserve respect.
In the early part of Aliens, there's a scene where Ripley, at a hearing on what happened back on LV426, stands up and asks something to the effect of, "Did IQs just drop suddenly while I was away?" Sometimes I feel like that.
Is the concept of anonymity really this difficult to grasp?
Newspaper articles are written all the time based on information that comes from anonymous sources. Guess what? The person writing the article knows precisely who they are, and a few others probably can figure it out, but since they're not named publicly they are anonymous sources.
Philanthropists often make major donations but choose to remain anonymous. Guess what? Their bankers, financial advisors, and probably at least one person at the institution receiving the gift know precisely who they are. But since they are not named publicly they are anonymous donors.
Yes, an administrator at the UPA knows all the names of the respondents to the Call to the Community, but unless those names are attached to the information publicly, so that any and all who see the information know the name, they are anonymous.
It's a pretty simple concept. I'm surprised so many of you have such a hard time wrapping your heads around it.
"What 'anonymous negative feedback'?"
See earlier threads on this blog.
"the gist of your thoughts seems to net down to: you disagree with the majority opinion of these HOF voters and for that reason the HOF is a sham."
No, the gist of my thoughts is: Dobyns has been excluded from the hall of fame primarily because the ultimate powers that be and some old-school players are uncomfortable with aggressive guys who used mental intimidation as a tool to achieve victory. It is weak to use this as a basis for hall of fame exclusion.
"these people probably took their ... responsibility to the greater ultimate community pretty seriously."
These people's view of "their responsibility to the greater ultimate community" is far broader than what this responsibility actually is.
"But it's pretty straightforward. Per the UPA website you need 60% of voters to say yes to get in."
Right, but your first post gave the erroneous impression that 100% of those already in the hall of fame actually voted and that more than 40% of them declined to vote for Dobyns. In reality, we don't know the exact composition of the class of 2010 voting committee and we do know it contained some upa-appointed non-hall of fame people (side note: the "contributor" voters are ex-upa people). It is legitimate to associate this decision with the upa.
"Fact is, as a group, the tally simply ended up that your hero didn't make the cut."
Dobyns is not my hero.
"KD scores strongly on on-field achievement, athleticism and commitment to winning etc and probably nobody disagrees with that ... so it had to be the sportsmanship component, right?"
Right.
"Again, there's no real conspiracy here, with some 'anonymous negative feedback' felling our favorite candidate."
I never said there was. You are misrepresenting my argument; which I doubt you have read completely.
"There's probably just a bunch of good people wishing their voting job could be easier,"
Boo hoo.
"if only Kenny hadn't chosen to be such a bullying unsportsmanlike asshole."
Yeah, he should have been more like Michal Jordan or Larry Bird. Oh, wait. This sarcastic point fails here because those guys play a sport run by people who accept that men can get a little aggressive sometimes when they compete.
"He could have been just as intense and just as irreverent etc and probably still have achieved close to the same level of success on the field (maybe even exactly the same level of success)."
Uh oh. This is pretty much an admission on your part that the hall of fame is punishing KD for being too good at intimidating opponents. Why did you hide this gem so far down in this post?
"But you gotta sleep in the bed you make and KD made the bed himself."
Do you think all those rings and trophies make the bed bumpy?
"His choices. His actions."
I love it when left-wing ultimate players who probably see hypocrisy and nuance in all sorts of the punitive aspects of our society get all simplistic and "law and order" when it suits them.
"they decided HOF membership is for great players who ALSO display laudable attributes beyond just winning and individual prowess."
I though I told you to take it easy on the caps.
"go ahead and disagree with whether that last sentence is the majority opinion of the entire ultimate community"
First, thank you for giving me license to disagree. That is magnanimous. Second, for the record, I do indeed disagree (although the hall of fame committee should not necessarily be completely bound by the popular will of the ultimate community).
"do not loosely and inaccurately call the HOF voters a bunch of people who do not deserve respect."
Can I respect a person and also state that I think they made a stupid mistake?
Response to Jacob's point #4 at 2:40 pm (why doesn't blogger put a date on these comments?):
That list (plus Henry Thorne) is the list of eligible voters: 22 HoF members plus the non-HoF members of the vetting committee (Finlay Waugh and Catherine Greenwald) and the Board liaison (Henry).
Also, the 80E mold and the game's founders (Joel Silver, Bernard “Buzzy” Hellring, and Jonathan “Jonny” Hines) are "Special Merit" members and do not have a vote as noted in the UPA Hall of Fame Selection Process page http://upa.org/hof/selection_process
In response to Jacob's comment about Larry Bird, Michael Jordan and sports that accept aggressive behavior. These sports also have referees and the players themselves aren't responsible for enforcement of the rules. We may not want Ultimate to be different, but it is.
Furthermore, these sports also have Technical Fouls, Unsportsmanlike Conduct Fouls, Taunting Fouls, Red Cards etc. that have nothing to do with how the game is played and everything to do with how the player conducts him/herself while playing the game. I only played against KD once, and my opinion after the game was he was an ass (though very good, I'd say he single handedly beat my team). Since my knowledge is limited I can only speculate, but I can say that if Ultimate had any sort of punishments for unsportsmanlike conduct, then maybe belligerant intimidation wouldn't be such an effective tactic.
Can you explain exactly what KD did to warrant the "ass" label?
I'm curious if they haze of time has made this one game out to be bigger in your memory than it really was.
OK, so we started by assuming that Dobyns was not excluded based on lack of great play and therefore must have been excluded based on poor sportsmanship.
Then we moved to looking at two subsets of poor sportsmanship: cheating and being a non-cheating jerk. For the most part, there seems to be agreement that Dobyns was not a big enough cheater to warrant exclusion based on cheating. Dobyns must have been excluded for being a non-cheating jerk. (I of course could be wrong here, but have not heard much testimony to the contrary).
Now we go to two subsets of being a non-cheating jerk: jerky conduct which would warrant a technical foul and jerky conduct which would not warrant a technical foul. If your argument holds water, we can assume that Dobyns is being excluded for the former only. If he is being excluded for the latter, then your argument does not hold water.
As there were no technical fouls (or yellow/red, cards, etc.) during Dobyns' time, one could argue that a retroactive penalty for conduct not illegal at the time is unfair, but for the purposes of this discussion we can simply pretend:
1) that the vague language on the sotg clause gave Dobyns fair warning regarding non-cheating jerky conduct; and
2) that the technical fouls in ultimate were/are/should be similar to those in basketball.
I referenced Michael Jordan and Larry Bird earlier because they were both notorious for being jerks to opponents; getting in their heads with smack talk. Last time I checked, both were in the NBA hall of fame and neither received many technical fouls ... but maybe Dobyns was just a bigger jerk than these guys.
Re: Corey,
From what I remember, he had a confrontational style both with our team and his own. It actually didn’t bother me then or now, I’ve played against plenty of players like this over the years. I’m just of the opinion that this behavior is neither warranted nor reflects well on someone’s character. Like I said, my experience with KD is very limited, but that was my first impression and I only offer it to provide context since this is his blog.
Re: Jacob,
Regarding the technical fouls and how other sports deal with player conduct, my point isn’t that we should judge Ultimate players by the standard used in other sports, rather that Ultimate is NOT those other sports, and that our system has a DIFFERENT standard. (I admit, the all caps was on purpose). The fact is that the rule enforcement structure of Ultimate demands more from players in regards to their own conduct. How can it not? KD and others shouldn’t be judged according to the rules of other sports, but according to the rules in Ultimate. KD was right that how we play the game is largely a function of the unspoken agreements made on the field. Different teams and different eras will play the game differently, but should you really be surprised that if you were one of those players that pushed the limits of the rules with overly aggressive play and intimidation, that the rest of the community may judge that negatively?
If any good is going to come from this whole HOF mess, it’s that maybe Ultimate can come up with some better way. I still think if observers were more prevalent, better trained, made more active calls and more willing to give TMFs, we would all be better for it and this whole KD in the HOF debacle wouldn’t happen again.
Ken, how about a little reflection on your part? And honesty. Do you really wonder why your request for examples of your bad behavior is yielding nothing significant? Like anyone wants to get bashed on the head with your bitter wrath. Some things have just not changed.
How about you share something? Just one honest answer for now.
Did you take steroids?
Please, no deflections. This is a seriously personal question but it needs to be asked because it is highly relevant.
Holy fucking shit! Whoever you are, most recent anonymous poster, you are my hero.
I have just finished a post that will appear shortly, but before I go do that...
I didn't mean to suggest that the only stories I wanted were examples of bad behavior. I just wanted people to know that they were free to post anything, so long as it was an actual memory. And maybe I'm crazy, but I don't remember bashing anybody over the head for something they say I did, unless they say I cheated (because I didn't). In fact, the hottest I remember getting was at Jim for implying that Babs is a cheater (which he is not, and which Jim later admitted).
So I guess maybe you're not really my hero, but it was a timely query.
"should you really be surprised that if you were one of those players that pushed the limits of the rules with overly aggressive play and intimidation, that the rest of the community may judge that negatively?"
Let's change the word "surprised" to the phrase "vehement disagreement" (leaving aside the grammatical problems caused by direct replacement in the above sentence), as I'm not sure if KD was actually surprised by his exclusion.
The answer depends on how judgment is manifested. If it is manifested in people saying: "Kenny Dobyns was a jerk", then no, he should not vehemently disagree. If it manifested in hall of fame exclusion, then he should vehemently disagree.
We agree that ultimate is played by rules different from other sports, but "we are going to keep great players whom we dislike out of the hall of fame" is not necessarily one of those rules, but rather either a very creative interpretation of existing rules or a new rule.
(Again, I am assuming that the hof committee did not have reliable information that Dobyns cheated.)
is it just me or are the spirt zealots basically admiting that if ultimate was a refereed sport that they wouldnt have a problem in the world with kens hof INclusion???? if so......how queer!........both for them feeling that way AND being so opposed to ultimate being a refereed sport. I mean, its almost as if the sz's want it to remain UNreffed just so they can exclude guys like ken from their little club. Why must ultimate be doomed to be the bizzaro sport.
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