you didn't hear it from me, but...

R.I.P.

2010-06-20T09:09:00.000-07:00

Seems like an awfully long time ago that I was immersed in the HoF discussion, a discussion that in turn became a cheating, steroids, defamation of character, refzervers discussion. There was a time when I planned to respond to some of the comments that were made to the last two posts, but that time has passed. At one point I even envisioned going back and reviewing the tapes of all the National Finals I’ve played in to gather statistics on fouls made or called, upheld or overturned, and their potential impact on the outcome of the game had they not been made, called, upheld or overturned, but that point has also passed (and, truth be told, was probably beside the point to begin with). At some point toward the end of the discussion, someone (perhaps Phil) indicated that he was bored with it, and I replied “Amen.” I was bored with it. I still am.

Among my friends here in New York, “boring” and “bored” are words we use all the time to describe things we simply have no interest in as well as things we have lost interest in. It works best with a Brooklyn accent, but when someone suggests taking the ferry to Governor’s Island to see an outdoor art installation, there’s a good chance the reply will be “I’m bored with it.” At the extreme, when a thing has completely lost whatever interest it might ever have possessed, we no longer say we’re “bored.” At that point, with a fitting air of finality, we say the thing “died.”

Several weeks after my last HoF post to my blog, I was contacted by an old school player from Boston (coincidentally enough, the “rippee” from my confessional blog post that Henry Thorne found so damning). Having recently enjoyed a random connection with Pat King during a family ski weekend, he had been made aware my HoF candidacy and thoroughly brought up to speed on the entire debate. He reached out to me for two reasons. The first was to tell me that as the rippee, he found the story laughable and would give me his HoF vote any day. The other was to fill me in on an idea he had been kicking around.

The idea was The Spirit Ride, an event that has since passed (but if you’re interested there’s always next year). In his email he suggested that, like Tiger Woods signing more autographs and being more accessible to the press and spectators as a means of repairing his tarnished image, perhaps participating in the Spirit Ride would be just what I needed to gain acceptance into the HoF. Sadly, we’ll never know if he had something there. I already had two “can’t miss” events on my schedule that conflicted with the ride, so I missed out on this once a year chance to repair my damaged reputation with an eye toward finally gaining acceptance into the group of the greatest players our little sport has ever known. Quel dommage.

A little over a month later I received another email, this one from Joe Seidler, with the subject heading, “Don’t you want to be on this list of Ultimate Stars of the 80’s?” The list was a partial listing of Spirit Ride riders, and the point of the email was to generate interest and increase participation. Looking over the list I saw many names I recognized, mostly from back in the day when I first started playing the game. Finally, two days later, I received another email asking me to sponsor a rider, suggesting that even though I wouldn’t be able to make it in person, perhaps having my name on the list of donors might do the trick.

Maybe I was having a bad day. Maybe I hadn’t eaten enough fruits and vegetables, but whatever the reason, the whole thing started to bother me.

This is not the first time that, in the course of the HoF debate, I have been compared to Tiger Woods, a man whose respect for women in general and his wife in particular seems to have been pretty much non-existent. Does my having played an over-aggressive style of ultimate really rise to such a level of betrayal as that? In looking over the list of riders I see a few Hall of Famers as well as current and former voting members of the UPA HoF subcommittee. Do they also believe that my behavior on the field brings me to the level of Tiger Woods? Do they also think that if I participated in the ride or made a significant enough donation to the cause it might make me a candidate more worthy of induction into the HoF?

Damn! If only I hadn’t had those scheduling conflicts, this whole debacle might soon be mercifully ended.

Sadly, however, it was not to be. But what was so important that it would prevent me from repairing my damaged reputation and enhancing my standing in the ultimate community (and perhaps finally securing my elusive HoF inclusion) by participating in the Spirit Ride?

On Friday, June 11th, the day before the Spirit Ride, I was in Benson, North Carolina. I flew down to attend graduation ceremonies for the West Johnston High School Class of 2010. This was the last class of students that I taught, and in keeping a promise I made when I quit teaching, I have seen every one of my former students graduate. I also attended the Senior Brunch at school that morning, signing yearbooks and posing for photos. That night, following the ceremony, I attended two graduation parties, and at one of them had the pleasure of the company of the class Valedictorian and Salutatorian, both former students of mine. We chatted well into the night, and while at some point the challenge of keeping up with the hyper-energetic banter of super smart teenagers about to embark on their life’s voyage got a little tiring, I was never “bored.” With full rides to William & Mary and Duke awaiting them, they are surely destined for great things. It would be hard to overstate how proud I am of them.

On the morning of Saturday, June 12th, the day of the ride, I flew back to New York, popped in briefly at home to shower, shave and change, and headed north to the Westchester Marriott in Tarrytown to attend The Celebration of Opportunity Gala and Awards Dinner hosted by the Cerebral Palsy Association. For my work with the Hudson Valley Chapter, I was honored to receive the Distinguished Professional Services Award. My work there includes development of a program designed to build universally accessible parks and play spaces where children and adults who experience disabilities can participate in age and skill appropriate recreation and competition side-by-side with their able-bodied peers. It’s an exciting project from which I derive many rewards, and I mean no disrespect or lack of appreciation when I say that the award I received that evening is least among them.

Now, sitting at home, enjoying my first quiet weekend alone in my apartment in some time, I am writing for what I hope will be the last time on the subject of the HoF. I’m not sure that I would have done the Spirit Ride had I been free, and I have no way of knowing that my participation or my sponsorship of a rider would have repaired my damaged reputation enough to make a difference. But honestly, who cares?

This summer I am playing in Westchester Summer League for the first time in 12 years, and I am enjoying myself thoroughly. After the games we retire to the parking lot for the classic mill, and though I only recognize a few of the faces, the feelings of community are extremely familiar. Last week I was approached by someone I hadn’t seen in many years, and after a few “How long has it been” pleasantries, he asked the question:

“Kenny, what’s the deal with the Hall of Fame?”

“The Hall of Fame died.”

More Mush From the Wimp

2010-03-31T21:24:00.000-07:00

Phil,

The character count made it impossible to reply in a comment, so you may have to read another post. Sorry.

But I really do think it’s kind of unfair for you to ask all of those questions and then tell me no more long diatribes because it’s making it hard to root for me (that’s me whining again). But you’re right; I really don’t care if you root for me.

Up front, I forgive you for not reading everything or having all the facts, but if you had them you wouldn’t be asking some of these questions. Nonetheless, because it’s you, I’m answering.

1. You complain that you're not in the HoF, you complain that you don't know why...so Henry tells you why, and then you complain that Henry is spreading information that is supposed to be anonymous. For cryin' out loud.

No, I am not complaining that I should be in the HoF. I do know why. What Henry did was justify his vote (which I don’t think he even had to justify) by publishing confidential information in the form of a false accusation from an anonymous source that he had no business disseminating without verifying it. I am not a cheater. He should not have put that accusation out there. I am mad about that.

2. You're parsing sentences and dissecting words like a Rabbinical scholar: Henry wrote "revile" rather than "deplore", does that prove that he's biased against you? "Judge for yourself." Yeah, really, this is worth discussing?

My point is that even Henry, who has gone to such lengths in an attempt to guarantee impartiality, is probably biased without even realizing it. Nonetheless, I can’t argue your point (assuming that this is your point) that in the larger context this probably doesn’t really matter much.

3. Argument by innuendo seem pedantic and petty, as well as a bit craven. If you think specific other HoF voters are biased against you, say who they are and why you think they're biased.

I tried to make this point early in the post. Without knowing which voters participated in the process and to what extent, I, like everybody else really, am kind of in the dark. I just don’t know who reviewed the anonymous cheating and steroids accusations, although I know that the HoF made them available to every voter. I also know what Henry said about the process:

Instead there was an extremely arduous private discussion about 100 messages long amongst a group of Hall of Famers and workers who did a ton of work to get as much data, and fair data, as possible to allow everyone to reach as informed of a decision as possible.

So my general point is that anyone who took such anonymous accusations into consideration without thinking to question them is probably biased. And if the discussion was as long and arduous as he says it was, and no one questioned the use of those accusations (as I was told by The Official), then it stands to reason that a good many of them are biased.

4. It looks like you devoted a whole post to dissecting the meaning of the word "cheating" (again, the Rabbinical scholar) and concluding that everybody cheats so it's unreasonable to hold cheating against you. (Or something; I confess, I only skimmed this.) You also posted something a while ago in which you talked about ripping a disc out of another player's hand to deprive him of a goal, more or less bragged about it, and said you're not sorry. You've gone out of your way to thumb your nose at anyone who thinks 'spirit' or even sportsmanship has the least bit of relevance. So it's a bit rich for you to be shocked to be accused of cheating.

I think you went too far here, Phil. I’ve gone out of my way to thumb my nose at anyone who thinks sportsmanship has the least bit of relevance? That’s simply not true. I have ridiculed some sentiments, like that intimidation has no place in ultimate, because I think they’re worthy of ridicule. I have also pointed out that the vague language in the spirit of the game clause leaves it open to myriad interpretations, and thereby implied that it is difficult to come to a consensus on precisely what qualifies as good or bad spirit. But I don't think I've ever even suggested that sportsmanship has no relevance, nor have I thumbed my figurative nose at those who think that it does.

As for the play you refer to, I have since clarified it. No goal was denied, no call was contested, the play had no impact on the game or the score. As for cheating, as you point out, cheating enough and well enough to change the outcome of a championship game would seem to be difficult. Personally, I think it’s pretty much impossible. The closest I’ve seen any one player come is by making a questionable call on universe point, getting the call and subsequently winning the game (and I don’t think that necessarily qualifies as cheating – who’s to say the caller doesn’t honestly believe the call?).

5. Outrage is easy. It seems like everybody is outraged. Tiger Woods was outraged that people accused his wife of trying to beat him with a golf club. Floyd Landis was outraged that people accused him of cheating in the Tour de France. I get it that you're outraged. What I want to know is whether you were a cheater. That is a completely different question. It is one you have touched on, only obliquely, in only a few of the hundreds of your sentences I have read. To me, it's the only one that matters, when it comes to whether you should be in the Hall.

I was not a cheater. I am not a cheater. I never took steroids. But let me ask you, Phil. Is this how it should work? Should I have to make those declarations because I, a known person, was named in anonymous accusations? Why aren’t you asking the anonymous accusers to step up, identify themselves, and offer proof of those accusations?

And I know that’s not your job, so really what I’m asking (and what this is really all about) is why did the UPA HoF and the UPA’s administrator take those accusations in, go to the trouble to check the information to verify the person filling out the form played at that time, and then circulate those accusations without thinking to question the source, delve a little deeper, make a fucking phone call for chrissakes? They themselves said they knew the information was “toxic,” and yet they figured, “Hey, somebody who played at that time said it while requesting anonymity, and that’s good enough for us.”

I mean, come on, Phil. You’re a bright guy. Think of people in the HoF or who have made the slate of 8 voting. If this kind of accusation came in about them do you really think they wouldn’t question it? Even toss it out? But it comes in about me and they pass it along without even batting an eye? That’s tailoring the handling of the information differently based on the subject of the information, and that’s bias.

6. If you do want to get into the Hall of Fame, here's my advice. Drop all the bullshit. Instead, get a bunch of your former fierce competitors to step up and say publicly that they played against you in important, hard-fought, close games, and that you weren't a cheater. If they won't, try to live up to your own promise, and "suffer the consequences of [your] actions humbly and without recrimination."

Drop the bullshit? Are you kidding? Five hundred visitors a day to this blog, and the vast majority of them during the workday. I'm a one man economic slowdown. You think I'm giving that up?

I do appreciate the advice, but I don’t want to get in the Hall of Fame. Period. I filled out the form they asked me to fill out. The last question was something like “Tell us why you think you belong in the Hall of Fame.” I wrote, “I never said I did. You contacted me. Remember?”

But I also don’t want the Hall of Fame to use anonymous accusations to malign my character and question my integrity without having to answer for it. None of this ever had to happen. They don’t want me in their club. Fine. Stand up and say, “We don’t think Kenny Dobyns belongs.” But to say they didn’t let me in because I’m a cheater and a steroid user, and they know this because people have anonymously accused me of it and I can’t prove otherwise, that is weak. You’ve been pretty sharp-penned with me here, and I accept it because you’ve got a sharp mind so your pen should match. But when you see how the HoF handled this, do you really think I’m the one you should be calling petty and craven?

-Ken

Toxic Avenger

2010-03-29T20:43:00.000-07:00

Hey! Think the time is right for a palace revolution
'Cause where I live the game to play is compromise solution
Well, then what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band
'Cause in sleepy London town
There's just no place for a street fighting man
No

- The Rolling Stones

Poor Henry. Up until now, he has been left standing alone to answer for the actions of a group, a group whose other members seem to have decided that it is better to sacrifice one man than it is to come to his defense and risk more casualties. Clearly the UPA HoF does not adhere to the code of the U.S. Army Rangers. Thankfully (but no thanks to his HoF colleagues), Henry is no longer alone.

Over the weekend, someone posted the list of HoF voters, although the list as posted was incomplete. Discounting the founders and the 80 mold, I came to a total of 25 voters when I counted them up, not the 22 that was posted. I’m not entirely sure what the final tally is, nor do I know how many of the voters actually participated in the process. It bears repeating that just because someone is on the list of voters it does not mean that person voted. Further, just because a person voted it does not mean that person reviewed all of the information that was made available by the UPA HoF committee. Unless someone involved in the process is prepared to reveal specific details, we will all be left to guess at how many votes were cast, how informed the voters were, and what weight might have been given to anonymous responses from the Call to the Community.

I’m going out on a limb here: I don’t think anyone involved in the process is going to be revealing any details any time soon.

Some of the recent comments to this discussion have focused on the mathematics of the process, bandying percentages about while postulating as to how many voters would have to have believed X in order for the vote to have been Y. Others have stayed away from numbers, choosing instead to focus on the obvious “fact” that the HoF is a sham unless I’m in. (I’m reminded of the character of Vizzini from Princess Bride: “Kenny Dobyns not in the Hall of Fame? INCONCEIVABLE!”)

I have no interest in speculating on vote counts in terms of yea or nay (although I do think it might be interesting to know how many total votes were cast, as a reflection of participation). Nor would I ever consider questioning any voter’s decision on any particular candidate (least of all myself). If a person has earned or been awarded the right to vote, they can vote as they see fit. My issue with the HoF has never been the outcome of the vote but the process itself. In Henry’s case, I have questions about the specific process he used to arrive at his decision, and the subsequent process he used to justify that decision on Jim’s blog. As it concerns the overall HoF committee, I have issues with how they collected information, what information they chose to consider, and how they went about handling it. Finally, I have issues with the way people involved in the UPA generally or the HoF specifically have reacted when I have made my concerns known. When I gather all of these things together, the processes, the justifications, the reactions and explanations, what begins to emerge is not a pretty picture.

In one of the earliest comments on Jim P’s blog, Henry responded to a question as follows:

The HoF voters had a great deal of information about Kenny's sportsmanship from many sources. They had the peer reviews where some 60 peers had to say whether Kenny's SotG should negatively effect his candidacy for the Hall. And there was the Call to the Community where some 100 people sent in their thoughts. There was also Kenny's blog where he's pretty frank about his sportsmanship.

What I find interesting here is how Henry described the peer review process. From his perspective, the peer reviewers “had to say whether Kenny’s SotG should negatively effect [sic] his candidacy.” That simply isn’t true, and the fact that Henry saw it this way, or at least described it this way, is telling.

The peer review form allows a peer to vote for (endorse the candidacy of) up to 10 candidates. The form that is used for that purpose is also the spirit rating form, so a peer reviewer must make one of three choices in order to endorse a player’s candidacy.

'+/positive' -- the player's spirit significantly adds to his/her qualifications
'0/neutral' -- the player's spirit doesn't significantly add or detract from his/her qualifications
'-/negative' -- the player's spirit significantly detracts from his/her qualifications

A peer is only required to make a selection if he or she is endorsing that player’s candidacy, so no peer HAD to weigh in on anyone. Additionally, although both positive and neutral are available choices, in describing the process as it related to my candidacy, Henry only mentioned the negative choice. Why would he do that?

To get a clue, let’s take a look at another comment. Although Henry admitted that he never played against me, and therefore has no personal experience to go on, he nonetheless shared this assessment:

KD was widely reviled for his misconduct while simultaneously admired for his ability and tenacity.

As a point of word choice, specifically related to connotative as opposed to denotative meanings, consider the contrast of “reviled” and “admired,” or revulsion and admiration. Is revulsion more negative than admiration is positive? Come to your own conclusion.

At another point in this discussion, Henry pointed to some raw data taken from the peer review forms as justification for the low spirit score (1 out of 9) that he gave me.

More than half (55%) of KD's peers checked the "his spirit should significantly detract from his qualifications" box.

If this is true (and I’m not saying I doubt it) doesn’t it stand to reason that 45% chose one of the other two options (neutral or positive)? If that’s the case, how did Henry arrive at a spirit score of 1?

As pointed out in a previous post, he also wrote at one point that the evidence against my candidacy was overwhelming, then later indicated that the responses were about 50/50. What strikes me when I take all of these things into account is that despite the fact that Henry seems to have gone to great lengths to create an evaluation system that would allow him to make what he believed would be an unbiased choice, it might have been a fruitless effort from the beginning. I think Henry may be harboring a sub-conscious bias against me, and I don’t think he’s alone.

When I first read Henry’s comments (almost four weeks ago – seems like longer) I contacted someone (hereafter The Official) who is very involved in the process, a person I don’t know very well but who strikes me as thoughtful and intelligent. We have spoken on several occasions in the past, and traded more than a dozen emails in reference to the HoF selection process generally. I must admit that at the time I was quite upset. Henry’s public posting of the anonymous accusation that I had cheated to change the outcome of multiple National Championship Finals was, in my opinion, quite beyond the pale. The combination of his repeating it while also stating his position on the UPA Board had the effect, I thought, of lending legitimacy to the claim. Perhaps most importantly, in the same string of comments Henry had described the vetting process the UPA HoF had gone through before the comments were shared with the voting committee.

The Call to the Community went out, responses came in, the responses had to include where you played, at what level, and what overlap did you have with the nominee. An administrator checked that information, removed it if it didn't match up, then removed the name if requested.

In other words, the UPA HoF collected the information, put it through a vetting process, deemed it worthy of consideration, and disseminated it among the members of the voting committee. A UPA Board member, in turn, published that information in a public forum. When a newspaper publishes a story based on anonymous sources, if that story turns out to be inaccurate, it is the newspaper that is on the hook. By the same token, given that the UPA vetted this information before one of its agents published it in a public forum, it is the UPA that should be on the hook. That was the point I made when I reached out to The Official. I told him the accusation of cheating to change the outcome of National Finals is totally outrageous, and quite possibly libelous, and that I planned to speak to an attorney about it.

At this point things started to get weird. The Official, with a very serious tone, suggested I probably didn’t want to get attorneys involved, because if I did, even more damaging information would have to be revealed. Imagine my surprise. I had been publicly branded a cheater, my integrity had been trashed, my accomplishments, and those of my teammates, had been called into question, doubts had been raised about the competence of the UPA observers who had worked the games in question, and the very legitimacy of the UPA Championship series had been threatened. And yet, there was something even worse out there. Wow! I had to know more.

The Official explained that there were two “toxic” accusations about me among the responses from the Call to the Community. The first was the accusation of cheating, which Henry had already revealed. The second, clearly the more toxic of the two, had not been revealed by Henry, but it had been among those the UPA had vetted and submitted to the voting committee for consideration. What was this bombshell whose revelation would be so damaging to me that the mere thought of it would cause me to abandon my efforts to get to the bottom of the cheating accusation? What could be so horrible that I would quietly allow my name and ultimate legacy to be tarnished forever rather than risk its revelation? What was this dark secret?

After a solemn pause, The Official revealed it: Steroids.

I tell you the truth: I laughed loudly and long. In fact, if it weren’t so fucking tragic I’d still be laughing.

First, steroids are not illegal in ultimate. Still, if someone used steroids to achieve greatness that would otherwise not have been possible, then surely one whose job included determining whether or not to officially recognize that greatness would have to consider the implications of steroid usage in that evaluation. Fine. I get that. But come on. Seriously. We’ve all seen how steroids work. McGwire. Bonds. These guys went through physical transformations that made Michael Jackson look consistent. I’ve looked like this since elementary school.

In the fourth grade, an assistant principal stopped me and my best friend, Herman Moriano, walking down the hall of Northwood Elementary in Highland Park, Illinois. “Look at the two of you,” he said. “Your arms don’t even touch your sides when you walk.” In ninth grade, I was recruited onto the varsity wrestling team at Riverdale not because I demonstrated any aptitude, but because the coach saw me outside without my shirt at lunch (throwing a frisbee, btw).

From my earliest days as an ultimate player I was a scowling, muscle-bound, beast prone to temper tantrums, and I remained that way my entire career. And if any of you are so simple as to say the tantrums were ‘roid rages, try again. When I was ten years old my mother tried to teach me to play chess. The third time I scattered the pieces across the room after losing, she stopped trying.

Yes, the steroid accusation is utterly preposterous, but it is also insidious, and the manner in which it was handled, both during the voting process and afterward, suggests at the very least that the people in charge of the process at the UPA HoF behaved irresponsibly. I believe it’s much worse than that.

What makes accusations like these so insidious is that there is absolutely no exculpatory evidence. I simply can’t prove I didn’t take steroids. But the anonymous accuser didn’t have to prove I did. All he did was fill out a form, ask that his name be removed, and then let the HoF committee distribute that information to all the voters for consideration. Same goes for the cheating accusation. How do I prove I didn’t? Where is the evidence that exonerates me? And yet the accuser had no such burden placed on him to prove the accusation. He merely filled out a form, asked that his name be removed, and let the UPA HoF do the rest. That they did. They checked the accuracy of the names, dates, overlap – everything but the information itself. Some of you may rightfully wonder how I can expect them to verify every piece of information on every form. I don’t. But let’s not kid ourselves. Not all pieces of information are this serious. By The Official’s own admission, they knew these accusations were toxic, and there were only two of them. Surely they could have done something other than blithely pass them around for consideration by the voters. Surely they could have decided to take some responsibility for the information that they were collecting and distributing, particularly when that information concerned issues of personal integrity and drug use. But they didn’t. Do you wonder why?

Remember that when The Official first mentioned the second “toxic” accusation, he did so in an effort to encourage me to drop the matter. The only way his strategy would have been successful is if it were true. In other words, for him to think that the revelation of the accusation of my steroid use would keep me quiet, he had to have already decided the accusation was true. Considering how cavalierly the cheating accusation was publicized by Henry, one can rightfully imagine a similar feeling among the HoF voting committee about that accusation. Think about it. If Henry really thought there was nothing to it, would he have used it to buttress his argument? It’s probably fair to say that in so far as the HoF voting committee was concerned, the accusations of cheating and steroid use didn’t need to be proven, because they were simply confirmation of what they believed all along. Chew on that one a little while.

Once The Official realized I was not undone by the steroid bombshell (I think I was still laughing, but my guffaws were dying down) he probably figured his strategy was going to fail. At that point he tried a different (and rather pathetic) tack, with predictable results.

Official: You’ve never taken steroids?
Me: Never.
Official: Methamphetamine?
Me: No.
Official: Caffeine?
Me: Are you serious?

He was. That’s when it hit me. This whole HoF fiasco isn’t about my play, or my style of play, or my spirit. It’s about my life. It’s about the way I carried myself on the field AND off. It’s about the fact that from the very beginning, when I was a young fireplug without throws on a marginally talented, over-achieving team, I never gave a damn what anybody thought. I launched myself into the air, into tirades, and into parties with passionate intensity, and never cared about the collateral damage. Eventually I learned to throw, learned to harness my emotions, learned to manage my buzz, but I never learned to care what the powers that be thought. I still haven’t.

Almost four weeks ago, I started this blog episode simply because a UPA Board member had taken an anonymous accusation which is totally false and published it in a public forum. When I approached The Official, the King Kamehameha of the HoF about it, he tried to intimidate me into keeping quiet by passing on another totally false accusation. I believe that both of those people are guilty of gross irresponsibility at the very least. But that’s not what bothers me the most.

As recently published, there is a long list of names of people who share in this debacle. Every single member of the HoF voting committee had access to this information. Everyone who reviewed it should have known better. Is it really possible, as The Official told me, that not a single one of them thought to say, “Wait a minute. Do we have any proof that this shit is even true? Has anybody looked into this?”

Imagine that. All those great players, who know precisely what it is to train, compete, sacrifice and achieve, and not one of them steps up. Kind of surprising, but then again, maybe not. Maybe they were just pleased to finally have confirmation of what they had always thought. Little did it matter the confirmation came in the form of anonymous accusations. Any port in a storm.

As my conversation with The Official came to a close, he made one last attempt to convince me to keep quiet about this whole thing, or at least to keep the lawyers out of it. I agreed on the lawyers, and he seemed pleased. He suggested that it was possible that Henry owed me an apology, and I facetiously called it a gracious admission. He allowed as how the Hall of Fame process is still flawed, but it’s getting better. He added that he thinks the whole thing is at a vulnerable point right now, and he’d hate to see it fall apart as a result of this incident.

When a guy is involved in distributing false accusations of cheating and drug use about you, grudgingly admits that maybe you deserve an apology, and then tells you what he’s really concerned about is his private club, you get a pretty keen sense of his priorities.

Some things aren’t worth saving.

I Am A Jelly Doughnut

2010-03-25T10:36:00.000-07:00

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.

Strong Work

2010-03-20T05:51:00.000-07:00

It has been a long two weeks since I stumbled across Henry Thorne’s comments on Jim Parinella’s blog, and many people have been working very hard ever since, reading, thinking, and discussing while trying to make sense of the situation at hand. I’m sure some of you are thinking, “enough already,” but I’m afraid we’re not done yet.

Still, given the effort already expended, and the fact that we’re really not even all that close to the destination, it seems a brief respite is in order. We need some time to rest our brains, catch our breath, and recharge our batteries. And yet, I really don’t want to lose the thread of the discussion, lest we find it hard to reacquire when it’s time to get back to business. So how can we do that?

Story time! Actually, this idea was inspired by Nathan’s story, which I have lovingly titled, “The Roller Pull or The Pussy.” As our respite, but as a way to stay focused on the task at hand, the combination of skills, accomplishments, championships, and heinous, indefensible acts of cheating that have made me the most polarizing, distasteful, and inappropriate candidate for the UPA HoF in its insignificant history, you are all being invited to share your personal stories of my ultimate ways.

Right here, in a comment, just as Nathan did, tell your story about Kenny Dobyns. Yes, since I allow anonymous posting to my blog, you can remain anonymous, just as the anonymous cheating accuser(s) did. Yes, since Henry and others within the Hall of Fame hierarchy have made it clear that my blog is fair game as “evidence” to be considered in evaluating my candidacy, you can have an impact on the process. And no, since there is no way to verify it, your story doesn’t even have to be true. There is one requirement, however, and that is that you have to tell it the way you remember it. Be faithful to your recollection, however flawed, drug and drink addled, or motivated by long simmering bias or jealousy as it may be. Tell it like you think saw it, without fear of recrimination, reprisal, or, the worst possible outcome of all, the risk of losing friendships. Have no fear that your anonymity will be revealed. You will forever be wrapped in the safe and snuggly warmth of the security blanket provided by Henry “Protector of the Anonymous” Thorne.

Rest easy, raconteur, and let the words flow freely.

This should be fun.

I’m a Cheater, You’re a Cheater, He’s a Cheater, She’s a Cheater. Wouldn’t You Like To Be a Cheater, Too?

2010-03-19T08:02:00.000-07:00

During my last semester at NC State I had to take a philosophy class to satisfy a requirement, so I registered for The Philosophy of Religion. After all, I thought, what better place to take such a class than in a Bible Belt state?

Generally, the class was a bit of a disappointment. It might have been because, generally speaking, devout people are a tad too serious about religion to really delve into some of the more intriguing examinations of faith and its underpinnings. It also might have been that, in my final semester, I was already a little burned out on what might best be described as academic pontification. Much of the content of the class has long since faded from memory, but I can still remember the assignment for the first paper. Answer the following question: “Is it reasonable to believe in miracles?”

I cannot remember what my answer was, but I do remember that I received an A on the paper, largely because I started by doing something that most of the other students in the class never did. I started by defining both “reasonable” and “miracles.”

In truth, I did it to take up space, because I really didn’t think there was any way I could fill up enough pages with my meager argument, but it turned out to have been a stroke of genius. Yea, me!

I was reminded of this recently when I reflected on the ongoing HoF/Cheater discussion and realized that while there have been many accusations and counter accusations of cheating flying about, we have yet to establish a consensus on precisely what constitutes cheating. I think it’s high time we did, so I’m going to take a stab at it. Feel free to amplify at your leisure.

I suppose we can start with a failure to abide by the rules of the game. It seems logical to add the element of intent, similar to the way the legal system works. Homicide is the killing of a person, while murder is the criminal killing of a person, which generally includes the element of intent, among others. So it seems that we should start our definition of cheating with the intentional failure to abide by the rules of the game.

Somehow that phrase, failure to abide by, needs more oomph. Let’s make it an act, as opposed to a failure to act, which is somehow less oomphy than acting. I think an intentional violation of the rules sounds better. But does a single instance of intentional rule violation rise to the height of cheating? Or, more to the point, is a player who intentionally violates the rules one time a cheater? Or does there have to be a pattern, a repetitive and systematic intentional violation of the rules? I would say so. I mean, somebody who is otherwise assumed to be a well-mannered player might one day ignite the most shameful brawl in the history of the National Championship tournament by striking an unsuspecting opponent in the head without provocation. We surely wouldn’t want to keep that player out of the Hall of Fame (or even delay his induction) over such an isolated incident, no matter how shameful and embarrassing it was to everyone who has ever played the game. So I think we have to go with repetitive and systematic intentional violation of the rules. Yeah. That’s cheating.

OK, so now that we have a working definition, let’s put it to work and see how it goes. I think we should start with one of the most common types of rule violations, the defensive foul. So what we have established is that while we can look the other was for one intentional foul, any more than that rises to the height of cheating. So that means that most all of the fouls committed in ultimate must be unintentional, because otherwise the sport would be full of cheaters. So when a guy goes up on defense, and the receiver has better position and times his leap better, and the guy on D goes ahead and takes a big swipe at the disc anyway even though it’s pretty clear that he probably can’t make the play and will certainly hit the receiver, that’s still an unintentional act, because if it were intentional then that player, and all the other players who make plays like that, are cheaters.

OK, we’re getting somewhere. Now let’s look at the mark, namely traveling, fast counts, and marker/thrower contact.

OK, traveling is an easy one. I mean, anyone who would deliberately travel is definitely a cheater. So if you have traveled more than once, then it must be true that you couldn’t help yourself, because holding your feet in place is hard, and nobody would ever attempt a throw, like say a break mark throw, that they knew they couldn’t complete without moving their pivot foot. Therefore, all travels must be unintentional, otherwise pretty much everybody in the sport would be a cheater, and that can’t be true.

Fast count. Now we’re moving. Everybody knows how long a second is, and the rules say you get ten seconds to attempt a throw. So nobody would deliberately count off seconds that are less than actual seconds, and surely nobody would ever speed up at the end of the count, making those last few seconds even shorter. And yet fast count is a pretty common call, so we have to assume that every person who has ever counted fast or sped up near the end of the count did so by mistake. If not, then any player who did it knowingly more than once would have to be described as a cheater.

OK, disc space. The rules state the marker must not take a marking position with a disc’s diameter of the thrower, and to do so is a disc space violation. Clearly no marker would ever intentionally take up a position that he knew was inside the disc space limit, and no marker would ever bump a thrower while marking. Any marker who repeatedly marked inside disc space or caused contact with a thrower would be intentionally violating the rules and would therefore be a cheater.

Finally, let’s look at line calls. Surely no ultimate player would ever call himself in when in fact he was out. And surely no player, when presented with a small army of people telling him that they had a better perspective and he was definitely out, would ever say, “I think I was in so back to the throw.” Any player who ever did that would have to be a cheater.

I think you get the point. Basically speaking, the rules of the game are violated repeatedly during the course of play, and it would not be a stretch in any way to say that the vast majority of ultimate players have committed repeated violations of the rules of ultimate. So we’re in a bit of a quandary here.

Either all of those violations are unintentional, or there are a hell of a lot of cheaters in ultimate. And you know what the worst part is? There’s no possible way for us to know.

Fundamentally speaking, since we all recognize that rules violations occur in ultimate with great frequency, and that pretty much everyone who has played the game at the elite level has committed rules violations on numerous occasions, the only way we can determine whether or not a player is a cheater is by knowing whether or not the violations in question were intentional. And there is simply no way we can ever know that.

Now if a player were to admit, “Hey, I’m a cheater,” that’s a different story. But in the absence of a confession, we must rely on our ability to judge intent in order to distinguish between the cheaters and the non-cheaters out there. And guess what? We have no ability to judge intent with any degree of certainty.

The plain truth is that outside of a certain drug-addled former player from Boston and some old-school carnival charlatans, humans lack the ability to read each other’s minds, and therefore cannot know another person's intent. In a court of law, attorneys argue, witnesses testify, evidence is presented, and still jurors go into the jury room and use their gut instincts to decide whether or not a defendant committed an act with intent. Ultimately they may render a verdict, but they will never know for sure.

On an ultimate field, we have no testimony, no attorneys, and the evidence is being presented before us at high speed in the context of a game in which we often have a vested interest. Can we really believe ourselves capable of not only being certain of exactly what happened on a given play, but also of knowing what the intent of the various participants was? The idea is absolutely ludicrous. But that doesn’t stop us from judging. So the default position in the ultimate community at large is that players who are generally good-natured and likeable don’t cheat but occasionally make bad calls. Conversely, players who generally aren’t good-natured and likeable, and who don’t seem intent on making friends when they compete, well those players are cheaters who generally make really bad calls. What a joke.

I played for many years, and I can tell you that I have seen a bunch of questionable calls, obvious fouls, super fast counts, and fouling marks, but I have never looked at anyone and said, “That player is a cheater.” Over the years I have played against at least two full team’s worth of defenders who extended their arms to slow down cuts, grabbed shirts when they were caught going the wrong way, stuck out their knees to create contact, and generally did whatever they could to slow me down. And I understood. Often it was a relative newcomer or a defensive specialist who had been given the assignment of guarding one of the most prolific goal scorers in the game. They came into the match up knowing I was on a mission to score goals and they would have to do everything they possibly could to contain me, and sometimes everything possible includes certain behaviors that are outside the boundaries of the acceptable norms as defined by the rules. But did that make them cheaters? Hell no. They were good, tough, physical defenders, and so long as they would accept the same kind of play when they had the disc, then play on.

And now we’re right back at square one, the same place we found ourselves when we were discussing belligerent intimidation. In a self-officiated sport every single player on the field has an interpretation of the rules, and it is on the basis of that interpretation that they play the game. One man’s foul in another man’s tough D. One man’s travel is another man’s foot watcher. One man’s double team is another man’s tight cup. And if everyone who violates the rules is a cheater, then we’re all cheaters.

Welcome to my world.

Elucidation of the Obvious

2010-03-16T19:26:00.000-07:00

I never expected to be writing this. To me, the specific facts of this most recent HoF debacle are so clear that it hardly seems necessary to review them, much less explain them in detail. But based on some of the commentary back and forth I have been having with Kyle Weisbrod today, I can tell that he is still a little confused. Given that fact, it seems plausible that there are others out there who might be confused as well, so maybe a little review is in order after all.

For continuity’s sake, I have decided to use Kyle’s most recent comment to my Captain Kirk post as our jumping off point. From there we’ll just have to see where the discussion takes us. I, for one, can’t wait to get started. Let the learning begin.

Note: Italicized comments are Kyle Weisbrod’s unless they appear in quotations, when they are Henry Thorne's.

Ok, I'm confused. What specific confidential information are you talking about here?

Sorry about that. I’ll try to be clearer in this post. Sometimes my enthusiasm for the discourse causes me to get ahead of myself.

You mentioned the comparison b/t you and Pat:

"KD had nine times as many negatives as Pat in the peer review. More than half (55%) of KD's peers checked the "his spirit should significantly detract from his qualifications" box. Next worst was 20%."

I'm not privy to the inner-workings of the process. So you are saying this was confidential (i.e. the respondents were told this would not be released)?. If so, sure, bad judgment.

Hmmmm. Before we get into the explanation, I couldn’t help but notice that you admit being unfamiliar with the inner workings of the process. I’m no expert, but I do try to make myself knowledgeable on a subject before I take a position in a discussion on that subject. It tends to lessen confusion and allow me to make more salient and cogent points. It’s not that I’m telling you what to do, but I’m just saying…

So, as to the process, the following is from the invitation to submit peer comments: “All feedback will be kept strictly confidential and will be available only to the committee members as part of their deliberations.”

So I guess what you admit is pretty much what I said all along. Henry showed bad judgment.

But I'm unclear on the other confidential information that Henry made public. Are you talking about your public statement? Yeah, agreed, bad judgment if it was communicated that that was for the committee's eyes only. Was that Henry's doing?

No, this was not Henry’s doing. It also was not a “public statement,” as you call it. It was information the UPA HoF requested from me to be used by the committee to evaluate my candidacy, and was also confidential information. The person who made the decision to post it has already admitted that it was inappropriate and apologized. I used the fact that it had been posted on upa.org to illustrate that the UPA HoF seems to have a sliding scale of sensitivity when it comes to being the guardians of confidential information.

Or are you talking about the anonymous cheating comment. If that's it - yeah, I'm not sure that's bad judgment. The argument that you don't deserve to get in based on "questionable spirit" alone is pretty much untenable with the huge majority of players.

Yes, that was the confidential information I was talking about, in addition to the stuff you’ve already admitted it was bad judgment to reveal.

As for the whole “huge majority of players” comment, I was not aware of that. Cool.

That has to be supported by some accusations that championships were won/lost based on unfair play to keep someone of your accomplishments out of the Hall.

That seems like a pretty big leap. We went from questionable spirit to altering the outcomes of championships through unfair play. But let’s say you’re right for the sake of argument. Are you honestly saying that the unsubstantiated anonymous accusations are reason enough to deny an otherwise worthy candidate entry in the HoF? Or do you believe that the accusations have to have some merit?

That’s a pretty serious distinction. Imagine a voter thinking, “Hey, that Dobyns was pretty awesome but he was a bit of a dick, and somebody somewhere says he cheated him out of a championship, and that’s good enough for me. Out.” I’d like to think the voters take their jobs a little more seriously than that.

Did he definitely violate anyone's confidence? That's not clear to me.

Again, all of the information is confidential. He actually has refused to violate anyone’s confidence in reference to the accusations of cheating because he believes the accusers deserve to retain their anonymity. But he nonetheless violated the terms of the agreement through which the information was obtained. I would also go so far as to say, as an elected member of the UPA Board who is rightfully expected to uphold a fairly high standard of ethical conduct, he violated the trust of the voters who put him in office.

How would it be any different than the claims of "questionable spirit?" or any of the skill attributes? The fact is that Henry didn't play against you so his vote is based on what other people said. If you didn't get in because he heard that you were a lousy thrower how would that be any different?

OK, the sotg clause, as I illustrated recently, is written in vague language that allows for multiple interpretations. It would be pointless to engage in a debate over whether or not a particular player has “questionable spirit.” There simply is no verifiable right or wrong answer. As for the skill attributes, those are a little more clearly defined in the sense that there are verifiable outcomes that can be measured. A thrower who competes at a high level, completes the majority of his passes and throws a lot of goals would reasonably be described as a good thrower.

Now, what Henry wrote was that cheating took place (not "unfair play" as you put it) and that my cheating resulted in multiple National Championships being won or lost. Now since NY never lost any National Championships, I did make the assumption that he was saying that I cheated to win. And that, too, like a goal, is a verifiable outcome.

Therefore, Kyle, it is dramatically different from claims of “questionable spirit.”

He didn't have to engage in this discussion yet he did in earnest.

And once again, I appreciate his efforts. But he made several egregious errors that I believe indicate poor judgment. I asked you point blank if you agreed, and you wrote about the process as being the culprit. No question the process is flawed, but Henry’s actions were his own, and I say, once again…

In choosing to publicly post anonymous accusations of cheating that question my integrity and the legitimacy of multiple NY championships, Henry committed an ethical lapse that reflects very poor judgment, and thereby called into question a former player, an entire team (over multiple years), any UPA observers who worked those finals with NY, and the UPA National Championship series as a whole.

And I'm trying to help you out here because I think this decision and process appears to be ridiculous. So quit being an ass.

I read what you wrote, Kyle. The way I interpreted it you were dissembling and deflecting, all in a bid to avoid admitting what to me was an obvious truth, an admission you have since made. I apologize for upsetting you, but I think calling me an ass shows “questionable spirit” on your part (it felt kind of like belligerent intimidation).

In the interest of encouraging greater transparency from the UPA and the Board it is probably counterproductive to make Henry's uncommon (for Board Members) stating of his opinion publicly in to a referendum on his Board membership. That will almost certainly make other board members less likely to be public with their opinions and that is bad for all of us.

I did not make it a referendum on his Board membership. He did. Henry chose to end a post by writing about the privilege of being given the authority to make such decisions by the voters. The decisions he referred to include the decision to use an unsubstantiated accusation of cheating to give me a sportsmanship grade of 1 out of 10, and thereby determine me unfit for the HoF. He also passionately argued that the anonymous accusers should not have to take a public hit, even as he was publicly calling my integrity into question with those same anonymous accusations. I believe it showed incredibly poor judgment. We elect people to representative office based on the hope that they will exercise good judgment, so how is it inappropriate to point it out when an elected representative fails to do that?

Finally, as a former board member, for you to suggest that rather than point these facts out I should be quiet because if I don’t other board members will be less likely to speak up is a little bit unsettling.

Wouldn’t it be great if the response instead were, “Hey, Henry made a mistake, but let’s examine what happened and how it happened, so maybe we can keep it from happening again in the future. And hey, cut the board a little slack. They’re just starting out with this whole communication thing. They may stumble at first, but they’ll get it right eventually.”

Of course, that’s the response we might get from a board that was committed to openness and transparency, and based on what I’m seeing, the UPA board is anything but that.

I'm Captain of the Ship! I'm Captain Kirk!

2010-03-15T17:19:00.000-07:00

I love Star Trek. Always have. There are so many great episodes, so many unforgettable lines, so many forgettable guys in red shirts dying, so many hotties in uniforms that could pass for negligees. That was possibly the best thing about Star Trek. How cool is the thought that space exploration would mean the armed forces would start to look like The Playboy Mansion, but with ray guns? I mean, really. Sign me up.

Of course, the central greatness of Star Trek has always been the preposterous overacting. In fact, for a long time I’ve been getting big laughs by identifying some actor, often DeNiro (before he enrolled in the “Anything for a Buck” Acting School), as one of the five greatest American actors of all time. To the inevitable query, “Who are the others,” I answer, “Well, DeNiro, Duvall, Pacino, Brando, and…….Shatner.” Now that he’s the star of Boston Legal and the force behind PriceLine’s market share, who’s laughing now? (OK, all of us are still laughing, but you get the point.)

Still when I think about Star Trek, and forget for a moment about Playboy Bunnies and bombastic emoters, what I remember most is that for all the talk of technology and transporters, for all the “strange new worlds” and aliens, what the various plots focused on the most was humanity. That is, whether it was the human failings of the human characters, or the human tendencies of the alien characters, everyone on the show, and by extension in the universe, was somehow tied together by a fundamental “human” goodness. Perhaps it was simply another example of anthropomorphism at work, but I’d like to think that it was a reflection of the times, the post-nuclear, Cold War times, when technology and space travel were still new and a bit frightening, and something about believing that whatever we found out there would share our fundamental goodness made the whole enterprise a little less terrifying. There was something very cozy about putting a human face on space.

Contrast that vision with the world of Aliens, or the Terminator series, where space is dark and cold, and the future is sinister and inhuman. Yes, it’s probably a more realistic vision, but I’ll take Star Trek and its Styrofoam boulders, plastic models suspended from wires, and brightly colored landscapes (with hotties in mini skirts) any day.

It is perhaps because of my affinity for the show that I often find myself remembering particular episodes in response to things that are happening in my world today. Previously I have likened the experience of riding the New York City subway during rush hour to living on the planet Gideon, from the episode “The Mark of Gideon.” Recently, as I spent part of a sick weekend reading through more than 120 comments on Jim Parinella’s blog, I again found myself thinking about Star Trek. This time the episode that came to mind is “Court Martial.”

As an aside, the totality of Henry Thorne’s comments to Jim Parinella’s HOF discussion blog post is such that I can’t possibly go through everything here, but I encourage anyone who is interested to go and read them yourself. I will be addressing certain statements in this entry, and I expect to address more in the future, but in the interest of expediency I will be pulling comments out of context. I will make every effort to explain the context when I do so, but again, please go read them yourself. I am trying to present them in the way I believe they were meant, but I might be getting it wrong. I urge you to form your own opinions.

So why did reading Henry’s comments about my HOF candidacy make me think of “Court Martial?” Early in the string, when Corey questioned him on why he game me such a low score for sportsmanship, he brought up the concept of evidence, as though the HOF selection process were a court proceeding.

“The evidence from the three sources I described was overwheliming [sic].”

The sources in question were the HOF peer reviews, the responses to the Call to the Community, and my blog entries. I have already addressed the issue of blog entries and why I think it’s inappropriate to use them to determine the merit of a particular player’s candidacy (Seventeen). But even if I were to accept that all three of these sources should be used, do they really rise to the height of “evidence?” Maybe we’ll come back to that question later.

What I want to point out now is how, as this discussion continued, and other comments raised the point that perhaps many people who might have a more positive view had simply not responded to the Call to the Community, Henry seems to relent somewhat.

“To be complete here, there were a lot of people who said what you heard, that he didn't cross the line, that he must be in. In the data I got the split was roughly even, and there was a lot of it, the 60 person peer review group, then the 58 responses on KD from the Call to the Community.”

So, forgive me for quibbling, and perhaps all I really need is some elaboration, but how did the evidence go from “overwhelming” to “roughly even?”

But let’s be honest, regardless of whether the “evidence” was “overwhelming” or “roughly even,” when it’s as damning as this, perhaps the amount doesn’t really matter.

“KD's blog post quoted below was typical of the stuff we were hearing but, worse than this, it was happening at high levels of play effecting [sic] championships won and lost.”

Now that is a serious accusation. My actions changed the outcomes of multiple championships. A careful reader by the name of AJ is one of the few who caught on to just how serious it is.

“AJ asked: "Are you saying that based on your discussions with "the hive" you found that KD was "un-spirited" (kind of a dick on the field, but not systematically effecting [sic] the integrity of the games), or that KD was "cheating" (changing the outcomes of series games through systematic violation of the rules)?"

The second.”

So now it’s out. Henry Thorne confirms that I am not only a cheater, but my cheating has changed the outcome of multiple championship games. Even as I was reading this I couldn’t believe it. Was a UPA Board member and the UPA HOF Liaison really stating in a public forum that I had stolen multiple championships for my team by cheating? I was blown away. Reading further, I saw that another reader named Kyle needed clarification. He had seen me play. He also had trouble believing what Henry was saying.

“Kyle,
I watched Kenny make that leap, it was amazing. I'd just won with the Seven Sages in the Masters division. But answering your question, did he cheat to win championships? There are players who have told me he did. Finals of Nationals.”

He goes on to paint the precarious position he found himself in once he came into possession of this “evidence.”

“They could be wrong, but I'm just telling you, it isn't that we're making this up, there is a real problem here, either those players who claim that will feel that we've completely dropped sportsmanship as an important criteria or we'll have the Toad's yelling and screaming.”

At times I tend to make light of things, but there is no making light of this. This is a very serious issue, and I’ll get into just how serious in a moment, but for now let’s take a look at how Henry, an elected UPA representative, sees this situation.

First, Henry uses the plural, “players,” but my HOF source tells me the cheating accusation appeared on one response from the Call to the Community. Still, Henry saw them; I didn’t. I’ll go with his recollection. So in Henry’s perception of how this very serious issue is manifested, what we have is:

On one side, players fighting for sportsmanship by anonymously accusing me of cheating to win National Championships.

On the other side, we have “Toads yelling and screaming.”

Is it just me, or is this pretty much a textbook example of the logical fallacy of the false dichotomy? Surely there’s some middle ground somewhere out there, isn’t there? I mean, Henry, are you seriously telling your constituents, all the members of the UPA, that in your world view there are anonymous accusers on one side and Toad and his ilk on the other? And that’s it?

As you can probably imagine, at this point in my reading I was getting a little bit upset, and that’s when I thought of Star Trek.

In the “Court Martial” episode, Kirk is on trial for causing the death of a crew member through negligence. I won’t go into details. The important point is that the testimony the court is relying on is the computer record, and it’s pretty incriminating. As Kirk watches himself on the monitor release the pod during a yellow alert as opposed to a red alert, thereby causing the crew member’s death, even he is perplexed, twisting in his chair as he offers a passionate, albeit feeble, defense: “But that’s not how it happened.” But just when all hope seems lost, Spock discovers that the computer has been tampered with, Kirk’s attorney, Samuel T. Cogley, takes the floor, and the computer takes a back seat to humanity once again.

“I'd be delighted to, sir, now that I've got something human to talk about. Rights, sir, human rights--the Bible, the Code of Hammurabi and of Justinian, Magna Carta, the Constitution of the United States, Fundamental Declarations of the Martian colonies, the Statutes of Alpha 3--gentlemen, these documents all speak of rights. Rights of the accused to a trial by his peers, to be represented by counsel, the rights of cross-examination, but most importantly, the right to be confronted by the witnesses against him--a right to which my client has been denied.”

Wouldn’t you know it? Someone else, our friend Kyle, is also a fan of Star Trek, and he suggests to Henry I should be given a chance to face my accusers, or at the very least they should be identified. Henry’s response?

“Like a public trial Kyle? Zero chance of success.”

Clearly Henry does not adhere to the Fundamental Declarations of the Martian Colonies, as he clarifies in a subsequent, more elaborate explanation.

“Kyle,
If we present the actual incidents then shouldn't KD be given the chance to "contest" their "calls?" I think so, which gets you to the public trial.

And would the people make those "calls" on him if they were to be publicized with their names attached? No. Why should they take the public hit?”

I’m guessing Henry doesn’t feel very strongly about the Statutes of Alpha-3 either. But in his defense, Kyle, he might be right. I mean, why should they take a public hit, when they can remain anonymous while UPA Board Member and HOF Liaison delivers the public hit to me, and then argues passionately why it is so critically important that they remain anonymous.

“If instead, they were not only not allowed to be anonymous to the voters but they were also going to be publicized with their names attached, then we would be forcing them to essentially be whistle blowers and the number of people willing to step forward and give data would drop a lot. Why should they be the ones to take the hit, they care more about their friendships than whether KD gets into the Hall.”

Once again, Henry returns to the safety and comfort of the false dichotomy.

On one side we have people’s friendships.

On the other side we have my HOF candidacy.

I hate to break it to you Henry, but by going public with these anonymous accusations, you kind of upped the ante just a smidge. Allow me to explain.

Taking the accusations at face value (I’ll address in another post how there’s ample evidence not to do so), let’s take a look at the ripple effect.

First, you have publicly questioned my character and integrity, which is a hell of lot more important to me than the HOF.

Second, all the Nationals Finals I played in were observed games, so by suggesting that it is plausible that I could have cheated enough to alter the outcomes of those games, you have questioned the competence of the UPA Observers and the UPA Observer system. Or maybe you simply think they might have been in on it.

Third, by stating that there is some reason to give credence to these accusations, you are effectively calling into question the legitimacy of multiple UPA National Championship tournaments, and by extension the integrity of the UPA National Championship Series as a whole.

So, Henry Thorne, UPA Board Member and HOF Liaison, do you really think that preserving the anonymity of the players who made these anonymous accusations so that they don't risk friendships is more important than everything you have called into question by repeating those accusations in a public forum?

But I guess I’m really asking the wrong person the wrong question.

“On the appreciation for the work I do...
Thanks. I love this game. But It's also a privilege, a privilege to be given the authority to make decisions like this one. And I've been given that authority by voters who hope I'll represent their views.”

So, voters who put Henry in the privileged position to exercise his authority, is he representing your views? Do you also believe that protecting the friendships of the anonymous accusers whose accusations have called so much into question is of paramount importance?

Is that the spirited thing to do?

If the Code of Hammurabi and of Justinian can be invoked on behalf of Captain Kirk, why not me?

After all, I’m Captain of the ship.

Listen and Learn

2010-03-13T17:46:00.000-08:00

UPA Board Member and Hall of Fame Liaison Henry Thorne had many interesting things to say in comments to a post on Jim Parinella’s blog recently. I will address some of the most interesting ones in considerable detail soon enough, but in the meantime I want to share some of what I experienced when I brought his comments to the attention of another member of the UPA HOF’s hierarchy.

Because he is someone I respect who was drawn into this morass reluctantly and through no fault of his own, I won’t name him. I will, however, share some of what he had to say in general terms as a catalyst to a broader and, I think, more illuminating discussion than could be had were we to confine ourselves to the fairly obvious details of my HOF outduction.

To begin, he “revealed” several facts that were not exactly surprising. First, based on the responses the UPA HOF received from the Call to the Community, I am a deeply polarizing figure. Second, a huge portion of the time spent in consideration of HOF candidates was spent considering the merits of my candidacy. Finally, is response to my statement that some of the things that Henry wrote on Jim’s blog were absolutely outrageous and borderline libelous, he dismissed my concerns by suggesting that the blogosphere is generally populated by (my terms, not his) nitwits, extremists, conspiracy theorists, and general nutjobs, and that the more reasoned portion of the population would remain blissfully unaware of Henry’s condemnations of my character. Effectively, he suggested the offerings on the internet are generally mindless blather.

Initially, as an erstwhile rsd poster and current blogger, I was slightly stung by his criticism, but I quickly dismissed his opinion as being woefully emblematic of the default position for any member of the UPA hierarchy when it concerns such matters. In time, and after some reflection, I thought there might be some truth to what he said. After subsequently re-reading many blog posts and comments on the matter at hand I realized that his assessment is largely accurate.

As a brief aside, it has been suggested that I really don’t care what people think about me, my playing career, my HOF candidacy, or my ultimate legacy. In fact, I do, but perhaps not in the way that you might imagine. It’s true that I don’t lose any sleep over people’s characterizations of me as a comical Napoleon, and I don’t lie awake at night fretting over my HOF exclusion. Nor are my feelings hurt when I am criticized, often anonymously, as an ultimate asshole or worse. But I do care what people have to say in the sense that, when time permits, I take the time to scroll through rsd and various blogs, as well as the comments to my blog, and “listen” to what people have to say by reading their words and trying to make sense of them. At times, it’s a fairly fruitless proposition.

To be fair, to say that all ultimate blogging, rsd posting, and subsequent commenting is mindless blather is too strong a statement. There are some thoughtful people in the blogosphere who take the time to craft carefully worded, illuminating posts that clarify the issue under discussion and enrich the dialogue. They are, however, the exception, and the vast majority of contributions to the various discussions taking place in ultimate cyberspace can be characterized by one thing: an astonishing absence of any evidence of disciplined thought.

There are many such examples, and it would be a foolish waste of time to catalog them all here, but I would like to highlight two recent examples to show that even people who seem reasonably intelligent often fail to take the time to think before they write.

Recently, someone posted on rsd in reference to an article that ran many years ago in the Wall Street Journal, and followed that post with the following query:

“Anyway....a basic UPA HOF candidate question:

Was Kenny Dobyns representative of the sport?”

I would say the question is irrelevant, but it’s not even irrelevant; it’s incoherent. Players are not representative of the sports they play. They are the sports they play. Ultimate is a grass field, eight cones, and a piece of plastic. Baseball is a dirt and grass field, some chalk lines, four bases and a mound. But when players step onto those fields and play the games, the games come to life, and they live through the players who play them.

You want a HOF candidate question? Here’s one:

Did ultimate at that time represent the candidate?

Now think about the players who are in the Hall of Fame. If you had the opportunity to see them play, then you know that often the answer is yes.

Now here’s another question:

Did ultimate in the late 80s and early 90s represent Kenny Dobyns?

Whether you like it or not, the answer is yes.

When Mark McGwire pathetically stated that he wished he hadn’t played in the steroid era, he tried to suggest that everything had happened to him, as though he were a passive victim, innocently caught up in the maelstrom of performance enhancing drugs. It was sickeningly disingenuous. The steroid era in baseball was what it was because it was representative of Mark McGwire and those of his ilk, not the other way around.

Along the same lines, the era that stretched from the mid 80s through the mid 90s in ultimate was characterized by a highly competitive, hyper aggressive, push the envelope of the game, in your face style of play that was representative of the people who played at the time. The theory has been advanced that what transpired in the game back then was the direct result of a system of lax enforcement of toothless rules. Perhaps that’s true, but such arguments are a little too close to a McGwiresque justification for my comfort. We chose our style of play. It didn’t happen to us. We looked at athletic competition as a war between opposing forces, and we were determined to prevail against all comers. To make sure we were prepared, we reminded ourselves in the huddle before we stepped onto the field: no mercy, no prisoners. If the people whose opinions drive the process have decided the UPA HOF is no place for people who played the game that way, then they are absolutely right to keep me out of their little club. No harm. No foul. But so long as the discussions continue, I’m going to use them to address the lack of disciplined thought I mentioned earlier, which brings me right back to Henry Thorne.

As I said, in the not too distant future I will address some of the egregious and indefensible statements Henry made, but for now I want to examine, for the purposes of instruction, how he made them. Basically I want to point out yet again how seemingly intelligent people sometimes fail to think before they write.

In response to Jim Parinella’s blog post encouraging discussion of the UPA HOF selection process, Henry posted over a dozen times. In some instances he was careful to point out that he was expressing his personal, not official, opinion. In other instances he was not so clear. But even when he did say something along the lines of “This is me expressing myself as an individual,” he added his official titles as UPA Board member and HOF liaison. He then made it clear through his writing that his opinion had been shaped by information he only had access to because he is a UPA Board Member and HOF Liaison. Given those circumstances, regardless of whether he is presiding over an official board meeting or posting to a blog from his basement, his opinion cannot be separated from the process through which he arrived at it. It is not the opinion of Citizen Thorne. It is the opinion of a UPA official and HOF voter, who also happens to be named Henry Thorne. One would imagine he has enough sense to realize that, but perhaps not.

Additionally, in responding to questions and supporting his process and conclusions, Henry revealed information (gleaned from HOF documents) that is almost certainly supposed to be kept confidential. Did he not realize that? It’s one thing to say, “based on the information provided to me about the candidates in question, I can say that some were rated significantly more negatively than others when it comes to the spirit category.” It’s another to quote specific statistics and attach them to particular persons. I recognize that these people are volunteers, and that you get what you pay for, but Henry should absolutely have known better.

In an earlier post in this forum I wrote that Henry should be commended. I still believe that. The UPA HOF selection process is clearly flawed, and while some people have expended a great deal of energy trying to improve it, there’s still more work to do. But in the areas of communication and transparency, areas where the process has so far failed spectacularly, I have seen precious little effort to improve, and nary an official admission of the need to improve. In fact, the only thing that has come close to an official engagement in substantive discussion of the process is Henry’s contribution to Jim’s blog. Based on my conversation with my respected but unnamed HOF hierarchy source, we probably have only ourselves to blame.

It has often been suggested that the UPA should use public forums (such as rsd) to engage directly in discourse with the ultimate community at large. I have heard at least one UPA response stating that the rsd community is not a representative sample of the ultimate community at large, a point I’d be willing to debate. I have also heard at least one UPA response stating that what passes for discourse on rsd is something less than true discourse, and that is a point it would be harder to debate.

When I was a teacher, I used a classroom discussion exercise to force my students to listen and think without speaking. I would tell them that on Friday after their weekly vocabulary quiz we would be having an open discussion on a topic I knew they would find interesting (the school dress code for example). Once the quiz was over, they would be all fired up to share their thoughts. Then I would have them reach under their chairs to retrieve a card. Depending on what was written on the card, they would either be required to speak during the discussion, or be forbidden from speaking during the discussion. Those forbidden from speaking would be required to start by briefly describing their feelings at the top of the page, and then take notes of what the speakers said during the discussion. In addition, they had to respond during the discussion with their own thoughts in writing, without ever being given the chance to speak out loud. Although they initially found it frustrating, in time they realized that by listening carefully and responding on paper, they often found their opinions on the topic changing ever so slightly during the discussion. By contrast, those who spoke their views openly generally left the class feeling the same as they had when they came in.

The take home lessons are that it is only by being silent that we can listen, only by listening that we can hear, only by hearing that we can understand, and only by understanding that we can learn. It is a sad comment on the state of rsd, and our society as a whole, that there is far too little silence, and precious little understanding in what passes for discourse these days, whether it takes place on rsd or on Fox News. Given that fact, I can’t really blame anyone who resists the request for engagement. Can you?

As I stated earlier, I periodically go back and read the comments on my blog. It is with some measure of disappointment that I note that many of the comments come from the same person, that all of his comments generally say the same thing, and that rarely does anyone continue to contribute to what, at that point, is no longer a discourse. It’s a pity. Some time ago I made a vow to neither delete comments from my blog nor restrict anonymous comments. Recently I have been considering a change to my policy. Would that instead the person in question would reach under his chair and retrieve a card, then sit in silence and listen for a change.

We all might learn something.

Belligerence

2010-03-08T21:03:00.000-08:00

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. – Eleanor Roosevelt

Many years ago, while discussing ultimate, Andy Borinstein, UPA Hall of Famer, used a phrase which I have since borrowed from him many times, without proper attribution. He described ultimate as a sport that “catches people who fall through the cracks” of other sports. I have always used the phrase in the way I believe he meant it, which is to say that people who might not be tall enough or strong enough or sleek enough or fast enough to play more mainstream sports find a home in ultimate, where hand-eye coordination and stamina go a long way to assuring at least a modicum of success, whatever one’s other shortcomings might be. Recently I have come to realize that there is another way to interpret the statement. Whether or not Andy meant it this way is irrelevant; the shoe fits, so we might as well wear it.

In various discussion threads and blogs, the question has been raised whether intimidation belongs in ultimate. By that I mean, it has been suggested in some cases, and stated outright in others, that intimidation is a violation of sotg and anyone who intimidates an opponent is guilty of a violation of the rules of the game. By extension, a player who purposely intimidates is knowingly violating the rules of ultimate, and therefore a cheater. With apologies to those of you who interpret the sotg clause this way (sotg specifically refers to “belligerent intimidation” without explanation), I am of the opinion that it is laughably ludicrous, and only players who have little to no understanding of competitive sport could think such a thing. Yes, ultimate catches people who fall through the cracks of other sports. In this case, I suggest that we try to make the game a coarser mesh sieve.

NY ultimate lore is full of many entertaining little tidbits that we never tire of rehashing. One time at worlds, while playing against Sweden, I found myself being guarded by a very young, eager, and wide-eyed player, who seemed a little bit nervous. As the disc was being walked to the line, the deep, reassuring voice of one of his teammates called out a bit of last minute advice: “Don’t look at his muscles.” Clearly there was a concern that the young man might be intimidated by my physique. Should he have called a foul, and required me to wear a baggy, long-sleeve shirt?

1989 National Finals against Tsunami, I am on offense, running down a hanging huck in the end zone with Marty Stazak right on my hip. Marty gets a great run and leap, but he’s a touch early. My timing is better, and I catch the goal. In retrospect, I’ve come to believe that Marty, aware of the rumors of my leaping prowess, might have been intimidated into making his jump early, and that enabled me to catch the goal. Marty, if that is the case, I’m sorry I cheated you out of the D.

1992 National Semifinals against Rhino Slam, we pull downwind and play zone to start the game. Rhino shows astonishing patience, throwing what must have been fifty passes while working it two thirds of the way up field before an errant pass sails out of bounds. I walk the disc to the side line and throw one pass, a long forehand to Walter, for the goal. Rhino, possibly intimidated by how efficiently and quickly we struck, is never in the game, losing by an astonishing margin. I realize now we should have thrown more passes and been less intimidating. A replay of the game might be called for.

1993 Worlds, also in the semis against Rhino Slam, we’re on offense trailing late in the second half, when I call timeout on a high count. We set up what looks like a standard dump play to reset the count, but we also isolate Cribber in the end zone. On the restart I throw the forehand (which they were giving me) to Cribber in the far corner (which they were giving him) for the goal. We run the table to win the game, and I realize now that Rhino might have been intimidated by our willingness to go big when circumstances (trailing late in the game) called for the safer play. They are arguably the 1993 World Champions.

OK, so these are pretty ridiculous examples, but no more so than the suggestion that sotg prohibits intimidation from ultimate. For comparison, let’s take a look at an example from another sport with a sotg clause, golf.

When Tiger Woods has a one stroke lead on Sunday, does a PGA official tell him he can’t wear red? Do they tell the media not to remind everybody within earshot of the guy’s record of greatness? Of course not. Tiger wears red, and the media reports go out and Tiger’s opponents spray it all over the course, and then once in a blue moon somebody like Y.E. Yang comes through. Why? Because Tiger wasn’t intimidating that day? Because he wasn’t wearing red? No. Because Yang wasn’t intimidated.

Intimidation is the flower of self-doubt, and in the absence of self-doubt, intimidation cannot flower. To paraphrase Eleanor Roosevelt, people can’t be intimidated unless they allow themselves to be. Yang didn’t allow it. Rhino did. Whose fault is that? Should anyone be held accountable when players or teams allow themselves to be intimidated?

As indicated earlier, the sotg clause refers specifically to “belligerent intimidation,” but based on RSD posts and blogs, a few people have decided to apply it to all forms of intimidation. This is at the heart of so much of what is flawed about the sotg clause and its enforcement. Individual players selectively emphasize certain words or phrases while ignoring others. The language itself is so vague as to open itself to multiple interpretations even when players agree on the wording. Case in point: “belligerent intimidation.” What does it mean?

If I’m on a team that hasn’t lost in months and I happen to be belligerent, is that belligerent intimidation? What if I’m a belligerent but mediocre role player on a great team? Is that belligerent intimidation? What if I’m the belligerent leader of a terrible team? Is that belligerent intimidation? A poster to Parinella’s blog suggested (perhaps with tongue firmly in cheek) that he has made many bad calls but nobody cares because he’s a mediocre player. Does the “belligerent intimidation” provision in the sotg clause effectively apply only to good teams/players, because people don’t really care too much what the teams/players that lose are doing (and because, generally speaking, there’s nothing especially intimidating about losing)?

The point I’m trying, and perhaps failing, to make is that a self-officiated sport must place a greater emphasis on specificity in its rules. The officials in officiated sports attend regular clinics and meetings where they are TOLD precisely how to interpret gray areas in the rules. In ultimate, every player makes his or her own subjective interpretation, so that at any given time there are as many as fourteen different versions of the rules being enforced and/or adhered to. For the purposes of illustration, and because I find the topic rather amusing, I have chosen to focus on a single, two-word term from what is said to be the most sacrosanct clause in the rules and shown how, taken to an extreme, it can yield some pretty absurd results. But the sad truth is that a quick read through RSD will tell you that some people are quite serious about using the vague terminology in the sotg clause to suggest that intimidation, an essential component of ALL competitive sporting endeavors, has no place in the game of ultimate. What other less obvious but equally absurd interpretations are being made on a daily basis?

Finally, because I really can’t get it out of my head, I’d like to ask someone, anyone (Henry Thorne perhaps) to define “belligerent intimidation.” This should be good.

Me: So what exactly is “belligerent intimidation?”
Henry: Well, it’s a little hard to define, exactly. But I know it when I see it.

(With apologies to Potter Stewart.)

Seventeen

2010-03-06T20:14:00.000-08:00

Mann: What was the awful thing you said? To your father?
Kinsella: I said I could never respect a man whose hero was a criminal.
Mann: Who was his hero?
Kinsella: Shoeless Joe Jackson.
Mann: You knew he wasn’t a criminal. Then why did you say it?
Kinsella: I was seventeen.

In the movie Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner plays a character, Ray Kinsella, who goes to great lengths to re-connect with his long dead father, without even understanding what it is that he’s trying to do or why. I saw the movie in a theater soon after its release, with my then girlfriend. She found the movie laughably sentimental and utterly unbelievable. I, on the other hand, found it to be genuine and moving. At the time I attributed the difference in our experiences to the fact that I love baseball while she does not. It wasn’t until many years and many viewings later that I realized that a more likely explanation for my emotional connection to the film was my status as a son who also has a complicated relationship with his father.

My father is not dead, although he’s not well. I have spent much of my adult life alternately trying to make sense of our relationship as it is, or shape it into the relationship I have always hoped it would be. I have not enjoyed success in either endeavor, and it would be difficult for me to over estimate the amount of time I have devoted to the effort. Such is the nature of the always powerful and often confusing bond between father and son. I have long since given up the hope of trying to turn my father as he is into the father that I wish for, but I am still trying to come to terms with our shared reality. That is, as they say, my cross to bear, and though it would be inaccurate (and not a little grandiose) to say that I bear it proudly, it is probably accurate to say that I bear it resolutely. I once received a greeting card that said that selecting a pet is the only time we get to choose a relative. In contrast, my father is the only one I’ll ever have. So be it.

Because it is the best tool I have for the job, writing is how I process life’s conundra, and my relationship with my father is no different. In fact, much of my recent writing has been devoted to a pseudo-memoir, a piece of creative non-fiction that details our tortured relationship by having the character of the son (that’s me) spend all of father’s day meandering through a series of seriocomic reminiscences only to discover that in doing so he has let the entire day pass without ever calling his father. Wracked by guilt at his failure to execute even this simple responsibility of sondom, the son (that’s me) crawls into bed to endure yet another year of inadequacy. No, it’s not exactly the most uplifting story you’re likely to read.

For those of you who don’t know, writing, like other creative pursuits, is an arduous undertaking, always lonely, sometimes painful, and invariably inadequate to the task at hand – knowing the unknowable. In an obituary of Ruth Kligman that appears in today’s New York Times, the artist Franz Kline is quoted thusly: “They think it’s easy. They don’t know it’s like jumping off a twelve story building every day.”

Throughout my five year stint as a North Carolina public school teacher, I wrote about the experience for the local newspaper, the News and Observer. I can’t even remember how many times, in response to my articles, editors, relatives, friends, colleagues, or assistant principals at my school came to me and asked, “Are you trying to get fired?” I wasn’t, but as a writer I had made a commitment to being the only thing that really matters, in life or art – honest. In time, that honesty burned enough bridges at my school to make my position there untenable, so I left. I harbor no resentment to the administrators who did their best to force my hand; they did what they felt they had to do, just as I had done. Life goes on.

Recently, I have been embroiled in another controversy that also involves my writing and how some readers (or reader) have interpreted it. The controversy is UPA HOF selection, and the reader is Henry Thorne.

For the record, I think Henry should be commended. While many members of the UPA hierarchy in general, and HOF voters in particular, have been reluctant to engage in substantive “discussion” with the masses, Henry has put himself and his thought process “out there” for everyone to see. For this alone he deserves our respect. But (and you knew this was coming) having read a portion of what he has written, I feel compelled to respond.

First, some background: I am sick. It’s your basic flu bug, but it has knocked me on my back for a couple of days and, because I don’t own a TV, has left me surfing the web looking for something to occupy my time between Nyquil induced naps. That is how I found myself on RSD and, subsequently, on Parinella’s blog, scrolling through an astonishing number of comments on the subject of my HOF deduction (the opposite of induction, yes?).

Second, at this time I am only responding to a specific comment that Henry made in response to a particular post. A more thorough response could follow, one that might address the many interesting angles reflected in the myriad comments posted thereto (save those of a certain poster who rarely plays more than one note, and not a terribly pleasing note at that).

So, somewhere between the lengthy list of comments to Parinella’s blog and the exhaustive “analysis” contained in the RSD posts, I came across a comment from Henry Thorne that characterized a post on my blog as “damning” in reference to my possible induction into the HOF. There are a number of reasons why that comment gave me pause, and I will try to address them in some semblance of logical order.

To begin with, I’d like to offer some unsolicited advice to Mr. Thorne. Try to avoid using words like “damning” unless you’re planning to assume the role of the almighty in the near future. Consider for a moment how your comment might have been interpreted differently had you used a phrase like, “His post gave me pause,” or “His post led me to question his candidacy.” Better, don’t you think? But let’s not quibble here. After all, I already said you deserve our respect; I may come to regret that statement as well.

Next, I have to question whether it is even appropriate for a HOF voter to take my blog posts into consideration when evaluating my candidacy. The HOF asks each candidate to fill out a questionnaire, and in turn asks them to have persons of their choosing submit references. In addition there is the Call to the Community, where individuals can anonymously lend the weight of their recollections to the decision making process. It is generally understood that a player's history in the game will determine whether or not that player deserves induction into the HOF. But I don’t see any place where it is expected, encouraged or even understood that a voter will seek out the writings of a candidate in an alternate forum to determine if those writings might somehow inform said voter in his or her effort to arrive at a conclusion as to the merit of that candidate.

As I have indicated previously, writing can be a brutally honest endeavor, and anyone who has read even a portion of my blog can attest to the honesty to be found there. If every HOF candidate were required to submit a personal journal of his or her reflections on his or her career, what might we find therein? But since no such requirement exists, how can one justify using his or her interpretation of my blog posts to judge my candidacy?

It is impossible for me to know how much of my blog any voter out there might have read. More importantly, it is equally impossible for me to know how much of what they read they have actually understood. For that reason, I feel it is necessary to engage in a little bit of review.

In my series on Poppy, the greatest dog in history, I pointed out that certain elements of the story were left out because they were not germane to the story that was specific to Poppy. The implicit point is that all writing, other than straight reporting, is inherently selective. This is why we actually have a term such as creative non-fiction. Yes, the basic facts are true, but we unfurl them in a manner and with such adornments as to make them more entertaining to our readers.

With this in mind, my question to you, Henry Thorne, and to anyone who puts so much weight to my words as to call them “damning,” is how can you distinguish among fact, fiction, and a combination of the two when you are reading my blog? More to the point (since I know that you can’t make such subtle distinctions), how can you use such a dull instrument (your understanding) to make such precise cuts (your assessment of my candidacy)? The point here, of course, is that you can’t. And yet you already have. And that’s a pity.

For the record, the play in question, the one involving Phil “Guido” Adams, occurred at April Fools, in the very earliest stages of my playing career. At the time, I doubt that there was even a strip call in the rules. Regardless, the play in question, a caught goal, resulted in exactly that: a caught goal. No contest, no do-over, nothing but a goal.

In the years that followed, I did some serious soul searching over why, in that moment, I pulled that disc out of Guido’s hand. Nothing that I did changed the course of the game, but I still had done something I couldn’t feel good about. Many years later, I wrote about it on my blog, and then someone who knew nothing about the circumstances or the outcome used it to pass judgment on me and my entire career as a player.

So why did I do it?

Like Ray Kinsella, I was seventeen.

The Shit You Read

2010-01-09T23:36:00.000-08:00

But rather than taunting, I'd call what I'm referring to as emotional
button pushing.

There certainly is no place in a civilized game being played civilly among gentlemen for such egregious behavior as button pushing, or button pulling, or buttoning or unbuttoning for that matter.

I think there's a difference between trash talk/bravado and
intentionally destabilizing your opponent using the exact boundariless
system that allows you to get away with it in the first place.

You are, of course, talking about the current system that allows for intentional opponent destabilization. A system that is, effectively, without boundaries, and therefore boundary less, that is, without boundaries.

When you are allowed to tweak your opponent at an emotional level
without any fear of penalization, there is something seriously
wrong.

You know, I can’t say that any of us should have to live our lives in fear of penilization, but maybe that’s just me. Nonetheless, I am in no way in favor of emotional tweaking; the physical kind is so much more entertaining. Like when Moe tweaks Curly’s nose. Now that shit is funny.

You can defend Biscuit all you wand but anyone who played Double
Happiness knew those guys were the biggest group of dickheads on the
west coast and what they did went well beyond taunting and certainly
went well beyond cheating.

You had me right up to this point, because even as I agree that there’s no place in the game for button pushing or destabilization or a lack of adequate penalization, I can’t follow you to the place where Double Happiness are dickheads and taunters and cheaters. I mean, that had to be some really bad weed you were smoking, and life’s too short to smoke bad weed, or drink bad beer.

The Spirit of the Season

2009-12-24T08:22:00.000-08:00

In 1936, in the first balloting for the Hall of Fame, Cobb received the most votes (222 of 226), outpolling Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson.

Like many of you out there, I was raised in a family that was upwardly mobile when it seemed like the whole country was on the rise. I do have three siblings, so there was a certain amount of sharing required, and I am the youngest, so I suffered through my share of hand-me-downs, but I can't say I ever really felt like I was left wanting at Christmastime. My mother tells stories from the time before I was born when, saddled with two children on an Army Lieutenant's salary, my parents couldn't afford a Christmas turkey until a ten dollar bill came miraculously floating to the surface of the wash, and I think she must be making it up. From my earliest Christmas memories I can see toys and games and smell pies and cakes, but I can't remember deprivation of any kind, and certainly nothing like the magically appearing Turkey Ten like out of some Frank Capra movie (It's a Wonderful Bird).

Over time, as my father's salary rose, Christmas grew proportionally, with more gifts and more food and more ornaments on a bigger tree each year. We moved often, and my memories of those Christmases are defined more by where they took place than by what took place, but the memories are predominantly warm ones, and I am vaguely confident that the rest of the family feels similarly.

Eventually, with my parents relocated to North Carolina and my siblings toting little ones around in their own miniature versions of the family, we made the transition to a Christmas Eve event. It was shortly thereafter that the whole affair kind of spun out of control, and the story of the holiday began to be told in measurements (feet of tree, strings of lights, number of gifts), and the theme of the event became impatience. (I can't wait to eat. I can't wait to open presents. I can't wait for the bourbon to kick in. I can't wait for it to be over.) It ended with a paroxysm of gifting, and when the sounds of ripping and rending died down there was another accounting: How many presents? How much money? How long before we can leave?

A move to a Secret Santa construct represented the final transition for our family Christmas, and the economic benefits, both monetary and temporal, kept us going for a few more years, but it was pretty clear our hearts were no longer in it. The kids spent most of the pre-present time watching television, and the adults punctuated their snacking with snippets of interstate woe, snapshots of traffic nightmares just endured and yet to come. Still we marched on, out of habit or obligation, eating the same food, drinking the same drinks, and having the same conversations. And then something mysterious happened – everyone just stopped coming.

Initially it was the siblings with the largest and most far-flung extended families using travel time as an excuse, but eventually even I, a mere five minute walk away, found reason enough to stay away from the site of so many family gatherings, the rural North Carolina house once home to my parents but now shared by my mom and her sister, three years her senior and a widow. For a couple of years they still put up and decorated a massive tree, but now even that time-honored tradition has fallen by the wayside. No fragrant spruce needles, no twinkling lights, no heirloom ornaments with their attendant stories told in reverent awe as hooks are affixed, spots chosen, and placements made.

As much of a pain in the ass as the whole spectacle had become, I actually missed it, or at least missed my selective memory of it, and for reasons I won’t go into, at this point in my life I really needed it. So in November I made a plane reservation and made some calls and started the ball rolling and got on a plane just in time to beat the blizzard out of JFK. But once I arrived I realized that my nostalgic reminiscence for the holidays of yore was not a widely shared feeling, and the reconnection I had hoped for, with the whole family getting together again on Christmas Eve, was unlikely to occur.

My sister and her husband, who live in Charlotte, were happy to host (or so I was told) but the rest of the family wasn’t up for the three hour drive. My brother and his wife, two hours closer in Efland, were also willing to throw open their doors, but they insisted that the traditional Christmas meal be Indian food, which sent the more timid palates in the family running. My mother, for her part, was also happy to get the band back together, but it had to be for the whole shebang – tree, decorations, and full traditional meal – and the thought of that ordeal was a conversation ender for more than a few of the relatives. In short, everyone was willing to participate in the holiday provided it was on their turf and under their terms. How’s that for the holiday spirit?

And that is how I found myself in my former NC home on Christmas Eve, sitting with my father, who is not well, trying to ignore the ear-slitting volume of the television as I scrolled through an RSD thread I was directed to by an old friend during a Christmas greeting phone call. It seems that nearly ten years after I played my last game of competitive UPA ultimate, I am once again in the center of a controversy. My family is growing increasingly fractured, a holiday’s meaning might be irretrievably lost for more than just my immediate family, serious people are dealing with serious shit and doing their best to hold on as the very ground they are standing on seems to crumble beneath their feet, and all some people have to concern themselves with is why I wasn’t let into the UPA’s club. On the surface it’s laughable, but when I gave it enough thought to dig a little deeper, I realized something rather remarkable – the UPA HOF members and selection committee have something in common with my family (and not just that they all find me exasperating).

As a general rule, people who cling so tightly to their vision of what something should be that they won’t allow it to develop naturally on its own cheapen the experience for everyone, and lessen its significance. At the risk of offending, I believe this is what my relatives did to Christmas this year. I also believe this is what has been happening to the HOF since its inception, and it’s a shame, not only for the people being excluded. What’s missing from this whole discussion is that when deserving players are denied, the significance of getting in is lessened. What does it say to the people who were rightfully proud to have been selected only to come onto RSD and see the shrine denigrated as a sham, a farce, and pointless? They deserve better.

There has been some suggestion that the HOF selection process reflects a conspiracy or bias to what Toad calls “spirity types,” what Tony categorizes as primarily northeastern former NYNY opponents, and what others might call the prototypical UPA vision of a player. I will go on record and say that I don’t believe there is any organized effort on anyone’s part to exclude anyone, but not all bias is organized. In fact, often the most insidious bias is subconscious, and sometimes I wonder if the process isn’t carrying that monkey around on its back.

Consider that when the UPA posted write ups about the Slate of Eight on upa.org, seven of the write-ups were written in the third person, ostensibly unbiased reviews of the players or contributors in question. Only one of the eight was written in the first person, ostensibly a self-aggrandizing proclamation of that player’s self-perceived greatness. That player was me, and the write-up was taken, without my permission, from the HOF application the UPA asked me to submit (after saying it would be used for internal purposes only). Did they have the right to the post it as they did? Did it bias any of the members of the ultimate community from whom they solicited input to help the decision makers cast their votes? Can we ever know?

For the record, I contacted the UPA and spoke to the person who made the decision to post my profile. That person assured me there was no intent to bias the process against me, and I firmly believe that to be true. But I also believe that unintentional bias has been and continues to be evidenced in the process. Ironically, that bias has, in my opinion, cheapened the very endeavor the powers that be are so strenuously committed to protecting. Seeing as how I have invested nothing in the process and do not hold the endeavor in particularly high esteem, that fact does not trouble me in the slightest. But there is something about this annual exercise in communal hand-wringing that I do find troubling.

What bothers me is my feeling that the denigration of my merits as a potential hall-of-famer is part of a larger marginalization of our team’s accomplishments, the familiar refrain being that we achieved what we did through unspirited play or exploitation of the rules. Such interpretations are not only inaccurate, they’re disrespectful to the many players who graced the NY roster over the years. What made New York special (and ultimately successful) was the rare combination of intelligence and intensity, of exhaustive preparation and explosive competition, and an ethos shared by every member of the team that said the most honest expression of the spirit of the game is to compete at the highest level possible every time you step on the field, no matter the opponent or the score. When we asked ourselves, “What is it not?” and answered, “Enough,” we truly believed it. It was never enough. Two hour practices became three hour practices became four hour practices became five hour practices because it was never enough. Eight sprints became twelve sprints became sixteen sprints became twenty sprints because it was never enough. We could be up by four, but we wanted to win by eight, because it was never enough. And when the curtain fell in the summer of 1994, after six National titles and five World titles, the question asked was, “What is it?” The answer: “Enough.”

And now, fifteen years later, people with limited understanding or insight, who have never had the courage to make the sacrifice required to reach the pinnacle of their chosen endeavor nor the fortitude and commitment to stay there, sit in the safety of their homes and throw around words like thug and cheater and tainted, and all the while they wave the flag of spirit. Maybe it’s just me, but that doesn’t seem like a very spirited thing to do.

I note with some satisfaction that one of the posters to the RSD thread is, if I’m reading it correctly, a player with whom I had an altercation some time back, not on an ultimate field, but in a competitive sporting endeavor. Unlike many of the posters who have no personal experience with me, this poster and I have battled, and his post is honest, thoughtful, and fair. If he can come to such a place, given his personal experience, then the rest of us can certainly do better. In that spirit, and in the spirit of the season, I will respond to that poster by granting his wish, and share with him a little insight into Pat King, Ultimate Hall of Famer.

Pat King has the quickest hands of anyone I have ever known, and only the truly foolish (or masochistic) will challenge him to a game of hot hands. I have personally seen him get a clean foot block and catch the disc before it hits the ground – twice. I can only imagine how many times he has done it when I wasn’t around or paying attention. In the fall of 1984 I suffered a freak kidney injury that kept me out of Nationals, but KABOOM! qualified to go to Santa Barbara, and Pat, playing every point, almost led us into the semis. I clearly remember the morning of our last pool play game, when my mother remarked that given the load he was carrying, she didn’t know how Pat managed to drag himself out of bed. At Nationals the following year I blew my knee out in semis, and in the finals Pat again played every point and nearly led us to the upset victory over Flying Circus. In one sequence late in the second half of a two point game, he skied for a block in the end zone, completed a fifty yard backhand, sprinted downfield for the dump, and then threw the goal. He was quite simply unstoppable.

On occasion we would end pre-game huddles by having every member of the team run to a spot big enough for him and his ego, and then we would scatter comically all over the field. Pat, one memorable day, simply turned and started sprinting away from us, never looking back. I think he might still be running – and rightfully so.

urEAlITY

2008-12-19T23:15:00.000-08:00

I once read somewhere that the happiest people are those who re-invent themselves every 5-7 years. I’m not sure that it’s true, and it was almost certainly said by someone who suffers from the habit, so we have to consider the source when evaluating the comment. Maybe it’s only restless people who re-invent themselves so often, and some restless people are happy, just as some stable people are happy, and so on. Regardless, after reading the comment, I began to look back at my own life.

I once worked in the telecommunications industry, and I clearly remember giving notice right around the five year mark. In an effort to keep me on, my boss offered me a substantial raise as well as a package of additional benefits that basically doubled my salary. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse, so I didn’t. You can probably guess the rest. My desire to leave could only be quieted for so long by the additional money, and after another five years, I again gave my notice.

This time the offer to keep me on was even more substantial, including an equity stake in the company. This time, however, I had the benefit of hindsight and knew that I simply had to leave, so leave I did. It was then that I moved to North Carolina, and soon after that I began teaching.

After five years of teaching I found myself in a bad spot at my school. My principal and I didn’t get along, I was frustrated by the entrenched educational bureaucracy and I was sick of being poor. My 6th year started, but my heart was no longer in it, and soon I began looking for a way out. That was November of 2007, and after a brief an unexpected phone conversation with my dear friend Arthur, I flew to New York to see what opportunities might present themselves.

Arthur had recently entered into a partnership with Tiki Barber to explore business opportunities he might pursue in his post-football career as an entrepreneur and TV personality. On the flight up I read an article about Mo Vaughn’s involvement with affordable housing, and upon arriving in New York I suggested that Tiki might consider doing the same. To my surprise I learned that he already had, partnering with Related Affordable on several ventures.

The following day I also learned that Tiki Barber, former New York Giant, was also Tiki Barber, children’s book author, and that he was having a book signing that day at FAO Schwarz. What happened next was one of those things you can’t really describe, explain, or even understand, but you know you’ll never forget. Sitting in Arthur’s Fifth Avenue office, I found a series of seemingly unconnected pieces of information coalescing in my brain, and before I even knew what I was saying I had given a brief description of a vague idea for a business that Tiki might get involved in. Looking at his watch, Arthur realized that the book signing was going on at that moment. “Let’s go see Tiki,” he said.

Going to see Tiki at a book signing at FAO Schwartz is not really going to see Tiki. It’s going to see Tiki and Ronde from a distance surrounded by fans and kids and security and signing books by the dozen and posing for pictures and so on. I didn’t meet Tiki or speak to Tiki and couldn’t in fact even tell Tiki and Ronde apart. What I did was get called over, admitted behind a barricade and introduced to Tiki’s business manager, at which point Arthur said simply, “You’re on.” So right there in FAO Schwartz I pitched an idea for a business I had just come up with to a man I had just met who manages the affairs of a man I had spent years cheering for when he ran around in blue with a football tucked in his arm. Talk about surreal.

When my pitch, such as it was, ended, I got the standard, “Great idea. Let’s do dinner soon,” that might have been sincere or a polite blow-off, and then we were gone. On the flight back home I couldn’t stop thinking about all the possibilities, and by the time my plane landed I knew my days as a teacher were coming to an end. Maybe it was the chance to do something meaningful, to make a difference and make some money at the same time. Maybe it was the allure of possibly being in business with a celebrity, a man I actually admired. Or maybe it was just the five year itch, but I quit teaching, spent the next month doing research and writing a business plan, and on December 5, 2007, made a formal pitch to Tiki and his business partners. One month later, I moved back to New York to start and run the business.

A year has passed. At times things have been slow enough to make me wonder if I made a mistake, but those slow times have also afforded me the chance to write, which I do enjoy. At other times, like for the past three months, things have been so busy that seventy hour weeks are commonplace, and I barely have the time to eat, much less write. For most of the year, I wasn’t drawing a regular salary, and my credit cards are nearly maxed out, but when you are a passionate person by nature, believe in something, and are willing to see it through, then putting yourself in financial peril to start a business during the worst economic crisis in the past seventy-five years seems like a logical thing to do.

We have now been a business entity for almost twelve months, although we’ve really only been actively doing business for the last six of them. In that time we’ve managed to turn a profit, and at a time when most companies are facing difficulties, we are expanding and hiring new people. Still, for all the good things that have happened, all the momentum we have, and the possibilities for continued growth and success that stand before us, it wasn’t until today that it really hit me. It wasn’t until today that it felt real. Why? Today our web site went live.

It is a function of our digital society that the web is so powerful. In some cases, a business that really isn’t a business at all can use the web to create the illusion of being a business. The other side of that coin is that a business can be doing business, making a profit, having an impact, and somehow it doesn’t quite seem real until you can type in a url and see them “in action.” So it is that today, thanks to the skills of an old friend and former teammate and the hard work of my business partner, we went live. A company founded a year ago based on an idea I had thirteen months ago that has been making money for six months is suddenly real. By now you’re probably fed up with wondering what the hell it is we do. But of course you know how to find out, don’t you?

www.tikirecreation.com

The Way It Was

2008-11-07T22:47:00.000-08:00

My elite ultimate career began in earnest under the Queensboro Bridge on the east side of Manhattan at 59th street. It was the summer of 1980. I had just graduated from high school, and my older brother, Brian, grudgingly dragged me along to a combination NY Heifers practice/pick-up game that took place after the softball players were done with the field. Because Brian brought me and I wanted to make sure that I didn’t embarrass him, I played my heart out. I layed out for everything, especially passes he threw me. At one point, someone (maybe Derek Lent) said, “Dude. You made the team. Please stop laying out.” At the time I didn’t even realize I was trying out.

For the sake of historical accuracy, I should probably divulge a few details.

First, the “field” was a patch of clay that sported more than its share of rocks, glass, and random pieces of potentially disfiguring metal. Second, we were poachers, meaning that we had no right to be there. At any time anyone could come up and kick us off or shut down the lights. Still, despite the tenuous nature of the arrangement, dozens of players from all over the city, alerted by word of mouth (this was, after all, long before the internet) came two nights a week to ply their trade on that bleak urban landscape. To this day I can remember watching players from Bronx Science, including Luis Pellecier and Jeremy Seeger, warm up before the game. They were the most talented players I had ever seen.

The game generally ran from 11PM to 1AM, and afterward we would gather at the Blue and Gold Deli on First Avenue, sit on milk crates and drink tall boys of Bud. When the cans of Bud had been drained, Brian and I would return to our upper west side apartment and plan our overthrow of the UPA.

OK, overthrow is a bit of a stretch. All we really planned was to find a way to circumvent the UPA’s regional qualification system and get ourselves to The Show. It was a show that, because we played in the northeast region along with Boston Aerodisc and the Hostages, was all but unattainable. They were just too good. But many of the teams that qualified from other regions were no better than us, and many were considerably worse. So there we sat, on hot summer nights with the AC cranking, in a 16th floor apartment in The Eldorado, on Central Park West between 90th and 91st streets, planning our coup.

“Let’s call ourselves Bayonne,” Brian said. “Bayonne. Not even Bayonne Ultimate. Just Bayonne.” I realized even then that he didn’t want to be from Bayonne so much as he enjoyed saying “Bayonne.” And let’s not forget that this was back in the day when the UPA’s verification system was all but non-existent, so we could pretty much say we were from anywhere on the planet. Saying we were “Bayonne” was not that far-fetched.

Still, while calling ourselves Bayonne would put us in the significantly weaker Mid-Atlantic region, and thereby give us a virtual ticket to Nationals, nobody who lives in New York would ever seriously consider saying he’s from Jersey. It’s just something you don’t do. Confronted with that reality, Brian came up with another idea: “How about New Orleans?”

At that time the South was an ultimate wasteland, and marginally talented teams regularly squared off for the chance to go to the big dance. Saying we were from New Orleans would certainly get us to Nationals, and the only downside would be that a shitty team like the Dallas Sky Pilots wouldn’t get to go to Nationals. No great loss there. But it would mean flying down to Southern Regionals, a tournament that virtually guaranteed us a weekend of eating altogether unpalatable food. As much as getting to the show was an appealing idea, eating that much fried food was more than we could take.

So, in the end, after much discussion and debauchery, we decided that the only legitimate course of action was to earn our way to Nationals. Not through Bayonne or New Orleans, but through the then brutal Northeast region (which was probably much like the NW of today’s club scene). It made no difference that we were in a tougher region. It didn’t matter that we were better than some teams that got to go even though we had to sit at home and read about it in the newsletter. The bottom line was that if we wanted to be in a position to challenge for the title we had to earn that right by slogging our way through the best competition, whether it was at the Regional or National level. Three years later, in 1983, we did so by beating the Hostages. For all the National and World titles I’ve won, there’s something about that second place finish at the 1983 NE Regionals that will never be equaled. Such is the nature of personally ascribed value.

I’ve been reading comments from teams who have been raised on the UPA’s all-inclusive sectional/regional system, and who are uncomfortable with C1’s more selective system. I’m not on a college team and can’t speak to the specific emotions you’re feeling. But I feel confident in suggesting that when players who are dissatisfied stand up and make the powers that be notice good things result. Maybe not immediately. Maybe not for those players who suffer the most initially. But unquestionably in the long run the game, the competition, and the experience are enhanced.

I know what it’s like to be left out of a competition you feel you have earned the right to be a part of. But I can’t help but say that if you were really good enough to win at the highest level you wouldn’t be on the outside looking in. Back in the early 80’s we wanted to go to the show, but the plain truth is we would never have won. Not even on our best day. Windy City had our number. But we kept working, fighting, running, planning, and eventually we beat the shit out of those second-rate Midwestern scumbuckets. Despite the presence of a C1, when you have worked hard enough to earn your chance, you’ll get it. I can only hope that you make the most of it.

Fight The Power

2008-11-05T08:24:00.000-08:00

In the summer of 1990, my mother, grandfather, and I decided to take a ferry from Newcastle, England to Bergen, Norway, across the North Sea. At the time it seemed like a nice idea, but that’s only because we had absolutely no clue what a ferry crossing on the North Sea would be like. After 24 hours of feeling sick, wanting to vomit, hoping to die, and thinking seriously of throwing myself off the deck into the water, I know far too well what a ferry crossing on the North Sea is like. If you can glean no other piece of wisdom from reading my blog, know this: fly to Norway.

The upside of our maritime misery was that we landed in Bergen, a lovely port city surrounded by mountains. From there we took a train over the mountains to Oslo. The train ride through the mountains was as spectacular as the ferry ride was horrible. The train itself was somewhat antiquated, but in an appealing, old-timey way. The seats were covered in a maroon fabric that at one time was probably plush but had been worn from use, and the brass fixtures were tarnished and dinged, but when it came time for a snack you did not walk to the snack car. Instead, an elderly man in a starched white jacket served us cucumber sandwiches and beer from a cart that he rolled through the aisle. Whichever side of the train you looked out showed breathtaking views of the surrounding mountains and their many lakes. It was a memorable trip, and though I’m sure the trains are now modern, sleek and fast, I’m rather pleased I got to experience some of the old world splendor while it lasted.

The occasion of our visit to Norway was the 1990 WFDF World Championships in Oslo, a tournament we qualified for by beating Tsunami in the 1989 UPA Nationals. At that game, as twilight fell and temperatures dropped, my grandfather took a seat on a cold aluminum bench on our sideline. Soon after he sat down, we began our second half comeback. Thinking that perhaps sitting on that bench had started our comeback, he refused to move, even as twilight became darkness and the temperatures continued to fall. After our victory, it took some time for us to straighten him out for the walk to the car.

There were no such problems at Worlds. The weather was warm and we rolled through the pool play games with ease, crushing the Swedes, who we felt had it coming after 1988, 17-4. But the tournament was not without challenges. Playing in July in Norway, “The Land of the Midnight Sun,” we had our first experience with trying to sleep in a country where it never gets dark. We finally got the hang of it by taping black plastic garbage bags over our hotel room windows. What we never did figure out was how you know it’s time to end the waffle ball game and go home when the sun stays out all the time.

The tournament continued, and a win in the semi-finals over what might have been Finland earned us a rematch with Sweden in the finals. It also earned us a bit of controversy.

The tournament program showed the finals had been scheduled in a local stadium, something that was hardly unusual for a world championship. What was unusual was that the stadium field was artificial turf, and we weren’t told until after the semi-finals. We couldn’t believe it. How could they even think of playing a final on turf? While it’s true that some teams, particularly in winter, play on artificial turf at times (usually for practice), we never did. We also played hard, layed out often, and expected to do the same during the World Championship Final. The thought of playing on turf was very unsettling to say the least. The fact that they had not told anyone on our team of their plans beforehand was even more so.

The tournament organizers were very re-assuring. They told us the field was in good shape, Europeans often played on artificial turf, and there was no reason to anticipate any injuries or problems. We were also told that it was in the best interests of the tournament organizers, the other eliminated teams who wanted to watch, and the many fans in attendance that we play in a stadium rather than on one of the pool play fields, our only other option. Despite the logical, well-made argument that it was in everybody else’s best interest for us to do something that made us uncomfortable, we, as a group, decided to do what was in our best interest. We refused to play. Told we could lose the game on a forfeit, we still refused. Our health and safety were more important to us, we reasoned, than their trophy.

In the end WFDF blinked, and the finals were played on a grass field. We beat Sweden, winning our second of five WFDF and WUCC titles. More importantly, we stood up for what we thought was right, resisted the pressure of an organization that tried to bend us to their will rather than look out for our interests, and refused to heed the argument that the interests of all the people not playing the game were more important than those of the players. If any of you young players out there find yourselves in a similar situation, perhaps you can learn from our example. How will you find yourselves in such a situation?

Let’s just say you’ll know one when you see one.

My Hall of Fame Induction

2008-10-24T15:31:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite lessons from my days as a teacher was one I called Verbal Hierarchy. The purpose is to illustrate to linguistically challenged (and largely disinterested) students that there’s a better way to communicate degrees of feeling than by simply adding really (as in “I’m really mad.”) to a sentence. It’s also a good way to show just how remarkably rich our language is, and how important proper word choice is to clear and effective communication.

Take an adjective that describes a feeling and write it on the board. A good one to start with is angry. Then ask for a synonym for angry and have the class determine whether that synonym describes a feeling that is stronger or weaker than angry. If stronger, write it above angry. If weaker, write it below. Repeat and continue, for as long as you can. Before you know it, teenagers who generally say things like “I wasn’t just mad. I was really, really, REALLY mad” are vociferously debating the proper placement of furious, livid and irate in the hierarchy of anger. Is miffed more or less than ticked, or irked, or peeved? Does anything trump apoplectic?

The exercise works best with adjectives, but nouns can be fun, too.

Some time ago, Alex DeFrondeville pointed out in response to an RSD query that I was not yet old enough for Hall of Fame induction (which was true at the time), but that once I was I would surely be a unanimous first ballot entry. If you’ve been paying attention, you know that once again Alex was wrong. More recently, Jim Parinella stated that it was an “embarrassment” that I was not inducted in my first year of eligibility. If that is true, what can he say about what happened in my second year of eligibility? Is it more or less than an embarrassment? Is it a travesty? A mockery? A sham? An indignation?

See what I mean? Isn’t that fun?

But enough of that. The truth is I’m tired of waiting by the phone, crying my eyes out night after night, hoping against hope for my Sally Field moment. It’s pretty clear now that if you didn’t play in Boston, California, or at Glassboro, the UPA doesn’t want you. While it’s true that I’m annoyed, abraded, vexed that in addition to myself, this year’s uninvited from the Sl8 include Pat King, Peg Hollinger, and CVH, at least I can be elated, buoyed, euphoric that John Schemechel made it.

So I’m taking matters into my own hands, and starting my own Hall of Fame. One thing I can tell you: not in this year’s class, nor in any other class, will you find a Frisbee. With all due respect to the powers that be (this is one of those times when a person uses with all due respect even though no respect is due) putting a piece of plastic in the Hall of Fame is just stupid. Why? Try reading Susan Casey’s essay on the ills of plastic pollution in our oceans and bodies in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2007 for an answer. I wonder how many red 80 molds are part of some enormous raft of plastic waste floating in the world’s oceans.

So, without further ado I give you The 2008 Inaugural Class of My Hall of Fame:

Pat King: No brainer. I mean, there are some guys who’ll tell you they belong in the hall when all they ever do is cut bowling alley, go deep, throw ten yard passes, and write tedious tomes filled with obvious observations. All Pat did was dominate ever facet of the game, write clever cheers (anybody else out there use the word souse without referring to alcohol?), and inspire the greatest team of all time to reach the pinnacle of the sport. Not to mention complete the first greatest in a National Championship Final, and thereby create an indelible image that is nothing short of iconic. I mean, if Ultimate ever wanted the perfect postage stamp, that’s it.

Team Mom: That’s right, my mom. If you don’t know, you better acks somebody.
(Maybe the only member of my hall who’s a shoo-in to get in the other one – Moonee ate an awful lot of PB&J sandwiches.)

Windy City: Yes, the entire team. 1983 National Finals was played during a monsoon, and all those guys did was throw and catch ridiculous blades all over the field on their way to the title. 1986 they simply rolled over us, a relentless machine. From synchronized breathing before the pull, to 1-2-Fuck You, to R, to Check, these guys were clever and good. They dominated their opponents, and forced you to toughen up, quit whining, and bust your ass if you were ever going to beat them. That or go crying to your typewriter to pen a self-righteous letter to the UPA about “uglimate.” Gracious in victory and defeat, these guys were the shit.

Johnny Sky: Condor from the early 80s who gets in on the nickname alone.

Peg Hollinger: Smart, good, tough, hard-ass, bitch of an ultimate player. Also one of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet. As we say in the south, Masher done good.

Andy Borinstein: Could be the most annoying pain in the ass ever, but he knew the game, its strategies, and was getting inside people’s heads and moving all their shit around long before Gewirtz and with more subtlety and style. Not blessed with much natural athleticism, but still an effective player at the elite level, and an excellent judge of young talent.

Brian Dobyns: Has coached in Open College, Women’s College, Open Women’s and High School divisions. Has started more teams than most people can name. One of the greatest throwers ever, but an even better teacher of throwing. Would have as many titles as anybody out there if that were what he wanted. Started the New York City Summer Ultimate League back in 1982, and even had the vision of a Club League for elite teams in 1980, long before most teams even thought about traveling outside their region to play.

Molly Goodwin: No explanation necessary.

Cribber: Could get in on the nickname and yes, could jump out of the building and throw the craziest blades on the planet. But he gets in because he once stood on the field at Nationals and said, “I wish all the weed I’ve ever smoked was in a big pile right here now.”

Peter “Smoke” Diamandis: Played when games were still timed. Playing with Kaboom! leading the then National Champion Windy City on the first day of Easterns. He has the disc in his hands when the time remaining in the game is less than the stall count. His defender says, “No need to throw. You guys win 10-7,” and reaches out to shake his hand. Smoke throws the flick for a score, looks the guy in the eyes and says, “Eleven.”

Heidi Pomfret: Find my RSD write-up from the first Bullseye squad at Potlach. A gem in every sense of the word, and tough as nails, on the field and off.

Pablo: Once skyed the whole NYNY team while eating a salami and provolone hero.

Skip Kuhn: Fast, tireless, and not a little bit crazy. Once fouled a guy by clipping his heels on a cut, and responded to the foul call by saying, “Maybe I wouldn’t foul you if you ran faster.”

Marty Stazak: Everybody who has ever played has one player who gave them fits as a defender. That guy for me is Marty Stazak from Tsunami. The real deal.

Leslie “Lester” Charles: Probably a no explanation necessary, but what the heck? She is still so ultra-competitive it’s crazy. Recently up in Massachusetts I was too tired (or drunk?) to come through on a promised game of Frisbee golf. She made it clear she was going to kick my ass if I didn’t go out there so she could beat my ass. I did. So did she.

Jean Francois Bullet: French National Ultimate Champion. Won 11 Championships in 11 years. Retired to North County, San Diego to surf and ponder the meaninglessness of existence and the significance of the experience.

Poppy: Yes, my dog. The best dog ever.

Bill Rodriguez: Played for years at the elite level and won a gazillion championships without ever learning how to throw. Forever justifies Joe Durso’s assessment of ultimate as a “limited skillset sport.”

Tully Beatty: Jackie Beatty – Need I say more?

Idol Musings

2008-10-24T10:59:00.000-07:00

Last weekend it was reported that Barack Obama set a new standard by raising an astonishing $150 million in a single month, September. By contrast, John McCain, who stuck by his pledge to have his campaign funded publicly, is limited to a total of $84 million from convention to election (and probably wouldn’t have been able to raise more had he opted to go private). The implications of this financial disparity are, at the least, troubling.

Obama has been using the majority of his riches to buy television advertising in swing states, and even in some states that are not generally thought to be “swing.” In one of those new-found swing states, North Carolina, Obama commercials outnumber McCain commercials 8 to 1. As a former resident of that state, I know that many North Carolinians don’t read; they get all their information from the television. McCain’s last minute efforts, hampered by limited funds, have been supplemented by the pedestrian (though affordable) tool of automated phone calls. It doesn’t take a political pundit to know if the average Joe is more likely to hang up a phone or turn off a TV. If Obama wins in North Carolina, there will be reason to wonder if it isn’t because the average person, hearing one message eight times and the opposite message once, simply came to believe the message heard more often. Regardless of which candidate you favor the idea of people’s votes being bought, either through direct payment or media blitz, should be unsettling.

At the same time Obama’s fundraising record was being reported, a smaller item described the changing patterns of campaign contributions made by big pharmaceutical companies. Pharma has historically contributed to both parties, but more heavily to Republicans. Recently, perhaps sensing the shifting tides of democracy, that pattern has been reversed.

As we contemplate the possibility of a historical outcome to a campaign built on the promise of change, we should also be mindful of the corruptive power of money, and the sobering reality that in a system so predicated on money, the one thing you probably can’t buy is change.

On a broader scale, given the current economic times, the excesses of the campaign as a whole are disturbing. Today’s New York Times reports that the total cost of this election campaign will top $5 billion. And that only goes to Election Day. Who can fathom the price tag of the inauguration? If it ends being put on by the same people who brought us the political convention as grandiose, opulent Roman spectacle, you can bet it will add handsomely to the already bloated price tag of this exercise in modern American democracy.

The Bailout

2008-09-30T16:39:00.000-07:00

Forgive me for saying this, but thank the Lord for the bailout. Finally, after two interminable years, something has pushed the election to the backburner. Just in time, too. I was beginning to run short of incredulity, cynicism, and contempt. But rather than get into any sort of substantive discussion of the bailout, let’s take a moment to examine the term itself.

Depending on your reference, the origins of the term can go back as far as the 14th century. Spellings vary depending on what side of the pond you hail from, but the meanings are similar. Originally derived from the French word for bucket, to bail out (or bale out) is to ladle water, as from a boat. Later meanings include buying a person’s liberty from incarceration, and leaping from an airplane (ideally with a parachute, itself seemingly the bale). According to Webster, it’s not until the 1950s that the term, now consolidated into a single word, is used to describe a financial rescue.

My motivation behind a close examination of the term, besides my desire to establish myself as a would be William Safire, derives from my basic discomfort with its use in the current context.

In my previous life as a teacher, I spent many hours explaining the difference between denotative and connotative definitions. Briefly, a word’s denotative meaning is its actual, dictionary definition. Its connotative meaning encompasses all the subtleties of use, interpretation and, perhaps most importantly in our current political and social climate, spin. As I explained it to my students, in a world where fewer and fewer people actually know the denotative meanings of many of the words they use on a regular basis, the connotative meanings take on added significance. ( By way of example, consider the word ignorant, which denotatively means without knowledge, but whose connotation is so negative as to make the word an insult.)

In the early days of the current economic downturn, there was much discussion, and an equal amount of hand wringing, over whether or not we were actually in a recession. Pundits pontificated on both sides of the debate, and we were treated to a parade of alternate terms that were not quite so depressing: correction, downturn, slowdown, and of course, stagflation. Finally, realizing the time had come for him to face our financial flaccidity head on, our illustrious leader, in a valiant effort to stiffen our economic resolve, proposed a stimulus package. Just listen to it: stimulus. It evokes feelings of activity, stimulation, even virility. It is unquestionably a positive term, and I’m sure the presidential spin doctors had every hope that the positive connotations alone would be the cure for our economic impotence. Sadly it was not to be.

Interestingly enough, like someone who had “never had this happen before,” he kept waiting for the stimulus to work, seemingly saying, “just give it a minute – it’ll come back.” Of course, as we all know, it only got worse (not that I’ve ever had that happen before). Which brings us to our current predicament.

Yes, times are tough, tougher than most anyone alive can remember. Yet with all of Congress, the Treasury, and the Federal Reserve on the case, I felt sure somebody would come up with something. Not a solution (because you can’t really solve a problem you don’t understand) but at the very least a proposal, a platform, a word whose connotation would be at least as inspiring as the stimulus. I thought long and hard on our current deficiencies and assumed that at the very least we would be in line for an enhancement. Perhaps, given the dire nature of things, the do or die situation we find ourselves in, it might be serious enough for Paulson to call for an augmentation. But no, faced with the specter of a calamitous collapse, when what he needed to do was choose a word whose connotation would inspire confidence and determination, Paulson gave us the bailout.

Just listen to it: bailout. Not exactly inspirational, is it? No matter which meaning you choose, we’re fucked.

We’re in jail. We’re facing the gallows or worse. Our bail is a paltry 700 billion. But check it out. Lucky US. Our doddering old Uncle Sam comes along to bail us out. But we still have to face the charges, or go on the lam and lose the bail money.

We’re in a plane. The pilots are dead. We’re on autopilot and running out of fuel. We’re going down. Nothing to do but bail out. But even if the chute opens and even if we don’t land in a tree or in shark-infested waters or in a fucking volcano we’re still in the middle of nowhere without a way home.

Finally, the one that I truly think is the most apropos: we’re in a boat in the middle of the ocean. We’re taking on water. There’s only one certainty and it’s that we’re going to sink. What to do? Let’s start bailing out, not because it will save us, but because it beats sitting here doing nothing, and at least gives the illusion of taking meaningful action.

So there you have it, and it ain’t pretty. We’re in a world of hurt, that sound you hear is shit hitting the fan, and the best all the assembled minds of our elected and appointed representatives can come up with is to try to save the sinking ship with a bucket. We’re going down and all we’ve got going for us is the bailout. It’s the financial equivalent of an ultimate team naming itself after an ocean liner that sank in the worst maritime disaster in history.

And we all know how that story ended.

I'm Not Drunk

2008-09-26T14:45:00.000-07:00

Early on in the frenzied reaction to my recent blog post about a person we’ve been calling Tim, I received a phone call from my brother. It might be hard for anyone who does not know me very well to know how much pleasure it gives me to write that simple line. My brother and I have not always been close. There were long stretches of time when our relationship was one of benign neglect, when we might have gone years without seeing each other if not for the regular recurrence of Christmas. I’m pleased to say that we’re probably closer now than we ever have been, and I’m always delighted when he calls. However, on this recent occasion I was also very busy and a bit distracted, which might explain why I can’t quite remember the exact wording of the wisdom he offered by way of commentary on the recent blog post about Tim. It went something like this: People should just get drunk, fall down, and start vomiting.

His point might have been that Tim, by engaging in conversation during that delicate period between drunk and falling down, had brought this on himself. In other words, once you’ve reached a certain level of drunkenness, the things you’re liable to say might be even more embarrassing than lying in a pool of your own vomit. Without revealing too much about the revelry that followed North Carolina State’s upset of Black Tide at College Nationals in Boulder (1999?), my brother knows whereof he speaks. Perhaps if he had been at the Clambake party last weekend he might have been talking to Tim and he could have counseled him. He was not. I was. I did not counsel. I listened, and then I blogged.

As previously mentioned, my post has generated a frenzied reaction, with three times as many visits in a day as I had ever recorded before. Comments to the post currently stand at fourteen, and an RSD thread, spun off by a reader with his own agenda, has had eighteen posts and seven thread title changes as of this writing. As is often the case, much of the reaction doesn’t merit mention. A few responses, however, were both thoughtful and thought-provoking, and it seems that perhaps some amplification of my position is in order.

I have no vendetta against Tim, and I don’t think it was inappropriate for me to blog using the information he revealed while drunk at a Frisbee party. I don’t know if he feels differently, but he has been in touch with me via email and did not indicate that he felt that I had crossed the line. I know that some people disagree on this point, so I think we’ll have to assume that our lines aren’t in the same place and leave it at that.

There were other things Tim said that I will not reveal, including his assessment of the HOF credentials of both the current Sl8 of candidates and his former teammates. To my way of thinking that would be inappropriate, the difference being that I think it’s perfectly acceptable to reveal (and perhaps revel in) Tim’s views on himself but not his views on others. As for why and how I revealed what I revealed, that question requires a more elaborate answer. Let’s start with how.

First of all, I make no claim to being an Oscar Wilde scholar, and if my thematic interpretation of The Picture of Dorian Gray is flawed, you have my apologies. It was really just a device to introduce the possibility that Tim’s revelations were more than drunken blather.

Likewise, the recitation of the falls from grace suffered by Fossella, Edwards, and Spitzer (now that would be a kick-ass law firm) was also a device, one I thought would suggest the likelihood that while there are certainly varying degrees of duplicity, it could be a more common part of the human condition than we might want to admit. I hope that you’ll note that in the politically charged environment we find ourselves in today, I made certain to include members of both major political parties.

As for the transition from device-laden intro to the actual meat of the matter, let’s just say that when Match wrote that I could have done a better job he was probably being kind. I’ve written smoother transitions with a sledgehammer.

Most of my writing is done in my head, with ideas weaving, unraveling and re-weaving themselves over a period of time until the piece feels ready. When I finally sit down to the actual task of writing, the piece is usually about 90% completed. That process doesn’t work well when time is of the essence, and because I wanted to get this quasi-Clambake piece posted soon after the event, I sat right down and wrote it. I’ll be the first to admit that it reeks of mediocrity.

I have written some pieces that I found to be well-crafted and genuinely moving, touching on topics that, while personal in the specific sense, could be seen to have almost universal application in a more general sense. Many of those pieces have been read by fewer than one quarter of the people who read this recent piece in a single day. Am I to assume that, among the ultimate blog reading community, flawed writing of a gossipy nature with dubious value is four times more popular than more cleverly crafted, poignant tales touching on serious issues? I don’t know. More importantly, I don’t care.

I write because I like to. Sometimes I write about life’s little absurdities, and I write in a way that amuses me, that makes me smile. Sometimes I write about more serious topics, and I’m not ashamed to say that sometimes my writing makes me cry. If I write about ultimate I try to do it tangentially. I’m not always successful. I do not write in a vacuum. I post my writing on a blog and I write for an audience, but it may not be the audience you imagine. In most of my posts there are little jokes that can only be understood by small numbers of people, sometimes only one. Most of the time I never know if those jokes find their mark, but I keep writing them. Every once in a while I get an email from someone who has been moved by something I’ve written. That’s the audience I write for.

I have nothing against Tim, but I was making fun of him. Anyone who reads my stuff knows I make as much fun of myself as anyone else. We should all spend a little more time laughing at ourselves. On that note, and to put to rest any suggestion of my lawn being decorated with heads on spikes, I think the Cheap Seats bit is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. In fact, for some time afterward, I changed all my passwords to FRIZBAY! So, in the spirit of self-deprecation, and in fairness to Tim, I’ll share some of the things I might have said that night at the Clambake party.

As a member of the HOF peer review committee, I had a chance to cast ten nominating votes from a selection of eligible candidates. I could only find three people to vote for. Two of those players are on the Sl8. I think that only three members of New York deserve to be in the HOF. I do not believe I was ever the greatest player in the game; I wasn’t even the greatest player on my team.

I am not drunk.

The Picture of (Your Name Here)

2008-09-23T15:29:00.000-07:00

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde’s only published novel, the title character is granted his wish for immortality. Despite the passing years, he does not show any physical signs of aging. Meanwhile, his portrait, which he keeps hidden, ages and becomes increasingly disfigured. But while Dorian Gray does not show physical signs of age, his internal disfigurement becomes increasingly problematic, as he secretly engages in worsening acts of lewdness and depravity. After many years of hidden debauchery, he attacks the now hideous portrait, but succeeds only in turning himself instantly into a withered and unrecognizable corpse, while the portrait returns to its original condition.

The novel’s examination of the question of immoral behavior and its impact on the soul captivated readers, and subsequent film versions of the story have done the same for movie buffs. There is even a condition known as Dorian Gary Syndrome, an excessive preoccupation with one’s physical appearance coupled with a fear of or unwillingness to accept aging. In light of recent developments in the political arena, I think the more compelling theme, in terms of applicability to the world as we know it, is the allure of duplicity, the thrill of leading double lives.

An item in today’s New York Post notes that the leading republican candidate for the congressional seat currently held by Vito Fossella is about to receive a judicial appointment. That appointment, should it come through and be accepted, would open up the door for Fossella to run for re-election, something he vowed not to do back in May. The reason he vowed not to run? After being arrested for DUI he subsequently admitted to having an extra-marital affair and fathering a three-year-old child out of wedlock. As for why Mr. Fossella wouldn’t think that having led a double life is an impediment to re-election to Congress, consider Senator John Edwards.

In early August, squeaky-clean John Edwards finally admitted the truth of rumors that had been swirling around his campaign for months. Namely, that while campaigning for the highest office in the land with his devoted, cancer-stricken wife at his side he had been carrying on an affair with a campaign videographer. Although he denies being the father of her new-born baby, there is at least some reason to doubt his sincerity. So why would anyone with such an unblemished image and reputation risk it all for such tawdry goings on? Perhaps we should ask Elliot Spitzer.

New York Governor Elliot Spitzer (aka Client #9) fell farther faster than either Fossella or Edwards, going from the Governor’s mansion to the political outhouse (and his wife’s doghouse) in a matter of days when details of his indiscretions became public knowledge. Yet his sin, hiring a prostitute, may have been the least distressing. (We don’t call the world’s oldest profession for nothing.) What made Spitzer’s fall worse was the fact that he had made his career as the crime-busting, take no prisoners, prosecutor of just these kinds of transgressions. When word got around that the holier than thou crusader was paying $5,000 a night to sleep with a woman only five years older than his eldest daughter, what he received was more than come-uppance. It was up, over, out and goodbye.

Three highly regarded public servants with everything to lose risk it all to experience the thrill of duplicity, and all of them within a period of six months. Three modern day Dorian Grays, composed, respected, and admired on the outside, while their secret sins eat away at their souls. Three people who were one thing on the outside, and something very different on the inside. If we can assume that for every one caught there are plenty more who get away with it, this is truly just the tip of the iceberg. Furthermore, if we see it in public figures we can readily assume that many average citizens, regular folk if you will, who would never be subject to the scrutiny that brought these scandals to light are probably living similarly duplicitous lives.

So there I was at the Clambake party, a Frisbee party that, with its food, drink, games, bands, diversions and indiscretions, is about as impressive a Frisbee party as there is. It is, however, still a Frisbee party, which is why I was looking to get a ride out of there even as I was swallowing my last bite of lobster. Unfortunately, before I was able to secure that ride and get the hell out of Dodge, I found myself in the company of someone whose name I’ve omitted for his own protection.

Now this person, we’ll call him Tim, is a very recognizable figure in our little game. He has made a name for himself as a very successful player, committed organizer, and even authored an expansive collection of strategies. Along the way he has come to be known as polite, intelligent, soft-spoken, and perhaps even a little bit bland, or so I thought. At a Clambake party, that celebrated 20 years of the event with a theme that harkened back even farther, Tim revealed another side of himself, a side that, a la Dorian Gray, he may have been hiding for some time.

Because this guy, the one we’re calling Tim, has some very detailed knowledge of the Hall of Fame selection process, our conversation began there. We started with the usual innocuous comments and insincere pleasantries, but then things turned quickly. For starters, Tim readily revealed the names of the eight finalists for this year’s Hall of Fame ballot, information that, to my knowledge, is not supposed to be discussed so cavalierly. He then offered his opinions on who should and should not be inducted, again a matter of some sensitivity. Finally, in a boast that might’ve come out of Joe Durso, he declared that he should be a first ballot entry into the Hall of Fame because he was, for period of years, the best player in the game, uncoverable, won six titles in a row, AND he wrote a book. I’m not making this up. In case there were any doubt about how he really felt, when given the opportunity to soften his boast, Tim declined, instead repeating it. Twice.

And I thought I was full of myself.

Having finally secured my much desired ride, I left the party wondering which Tim is the real Tim. Is it the guy I’ve known for years, the quiet, sometimes awkward, intelligent and soft-spoken Tim. Or is it the bombastic, presumptuous, self-inflating egomaniac who holds so many of his peers in contempt?

The following day, Clambake Sunday, I arrived for our quarterfinal game still a little undone from the previous night’s encounter, and was approached by a teammate who asked ,”Did you hear about Tim?” He proceeded to tell me a story that was soon corroborated by several others. As the night wore on and the party continued, Tim had gotten so drunk that he fell on his head, not once but twice. Soon reports started rolling in that he was on his team’s sideline vomiting.

Was everything Tim said just drunken rambling? Or did the alcohol, whose effects were less obvious when we spoke than when he walked, acting like a truth serum, bringing his real, honest, heartfelt feelings out in the open? Had he been living a double life all these years, pretending to be one thing but knowing he was another, and did that duplicity and its attendant tension finally push him to do something so outlandish he would never be able to go back to old Tim? Is that what happened to Fossella, Edwards and Spitzer? If so, if it can happen to them and Tim, who’s next?

Toad, Dusty, Ray, and the Grammar Police

2008-09-15T16:25:00.000-07:00

It has been widely recognized that the New York roster had a remarkable blend of talent and intelligence. What is perhaps less widely known is the intelligence extended well beyond the ultimate field into the minutiae of the English language and its usage. Several members of the team routinely engaged in discussions of proper grammar, as well as parsing the sometimes subtle distinctions among fact, opinion, conjecture, and supposition. One might suggest that had we not been beating teams so handily and therefore had so much time to kill we would never have expended such mental energy on such idle matters. I like to think that even if our games were more hotly contested, we would still have found the time to engage in what was, for us, more than an idle pursuit. Regardless, those of us who were so inclined did discuss such things, even during timeouts, much to the consternation of our less linguistically inclined teammates, a practice which collectively earned us the moniker, the Grammar Police.

I admit with no small degree of embarrassment that we were only volunteer policemen, ersatz grammarians, proudly strutting about in uniform and badge but lacking both the firepower and the training to qualify as official enforcers of the laws of the language. You can be fairly certain that we didn’t even always understand the laws we were attempting to enforce. Nonetheless, like other volunteers the world over, our hearts were in the right place, even if the same could not always be said of our modifiers.

The years passed, our greatness waned, but my love of the language and its many arcane rules did not fade in the least. When a life-altering experience led me to switch careers, I put my volunteer’s uniform in storage and enrolled in the Police Academy. A short time later, I graduated with honors, a full-fledged, Harcourt-Harbrace Handbook trained, sentence diagramming member of the National Order of Grammar Police.

In the movie Training Day, relative rookie Ethan Hawke is acquainted with the hard reality of what real policing is like by veteran Denzel Washington, and it is in no way what he might have expected from reading the manuals at the Academy. The same can be said of my first assignment in the precinct that includes West Johnston High School.

For starters, I soon learned that my partner, who has a master’s degree in journalism from an institution of “higher” learning I won’t name (Kansas State), couldn’t identify a preposition in a sentence. Later that year, when a dispute with my captain landed me in her doghouse, that partner was given my Honors English I beat. The following year, the Chief of the Department caused us to lose the county-wide, departmental spelling competition when she misfired on “connoisseur,” insisting despite my protestations that it only contained a single s.

As the years wore on, my insistence on doing things by the book isolated me from the rest of my fellow officers. On my beat, students were not allowed to get by using the wrong case, make do with sloppy spelling or punctuation, or muddle through with flawed subject/verb agreement. My colleagues, thinking I was trying to make them look bad, resented my adherence to the letter of the law. When my methods were successful, when crimes against the language dropped on my beat, they attributed it to the caliber of my students rather than to my practice of stringent enforcement of the grammarian’s code. I suppose things hit rock bottom when it became known throughout the department that it was standard practice on my beat to have my students mine the school newspaper for errors as part of their weekly assignments. I became an outcast, no longer even called by my first name, but referred to only as “Dobyns,” most often in the context of, “Don’t you hate Dobyns?”

Looking back, I’ve often wondered if I might, just possibly, have gone too far. I mean, I wasn’t just a member of the Grammar Police. I was Grammar Supercop, and I really can’t blame my fellow officers for finding me unbearable. Strict, unabashed, and unwavering adherence to the rules, even rules as sacrosanct as those of English grammar and spelling, can be a little tedious, even when it’s well-meant. Perhaps I should have loosened the reins a little, looked the other way on occasion, let some of the less serious violations slide. After all, everyone else was doing it. I guess it was something about the uniform that made it hard for me loosen up. But now that I’m no longer a member of the force…

Which brings me to Toad -- passionate, linguistically challenged Toad. Yes, his posts, comments to my blog, and probably his grocery lists are rife with spelling errors, but looking through the prism of my former grammar zealotry, so what? Does it really matter? Most of the time I know what he meant to write, and even when I’m a little confused, I can usually gather from context which of the possible meanings he was shooting for. In fact, it’s been shown through an oft-repeated study (that I think originated at Cambridge) that when it comes to matters of comprehension correct spelling is over-rated. Factors like word shape, initial and terminal letter accuracy, and context have more impact on comprehension than accurate spelling. And since the goal of all language use is communication, who cares if he can spell, so long as I can understand him?

Which brings me to Dusty, whose carefully written elucidation of his previous comment seems, for the moment at least, to have adequately quelled Luke’s desire to smash his face in with a baseball bat (Ichiro model, I’m sure). Although Dusty clearly possesses linguistic skills to spare and spelled every word in his initial comment correctly, he fell a tad short on the communication front. I will openly admit that I was totally lost, and on reading Luke’s response I went back and re-read Dusty’s comment, simply because I had missed both the slight of teachers and the general doucheyness that Luke had detected. On a second read I still didn’t understand, but does that mean that if I needed a second read of a manuscript I was submitting I’d send it to Toad before I sent it to Dusty? Not bloody likely.

Which brings me to Ray, who used his comment on my blog to take a swipe at Toad’s spelling before he got around to the really important issue, me. For the record, I have no problem with personal attacks, misdirected aggression, off-topic diatribes, or anything else someone might post under the guise of “comment.” It all qualifies under my liberal definition of discourse; bring it on. But Ray’s related post to Toad’s rsd thread, mired amid the drivel, raises an important point that bears repeating lest it be lost: sometimes what you write isn’t the only thing we’re reading.

Readers have active minds, and even as we’re processing the content, deciphering its meaning, making associations to stored knowledge, and wondering if the person in the next cubicle is going to see us scratch ourselves, we’re making assumptions about the writer. Hence, Toad is ignorant, Dusty is a douche, and Luke has some anger management issues. Any or all of these might have some merit, but none of them was explicitly stated; they were all inferred by readers who were, either consciously or subconsciously, filling in the blanks between the lines.

So, without taking sides, I think Toad should consider the constructive part of Ray’s criticism as just that. There are people who will be more likely to give his candidacy for the UPA board support, or at least consideration, if he takes the time to carefully construct his position statements, and then takes a little more time to proofread them. I might also suggest that, in addition to being a valuable exercise in self-improvement, using proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation in written communication might come in handy should the day ever come when Hurricane Francis bears down on the Carolina coast and wipes out his millions. A poorly written cover letter or flawed resume is often the first thing that gets a job seeker disqualified, even if he did once have more money than the person doing the hiring.

I think Dusty might have learned a thing or two about communication from this discussion as well. His recent comment was a joy to read, and was a beautiful illustration of something that is often forgotten. Good writing is hard, but the effort is worth it, because it has always been true that the harder you work at your writing the easier your words are to read. Well done.

To Ray I say that although I have appreciation for the point I think you were trying to make, I detected a note of condescension in your writing that probably made it hard for Toad to accept your criticism, however well-meaning it might have been. I am not, however, suggesting you change your style; I’m a former member of the Grammar Police, not the Tone Patrol.

Finally, in case you were wondering what happens when veterans of the force lose their edge, when their previously way honed skills become dull from disuse, consider this:

On a recent weeknight, a couple of friends/former teammates from the great World Champion Red Tide ’98 team were in town, and we found ourselves in Union Hall, a favorite Park Slope hangout. In addition to having indoor bocce ball every night, Union Hall has an occasional grammar and spelling competition. We were cajoled into entering by the jovial emcee, and made our way downstairs looking forward to what we assumed would be a very relaxed event where we would all be reminded, in the nicest way possible, how stupid we are. Instead we experienced an excruciating evening of humiliation at the hands of the formerly jovial emcee who turned quickly into a Grammar Nazi, and were also reminded, in a not especially nice way, how stupid we are.

Through a series of spelling questions (caipirinha, Worcestershire, radicchio) and grammar questions (transitive/intransitive verbs, restrictive/non-restrictive clauses, subjective/nominative cases, past perfect progressive tense) the pool of contestants was whittled down to the final 5. Those five were then brought up on stage where, prior to answering all subsequent questions, they were required to do a shot. That’s when things got really ugly.

For the record, I finished third, eliminating myself after several rounds of shots by misidentifying a verbal and misspelling crustacean, a word that is significantly easier to spell before you do a pineapple upside down cake shot.

Nothing Means Anything

2008-09-12T16:21:00.000-07:00

On September 11, 2001, I was in a classroom in Poe Hall on the North Carolina State University campus, watching the events unfold on a small television that was rolled in on an A/V cart. As the day wore on, I continued watching in the Caldwell Hall Lounge, and in another classroom in Tompkins Hall. Less than three years removed from the city and with many dear friends in harm’s way, I felt maddeningly distant and utterly impotent. In time I would learn that people watching from rooftops around the five boroughs had remarkably similar feelings, despite their proximity. There was nothing anyone could do but watch.

I was lucky. All my friends escaped physical harm. My friend Arthur was not so lucky. He lost a childhood friend, a friend he called a brother as an expression of their closeness. For him, and for many others like him, life is divided now neatly into two parts: before 9/11 and after 9/11. Their lives will never be the same.

Yesterday was my first September 11th since I returned to New York, and it was therefore my first chance to spend the day with Arthur. It didn’t quite work out the way I planned, for a variety of reasons. The first was work.

Arthur doesn’t work on September 11th, and if I had to hazard a guess I’d say that he never will. I, however, as a partner and managing director of a start-up that is trying to grow, do not yet have the luxury of saying there are any days that I don’t work. So while Arthur spent the day in Bay Ridge, taking his son to visit with the family of his “brother” and attending various memorial services, I took the R train to my Manhattan office.

I’m not sure precisely what I expected working in New York on September 11th would be like, but this wasn’t it. For starters, the New York Times did not have a single mention of the event on the front page. Nothing. The Metro section had a story about the altered skyline, but that was it. Somehow I thought the event, the date, the remembrance would be a more substantial story.

My first meeting of the day was with a woman who moved here two years ago from Brazil, and she was frank in her assessment of the seventh anniversary of the attacks. “Get over it already,” she implored with an insensitivity bordering on callousness. “I mean, it’s too much.” Among the group of people I spend time with in Bay Ridge, where people still fly American flags with the words “Never Forget” embroidered among the stripes, such thoughts would never be uttered. It would be blasphemy. But she said it as though it were a perfectly natural reaction. Since she is a recent transplant, I assumed that her lack of sympathy could be attributed to the fact that she hadn’t been here to experience the event and its aftermath first hand. That or she’s just a stinking foreigner.

My next meeting, over lunch, was with a lifelong New Yorker who lives on the West Side of Manhattan and was in the city, watching from his 45th floor apartment that day. His experience was totally different from the Brazilian woman’s, but his feelings were quite similar.

We were sitting in the back of the restaurant, with no one else near by, but still he spoke in hushed tones. He prefaced his remarks by saying, “I know I shouldn’t say this, but…” and because of my previous meeting I knew right away what was coming. What I could not imagine was how it would arrive.

“I can’t stand it,” he said, his voice betraying a hint of anger. “I’m just sick of it, all the moaning and the violins,” he went on, adding, “It’s just so unseemly.” I was beyond shocked, and I’m pretty sure my lower jaw dropped into my Salade Nicoise. I had been under the assumption that the collective grief that gets broadcast around the country, the world even, every September 11th was a central part of every New Yorker’s life. What I was hearing told a very different story. As the meal went on, he elaborated: “At first I could understand, but it’s been seven years already. I mean, when does it end? Seven? Ten? Twenty? When is it enough?”

Walking back to the office, I sent a quick note to Arthur asking how he was doing, and we began trading texts. He seemed in good spirits, and I found myself writing about business, feeling guilty about it, and then doing it again. I realized then that I was a grief fence-sitter. My closeness to Arthur made it important to me that I recognize and share some of his experience, but I could also understand and relate to some of the things that others had been saying. When is it enough? Will there really be a “9/11 – Seventeen Years Later” television program? Will the names of all the victims still be read aloud in 2018? I began to wonder if the whole process had gone beyond mourning the dead, and instead had become celebrating the grief of the living. And if that were the case, wasn’t it all just a little too self-indulgent?

After finishing a few things in the office, I was on my way back to Brooklyn. I had hoped to leave right after my lunch meeting, around 2PM. Instead, I left smack in the middle of rush hour.

As I mentioned, I’m trying to get a start-up off the ground, so I usually come to work very early and stay very late. At the same time, I am my own boss, so if I feel like going to the gym in the morning or simply hitting the snooze button a dozen times, there’s no one to chew me out when I come in at 10:30. The result is that I very rarely (almost never) take the train at rush hour. After yesterday, I never will.

The New York City subway is a marvel in that it gets so many people to so many places every day almost without fail. It is also a marvel for the smell, grime, stench, filth, and general unpleasantness that await all of those people when they descend into that singularly urban experience. On a slightly humid late summer day at the peak of rush hour, the experience is like something out of Star Trek’s “The Mark of Gideon,” only without the blond hottie, and you’re no Captain Kirk.

By the time I was mercifully belched out of my subterranean misery, I knew that Arthur would be at home, preparing for that evening’s memorial service on the 69th Street Pier, a service at which he would be the keynote speaker. When I arrived at his house, in true Arthur style, he was neither getting dressed nor preparing his speech. He was sitting on the living room floor playing with his son. I joined them, and while Luca played, Arthur and I talked about the day. I shared some of the things I had heard, and some of the things I had thought, in reference to the day and its ongoing memorial significance. Arthur listened quietly, and then spoke without a hint of defensiveness: “You don’t get it,” was all he said. Then he left me to watch his son while he showered and dressed.

The 69th Street Pier, also known as the Veterans Memorial Pier, juts out from 69th Street in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn into New York Harbor. From it you get a spectacular view of the Statue of Liberty and lower Manhattan in one direction, and the Verrazano Narrows bridge in the other. Last night, with the array of flags fluttering in a steady breeze, the twin beams of light shining skyward from Ground Zero, and the outline of the bridge etched in green lights against the night sky, it was truly a beautiful place to be. And when Arthur stepped up to speak, I quickly learned this would be no grief session.

Speaking freely and off-the-cuff, Arthur started with a series of anecdotes about his brother, Crazy Joe, and quickly had us all laughing. He imitated his voice and his mannerisms, and because the only thing funnier than Joe is probably Arthur imitating Joe, we were soon wiping tears of laughter from our eyes. Then, like all good, natural speakers, Arthur changed the tone. He did so by remembering a death, but it wasn’t Crazy Joe’s.

Two weeks ago, the 3 year old daughter of another lifelong neighborhood friend of Arthur’s died in a boating accident. It was one of those senseless, shocking, unexplainable things that sometimes happens in life, and it tore another hole through the fabric of this close-knit community. Arthur described the dinner he had with the father of the little girl two days ago, and told the people huddled together on that pier the one thing that heartbroken father wanted them to know. All the little things we spend our days worrying about, like jobs and money and career, that we think are so important, those things are meaningless. Then Arthur took it a step further.

“Nothing means anything,” he said.

He went on to explain that all that matters is community, the neighborhood, the family, people looking out for each other. He explained that when he thinks about 9/11 and his brother Crazy Joe, he doesn’t actually think about 9/11 at all. He thinks about the 12th, the 13th, the 14th, the 15th. The days when complete strangers took each other by the hand and comforted each other. When strangers became neighbors and neighbors became family. He said that the reason he knows that if something were to happen to him, Luca would be alright, or if something were to happen to Luca, he would be alright, is because every year these same people come to this pier and by their very presence show that no matter what horrible events might occur, all of them will always have people to look out for them.
As Arthur stepped back from the microphone, the emcee of the event asked everyone holding a flag to raise it high, and a choral singer from the local church began singing God Bless America.

I am not what I would call an overtly patriotic person. I love America, but I never put an American flag decal on my car, and I think that much of the post 9/11 flag flying was over the top. But last night, in that context, on that pier, it wasn’t. Those people, family and friends of one victim of the 9/11 attacks, live in the community of Bay Ridge, but they represented the greater borough of Brooklyn, stood for the larger city of New York, and in some strange way, when they raised those flags, were emblematic of something even larger. By standing together on that day, and all the other days like that to come, they take the memory of a tragic event and turn it into a feeling of belonging and community from which they can draw strength and comfort on every other day of the year. Being a part of it was incredibly powerful, totally unexpected, and completely enlightening.

Arthur was right. I didn’t get it. But now I do.

Hypocrites, Subversives, and Public Education

2008-09-09T15:28:00.000-07:00

I was first exposed to the hypocrisy of public education during my teacher certification program at NCSU. In a class called Schools and Society, I was assigned the task of researching and reporting on recent ballot initiatives on the use of vouchers in public school systems. At the time, the two most recent initiatives had taken place in Florida and Michigan.

For the uninitiated, a simplified explanation of voucher programs follows:

Voucher programs allow parents of children in failing schools to move their children to an alternate school of their choice. The voucher has a dollar value that is roughly equal to the cost of educating a child in the public school system, but the parents can choose to apply that value to the cost of attending a school outside the public school system. Critics of voucher programs argue that they take precious resources out of the public schools. Proponents argue that giving parents choices will force failing schools to improve in order to “compete” in the education marketplace.

What I found when I looked into the Florida and Michigan ballot initiatives was that in both cases, right up until a month before the election, polls indicated a comfortable majority of voters favored the idea, at least on a limited, experimental basis. Then the two largest teacher’s unions, the NEA and the AFT, came in and over the next 30 days spent millions of dollars on advertising designed to discredit and defeat the initiatives. In both cases they were successful.

It is quite possible that the voucher proposals would have failed without the unions’ involvement, but we’ll never know. It is also possible that the Florida and Michigan voucher experiments would have been unsuccessful. That’s another thing we’ll never know. What we do know is teacher certification programs tell prospective teachers to experiment, be creative, be willing to try anything to educate your students, because you never know what might work. Yet while teachers experiment, the teacher’s unions spend teacher dues by the millions to squelch experimentation. There’s a word for that, and the word is hypocrisy.

I never gave a dime to a teacher’s union.

During my year-end review at the end of my fifth and last year teaching, my principal went through the standard evaluation form, on which I was rated well above standard in every category except one: communicates well with colleagues (imagine that). Then she got personal. “I don’t trust you,” she admitted. “I think you’re a subversive.” I felt like I had been transported back in time.

As a student, I was called to the principal’s office more times than I could ever count. Most often it was for general misbehavior, but in my time I was called disruptive, offensive, a ne’er-do-well, and on one celebrated occasion in France, a “danger publique.” But it wasn’t until I was a forty-six year old teacher with five years experience that a principal ever called me a subversive.

Thing is, she was right.

One of the joys of teaching comes when you recognize a special quality in a student and, like a seed gardener with a young seedling, feed that quality and watch it grow. On rare occasions, that growth leads to something truly special, the kind of experience that makes teaching quite simply the greatest job in the world. Such was the case with a student of mine, a student we’ll call Jim.

Jim was gifted, and I knew from the start I’d have to work to keep him challenged, since he mastered the 9th grade English curriculum almost without trying. Much of the time I didn’t even bother having him do the class assignment, but instead gave him a NY Times crossword puzzle, or a section from a practice SAT test. He loved and rose to the challenges I presented him with, and eventually he was helping me write quizzes, tests, and brain teasers for the rest of the class. The following year he quickly realized that Honors 10th grade English, taught by a National Board Certified teacher who was also perhaps the laziest, worst teacher in the school, would not be quite so rewarding. He again came to me looking for a challenge.

Out of respect for my colleague (respect she didn’t deserve) I decided to give him something extra-curricular, so as not to undermine her classroom authority. And because I was once a smart, bored kid just like him, I made it something fun. I encouraged him to start an underground newsletter (like she said, subversive).

To give me plausible deniability, we never spoke openly about the project. He involved several classmates he could trust, but never told me who they were. Although I didn’t approve topics or proofread articles, I did, through cryptic conversations in the hallways or after school, gently nudge them in certain directions.

“Hey Mr. Dobyns, what do you think of the new dress code?”

“All students hate the dress code. There’s nothing new there.”

The first issue appeared out of nowhere, strategically placed in the bathrooms shortly before lunch. I am proud to say it was very well-written, and carefully examined the questions it posed from multiple sides. In fact, there was almost nothing written in it that I would have called objectionable. There was, however, a rather unflattering caricature of the principal wearing a swastika.

Within minutes, a team of administrators swooped through the bathrooms en masse, collecting and destroying all the copies.

For the second issue, they stayed away from cartoons and widened their distribution. The primary question they examined was just how nutritious are school lunches, and not surprisingly the answer they arrived at was not very. They examined the data, and it was disturbing: Of 6 lunch lines in the cafeteria, only one served a “healthy” lunch; the rest served pizza and French fries. They conducted interviews, and they were alarming: The cafeteria manager pointed out that they had to have the healthy alternative to provide free/reduced lunches, but speculated how much more money they would make if they didn’t. I was ecstatic. In a state where the rate of obesity among high school age children is well above the national average, this was an issue that needed to be addressed. Of course, the administration felt otherwise, and all the copies were again gathered up and destroyed.

Frustrated by the administration but still determined to be heard, they changed their tactics. Rather than publish a newsletter, they emailed, texted, MySpaced, and Facebooked their next initiative, and it was a doozy. The following Thursday, in an inspired act of civil disobedience that had me practically busting with pride and joy, they staged a lunch-out, opting to bring lunch rather than buy what the school offered. In a school cafeteria that normally serves 2000 lunches a day, fewer than 300 were purchased.

Anyone who has taught the current cell phone, I Pod, Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister generation knows that they really don’t seem to care about much of anything that doesn’t carry a brand. But here they were engaged in underground organizing for a common cause, and it was a just cause. I was blown away. Of course, yet again, the administration saw it differently.

Shortly before the end of the day, the principal came on the school intercom system and announced that if the lunch-out were to be repeated, several members of the cafeteria staff would be fired. Here was an educator, charged with the difficult task of educating and inspiring a largely disaffected crowd of young people. Suddenly, they became energized and inspired on their own, and all she had to do was engage them in the process, channel their energy, encourage them to promote their cause through existing and accepted channels within the system, and instead she told them their actions were going to put innocent people out of work. It was as if the collective spirit of the student body was suddenly smothered with a wet blanket. I’d say she’s a hypocrite, but really she’s just a dumb-ass.

Shortly thereafter, one of the newsletter writers, a senior, was discovered. He was a former student of mine, an excellent writer, and top 5 in his class. During his interrogation, the administration threatened to withhold his scholarships if he didn’t turn in his collaborators. He refused. They threatened him with expulsion, and still he refused. Eventually, they settled on him reading a mea culpa, written by the administration, over the intercom, and followed that with a three day suspension. In an egregious violation of his rights, they did not contact his parents until after the interrogation was completed and his mea culpa had been read.

I listened to that student’s forced humiliation, in which he castigated his fellow students for following him in a misguided, dangerous, and disruptive activity, and I wanted to cry. I listened to the principal’s “I hope you learned your lesson” afterward, and I wanted to smash something.

I taught for another year and a half, but a big piece of what made me want to be a teacher died that day.

The Call from The Hall

2008-09-07T08:37:00.000-07:00

I suspect that in the days before email, getting “The Call” might have actually meant getting a phone call from a highly-placed representative who, with appropriate fanfare befitting the occasion, would inform you that you had finally made it, your day had come. Or at least you were closer to making it than you had previously been, and your day to begin the process of determining if your day had come had come, or something like that. Sadly, in our modern, all-wired-all-the-time, have you checked your inbox in the last thirty seconds times, there was no Call from The Hall at all.

What I received was an email from a guy who has sent me no fewer than two dozen emails since May of this year, an email whose subject heading was “Ult HOF calling?” Truth be told, I was so certain that this was another admonishment for another failure to adhere to another deadline for submitting my evaluation of another form that I hadn’t reviewed that I deleted the email off my Blackberry without reading it. It was only after I returned to the office and checked my email from my desktop that I found that yes, indeed, I had gotten “The Call.” As you might imagine, I wasn’t quite so thrilled by the honor as I never really thought I would be.

Thus began the vetting process, but unlike Sarah Palin, I can’t say it was like a visit from the IRS and the proctologist at the same time. In fact, it really wasn’t much of a visit at all. It was more like a prize announcement from the Publisher’s Clearinghouse, but without the magazine subscriptions. Greetings! You may have already been named to the Hall of Fame. At the very least, you have been selected to the “Slate of 8,” (their term, not mine) and you should consider yourself honored to be among the eight finalists who have been chosen to be under consideration for the honor of possibly being inducted into the Hall of Fame. All you have to do is fill out the attached seven page self-aggrandizement form and have each of three friends/teammates/acquaintances fill out the attached suck-up form and get all these supporting materials returned to us with a photograph no later than five days from now.

There is nothing the UPA loves like a deadline.

When the inductees from the Class of 2008 were announced and I realized I was not among them, I asked via email why I had been snubbed. What I was told is that no one had realized I was old enough until the voting had already been done. I was also told that while it was an “embarrassment” that I hadn’t been inducted in the first year of my eligibility I was not alone. Other prominent and potentially deserving players had also been overlooked. What I couldn’t help thinking at the time was, if this is such an embarrassment, if so many deserving players were overlooked, why don’t you just extend the deadline? I mean, how hard would it be to re-open the voting?

Now don’t get me wrong. I mean, I’m all for strict adherence to deadlines, and I have no problem with not letting that slacker from Ambush (it was Ambush, right?) play because all the other teams did play by the rules and did get their rosters in on time and did deserve the right to pound the shit out of Ambush even worse than they would have if the rules had been bent a little. Besides, if you make an exception for them where do you stop? It’s the principle of the thing. What I’m not so sure is how the same principle applies to the Hall.

By that I mean, if our fledgling shrine to the glory of the past achievements of the legends of our little game decided to extend the deadline or even re-open the voting to right an obvious wrong, who would be hurt? Would all the other marginal sports with fledgling shrines rise up in protest because they, too, through some unfortunate oversight, overlooked the eligibility of Weasel McNulty, a true god of the game, but they didn’t re-open their voting or extend their deadline? That seems just a tad unlikely. But perhaps a more salient question is just how important are Hall of Fame deadlines anyway?

On the UPA site Hall of Fame page we can learn that the selection process is an extremely complicated, multi-layered affair with a series of periodic deadlines running from March to August. But the one that really sticks out in my mind is the one at the bottom that says that once the voting has been completed, a press release will be issued on the fourth Monday in August with the names of that year’s class of inductees. Click on the “Press Releases” link at the top of the page and what do you find out?

Of the four press releases announcing HOF inductions, not one was released on the fourth Monday in August. The earliest release date was for the inaugural class, and it was dated November 1, 2004. On average, UPA Hall of Fame press releases can be expected to be issued about three and a half months late.

Which once again sets me to wondering just how important HOF deadlines are.

But I’m letting that nagging question get in the way of my immeasurable joy at making the Sl8 (better, don’t you think?). Although to be truthful I was not nearly so pleased to receive the honor of the candidacy as I was to be given an excuse to fill out an lengthy form detailing the myriad impressive accomplishments of my most favorite player, me. I’ll leave it to you to imagine what a wonderful read the self-aggrandizement form of an accomplished egotistical blowhard such as myself must be, and I might even share some of the tastier tidbits if not for the fact that to do so would in some way tarnish the solemn significance of the process. Nonetheless, I will share a few of the achievements that didn’t quite make the cut.

Fall of some year at some tournament someplace: Pat King cutting downfield catches a lead pass near the endzone when some douche bag covering him makes a gratuitous layout bid, threatening to take out (and possibly break) his ankles. I’m in the end zone and make my classic near corner break for the goal, but Pat, desperately trying to keep his legs away from the defender who is now attempting to roll both of his ankles simultaneously, doesn’t see me. We (Pat and I) arrive at the front corner of the end zone almost simultaneously, at which point I express my concern for his safety by saying “how about a little less dancing and a little more looking.” Now that’s a teammate.

Nationals of some year someplace: looking through the program to help calm his pre-game nerves, rookie Mike Palmer-Poroner reads the line describing KABOOM! as an enigma. He sheepishly asks, “What does enigma mean?” Taking the poor, frightened soul under my wing, I reply “It means you’re a fucking idiot.” Now that’s leadership.

Some place at some time somewhere: I’m covering Phil “Guido” Adams in the end zone when he breaks to the corner and the pass is thrown. I’m in perfect position for the layout block, but somehow, while we’re both diving, he reaches around me (Yes, I’ve heard the rumors about Guido, too.) to make an astonishing grab. I land on his arm in such a way as to obscure the outcome of the play from everyone but me, and then rip the disc from his hand. He rightly calls strip, and I contest the call. Now that’s spirit.

My point here is that those of you playing the game now are playing at a time when the Hall of Fame is a reality. My generation played not only when it wasn’t a reality, but when it wasn’t even deemed necessary, possible, reasonable, called for, insert your own phrase indicating how ludicrous the idea would have been to all of us running around in our short shorts way back when. Today’s player has the benefit of knowing that some day he or she will be judged by the HOF selection committee, and they will place a high premium on spirit, fair play, and the image the player presented for the sport. We judged ourselves on only two questions: how hard did you party, and could you still win? So it is that, somewhat ruefully, I submitted my application to the Hall. I am deeply sorry for my past transgressions, and wish I could go back and right some wrongs. I’m hopeful that my numerous spirit violations won’t keep me out of the most hallowed institution our sport can claim, but I am prepared to suffer the consequences of my actions humbly and without recrimination.

Oh, and one more thing: I’m NOT sorry!

Good Girl - Postscript

2008-09-04T13:42:00.000-07:00

Poppy’s story is one I’ve needed to tell for years, and it was not easy. Still, having finally completed it, and based on some of the reactions, I feel confident that I did succeed in sharing some of what made her special. Still, I’m a storyteller, and in telling Poppy’s story I had to leave out certain elements because they are, strictly speaking, not part of Poppy’s story. Some of those elements are important. One of them is Fennel.

Fennel was abandoned, found by my brother on the side of the road in early October of ’98, two months before Poppy and I moved down to NC. Brian sent me two Polaroids (back when people still did such things) of his wife, Bliss, sitting on the couch with this adorable, pudgy, black and white pup. In the first, looking about 8 weeks old and slightly bewildered, he sits in that awkward, tilting, puppy way, next to but not touching Bliss. In the second, clearly startled by the flash of the first, his eyes are huge, his look terrified, and he is pressing himself into Bliss in an effort to hide. Needless to say, I was smitten.

Fennel is a sweet dog, with a bull terrier chest and head, lab tail and paws, and pointer markings. He has enough love for the whole world twice over, and not an aggressive bone in his body. He and Poppy got along beautifully. Still, there was little doubt that Poppy was number one, Fennel was always fighting for attention, and that neediness tended to make him a little annoying.

As a puppy, he was a chewer (which Poppy had never really been) and he went through remotes, shoes, table and chair legs, and the like, before he finally grew out of it. That was a little exasperating. He also reacted to being left alone for long periods of time by climbing on counters and generally getting into mischief. Poppy would never have done that.

When it came time to train/discipline Fennel I used my best, stern voice (what I called “beating him with my words”), but he seemed to hardly notice. Poppy, on the other hand, would drop her ears and slink over to her bed, as though she had displeased me terribly. Eventually I learned to separate them before I did any training or discipline. In other words, my dogs trained me.

I note with some amusement that for years I assumed that any mischief created while my attention was diverted or I was away was always attributable to Fennel, and he always received whatever meager discipline I meted out. That is, until the Day of the Flour.

I love to bake, and when I was a teacher I would periodically bake cookies for my classes. Because I taught three blocks with average class sizes in the low 30s, that meant baking a bunch of cookies. One day, while preparing to bake, I realized I didn’t have enough butter. I ran to the store, leaving a 5 pound bag of flour on the shelf, thinking “Fennel won’t have any interest in that.” When I returned, I was not all that surprised to find flour all over the house. But I did find something surprising.

Picture a dark, hardwood floor, and white powder everywhere. Off to the side, looking a little startled, sits Fennel. Smack in the middle of the greatest concentration of white powder sits a figure that might be a dog. She is completely covered in white powder. Some of it, especially around her snout, seems caked on, and in that sea of white the only things that stand out are her two brown eyes, sheepishly blinking her guilt.

I never blamed Fennel again.

After Poppy’s death, Fennel went through an amazing transformation. No longer preoccupied with trying to get attention, he mellowed. Being more relaxed, he behaved better, obeyed commands, and generally turned into a wonderful dog. He still is, but I have now relocated to New York. For a while, my aunt lived in my house and took care of him, but that was only a temporary fix while I determined if I would be in New York long-term. Recently I determined that I will be, and the decision was made to send Fennel to live with my brother, his two young sons, and his two, lumbering, two-year-old female lab mixes.

On my last visit down south I packed up Fennel’s things, bundled up his bed, and moved him to my brother’s. When I came back to my North Carolina house that night, for the first time in almost 14 years, I walked into my home to find no dog waiting for me. No home has ever felt so empty. That was when I learned the answer to the questions I asked when Poppy died.

Our lives, no matter how full we make them, are equally full of little spaces that can only be filled by something special. For some people that special thing is another person, a child, or maybe fire-bellied toad. For me, that special thing is a dog. As much as the emptiness that Poppy left behind broke my heart, all the tiny little spaces she filled for all those years went almost unnoticed. Now, with her long gone, Fennel moved away, and me living in New York, I am once again noticing those little spaces.

I live now in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. My next door neighbor has a Jack Russell Terrier named Sammy who holds court on the front lawn all day long. Recently, when leaving for work in the morning or coming home at night, I’ve taken to stopping and spending a little time with Sammy. I scratch his ears and rub his belly, and he nuzzles his silly little snout against my leg. I doubt I would ever choose a Jack, but when I spend time with Sammy I can feel those little spaces filling up again, and it feels very good.

I’m thinking maybe it’s time.

Good Girl - Part IV

2008-09-01T10:17:00.000-07:00

Every summer, in the Italian town of Siena, they run a horse race called the Palio. They don’t run it at an established horse racing venue, or even at a local dirt oval that is pressed into service for the occasion. No, they run it in the Piazza del Campo, the cobble-stoned town square.

Shaped like a semi-circle, the Piazza is covered with a deep layer of dirt, and mattresses are positioned against the exterior walls of the buildings at the corners, to protect the horses and jockeys. The interior is cordoned off and packed with race fans, much like the infield at Churchill Downs or Pimlico. But this is neither the Kentucky Derby nor the Preakness. It’s the Palio, and it’s a much bigger deal.

The town of Siena is divided into districts, called Contradas, and each district enters a horse in the race, so the outcome is a matter of civic pride. During the days leading up to the race, every district brings its representative horse and jockey into their local church for a benediction, an event so important to the community that the seats for it are sold out a year in advance. At night, the local restaurants and bars are filled with partisan citizens arguing the relative strengths of their district’s horse, and boasting of their impending victory. By day, parades and pageantry turn the town into a giant festival, Mardi Gras and Carnival with horses. In fact, it is safe to say that the horses, trainers, jockeys and citizens of Siena spend the entire year preparing for and building up to this race. And how long does the race last? The winning horse generally completes three laps around the Piazza in less than a minute and a half. A whole year of preparation for 90 seconds of action. That’s what it was like for Poppy.

Poppy loved to eat. Throughout her life, nothing other than Eukanuba Lamb and Rice ever filled her bowl, but she truly loved that kibble. She wolfed it down so fast, that I used to say that she spent 23 hours and 59 minutes every day thinking about eating, and one minute eating. For Poppy, every meal was the Palio.

That’s why I should have known something was wrong when she stopped finishing her food .

My first thought was that after ten years of eating the same kibble she had simply grown tired of it, so I tried an alternate. Then I considered the possibility that, as a function of her aging, her mouth had gotten a little tender, and maybe I simply needed to soak her food in warm water to make it softer. Any change I made seemed to solve the problem for a while, but soon afterward she was leaving food in her bowl again. Then, I was looking for a simple answer, because I didn’t want to consider the possibility that it was something serious. We never want to imagine the worst. Now, years later, I wonder how I could have been so stupid.

Pretty soon, I started to notice the weight loss, and then it occurred to me that she seemed to be drinking more water than usual. But there was nothing in the way she was behaving that suggested anything serious. She was as playful as ever, and seemed healthy enough. But when the loss of appetite continued, I decided to take her to the vet.

Poppy had always hated the vet, and this visit was no different. She tensed up and spread her paws wide, dropping her belly to the floor and refusing to walk on the slick tile. I had to lift her onto the scale and the examination table, and when her blood was drawn, she looked at me sadly with her big brown eyes and whimpered. The vet asked me a few questions, nodded knowingly at my answers, and evinced a somber manner that was more than a little troubling. But when the assistant cracked open a can of wet food, a delicacy which Poppy had never tasted before, she ate enthusiastically, and my spirits were buoyed. On the way out, the vet asked me if I had recently changed the radiator fluid in my car. I had. He nodded knowingly, and told me he’d call the following day with the results of the blood work.

On the way home from the vet I stopped and bought all sorts of wet food, some in cans and some in pouches. I bought it with the awe and wonder that might be felt by an immigrant from a less affluent country who suddenly steps into an American market and sees all the bounty to be found there. I simply had no idea that so much variety existed. I bought beef and fish and chicken with rice and peas and carrots, some with gravy and some without. I bought it giddy with excitement at the thought of solving Poppy’s problems with something so simple as a change of food. But truthfully, I bought it with a combination of a vague unease and a profound understanding of the futility of the endeavor.

The following day, a Friday in late October, the vet called and gave me the news: Poppy had kidney failure, the kind of condition that is often brought on by consuming even a small amount of ethylene-glycol, the chemical component found in anti-freeze. He asked again about me changing my radiator fluid, but I assured him that Poppy’s appetite had started to wane a good month before I had done so. No matter, he said, and suggested I bring her back in right away for a complete flush of her fluids, a process he said would require a three day stay in the animal hospital. When I pressed him he admitted that at most it would buy her an additional six months. Poppy was dying, and there was nothing anyone could do about that.

I called a colleague and asked him to cover my fourth block class, then drove home in a daze. I started to question my memory of the time line of her illness. Had she stopped eating that long ago? Could I be responsible for killing her? The thought was too awful to bear, so I set it aside and started considering the alternatives. How miserable would a three day stay in an animal hospital be for Poppy when she couldn’t stand a fifteen minute visit to the vet? What would those six months (at most) be like? And finally, sadly, pitifully, what would it all cost? As a third year teacher working two side jobs to make ends meet, I had only recently decided to replace a blown head gasket in my Pathfinder myself because I couldn’t afford to pay my mechanic to do it. I simply didn’t have the money to cover an expensive vet bill, particularly one that would only buy her another six months of dying. I called the vet and told him we wouldn’t be coming back. Then I called another vet, a close family friend who made house calls, and asked her to come by the following Monday afternoon.

That weekend, my cousin’s husband Lewis helped me fix the Pathfinder. We broke it down to the engine block and replaced the head gasket. We took the opportunity to replace the timing belt, water pump, thermostat, starter and distributor cap as well. It took the better part of two days, and whenever we were working Poppy was lying in the back of the car. I would pop back periodically to check on her, make sure her blankets were keeping her warm, and give her a hug. When Lewis went to get lunch and brought back Arby’s, I fed her roast beef and curly fries, an event so unheard of that it probably tipped her off that something was up (that and the fact that her kidneys were failing). At meal times, I fed her from the cornucopia of wet food options I had picked up, and generally spoiled her in every way possible, even letting her sleep on my bed.

Sunday night I had a horrible dream. I think it was brought on in some way by a photograph I have on my refrigerator of Poppy lounging on an inflatable blue raft in the middle of the pool at Mike Nevins’ family home in Montclair, NJ. She looks altogether natural, even comfortable, a contented mass of chocolate brown surrounded by a deep, cool blue, and her expression seems to say, “What? You still think dogs don’t belong in the pool?” It’s a photo that has always made me happy, but the dream was anything but. We were in a pool, but Poppy was on the bottom, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t bring her to the surface. Eventually, running out of air, I had to choose between trying to save her and saving myself. I woke in anguish, thinking not of cool blue but of bright, iridescent green.

I went in to school and taught my first two classes, though I can’t imagine it was much of a lesson. Then, with the same obliging colleague covering my fourth block, I left school around 11AM and headed home. I had asked the vet to be there at 3, which I figured would give me enough time to prepare. On the way home I called my aunt, Aunt T, who dearly loved Poppy, told her the dream and asked if she wanted to come over and say good bye.

Whenever I needed someone to watch Poppy, Aunt T, volunteered. Over the years she had come to love her, and I knew she would miss her deeply. She is, like me, a dog person. She is also the world’s most prolific note writer, and whenever she watched Poppy I would return to find my refrigerator stocked with Tupperware containers with post-it notes saying utterly superfluous things like “soup,” and “vegetables.” Sometimes I’d find one on Poppy’s food bin saying “need food,” as though it weren’t obvious enough. And always, always on the green plastic 1997 WSL beer cup cut down to just the right size to measure Poppy’s food, “fed dinner.” I used to make fun of her for her notes. In fact, I still do. But on this day, there was no making fun.

When she arrived she stepped through the door purposefully, clutching her date book in her hand. She went straight to the kitchen counter, flipped the book open, and pointed. There in the same hand that had written so many useless things over the years, was a single line: “P didn’t finish dinner – need to tell K.” The date was almost three weeks before I had begun working on the car. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “Just let her go.”

I left her with Poppy and went outside. The air was crisp, and fall rode on the steady eastward wind that blew leaves across the yard. I walked down to a corner of the garden and, in an open patch of grass where Poppy used to lie in the sun and watch me tend the plants, I started to dig.

To say that the soil in my yard is unforgiving is putting it mildly. I’ve been ameliorating the planting beds in my garden for seven years, but in the area I’d chosen for Poppy the composition is still about two inches of grass roots in topsoil on top of a bed of Carolina clay. After clearing off the top layer with a square blade shovel, I got to work with the pick axe.

I had imagined the exercise would be both nostalgic and therapeutic, with all the wonderful memories of her life running through my head like a slide show, dulling my grief while I prepared her final resting place, but it wasn’t. It was mindless, my head empty, the steady rasping of the pickaxe and random rustling of leaves undercut by my labored breathing. Periodically I’d lay the pickaxe aside, grab a small shovel, and add to the growing pile of dirt beside the deepening hole. At those times, without the steady rhythm of the pickaxe to build on, the rest of the sounds seemed to disappear. Those were the times when I felt the worst, when the enormity of what I was doing was inescapable. I grabbed the pickaxe again quickly.

I have no idea how long I was digging, but because I wanted her to fit comfortably, I made sure the hole was wide, and because I wanted her to be safe, I made sure it was deep. Looking back, it must have taken hours and by the time I was done my shirt was wet with perspiration, and Aunt T, her eyes red with tears, was ready to go. She gave me a hug at the door, Poppy pulled herself out of bed, and in the most heart-rending moment of the day, gave her last five holes.

When the vet arrived I was lying next to Poppy’s bed. The door was unlocked, and I called to her to come on in while I stayed with Poppy. She did, and got right to work, unpacking her bag quietly. The whole process was incredibly quick and, I hope, painless. I held Poppy in my arms while she gave her the first shot, the one that put her to sleep. Unlike at the vet’s, she never got agitated, and didn’t make a sound. The second shot, following soon after, stopped her heart. Though I still held her in my arms, just like that, she was gone.

Being a family friend she refused payment, and though I knew it was the right thing to do it felt positively bizarre to thank her. She drove away and I took a walk in the woods alone, on the same paths we had walked together thousands of times. I thought of the life she had led. For seven of her ten years she had lived on this property, running through the woods chasing animals or their smells, bounding through the creek, rolling in the mud. She would never run off, so she never had to wear a collar or a leash. She lived a good life, was universally loved, and on this day those thoughts should have brought me comfort, but they didn’t.

They say the most unnatural thing is a parent burying a child. By contrast, even those of us who treat our animals almost like children know from the very day we get them that we will probably live to see them die. So why does it hurt so much? More to the point, why do we do it? Why do we tie our hearts to these creatures knowing full well that someday we’ll live to see them at the bottom of a hole, waiting for us to cover them with dirt? Why do we knowingly let our pets occupy huge places in our lives when we can just as knowingly anticipate the day when that same place will be hopelessly, irretrievably empty?

Returning from my walk, I pulled my black Cojones shirt out of a drawer, and a rawhide bone off a shelf, then went outside and placed them in her grave. Back inside, I found her collar and clipped it on. Then I wrapped her in her favorite blanket, and just as I had all those years ago on the very first day I saw her, I held her in my arms and carried her home.

Good Girl - Part III

2008-08-25T15:28:00.000-07:00

Her name was Poppy, like the flower, although she wasn’t so named. She was named for the deli where my then girlfriend would wait for me to pick her up after work during the period of time when we (she) got her. The name also makes some reference to a movie about a boy who might have been disabled and that might have starred DeNiro, but as you can see I’m a little unclear on the details. I don’t know that I would have chosen the name, but in the end it worked. It had the requisite two syllables that all dog names should have, so as to make them easy to call out in a sing-song manner when the animal has run off.

On a side note, I once spent New Year’s Day sing-songing the name Biko through the woods of Pound Ridge, New York in a vain search for a friend’s Rhodesian Ridgeback that had run off in pursuit of a deer. It was a terrible experience, but it taught me something about breeding, instinct, and training that it’s wise to keep in mind when selecting a dog. Sight hounds (like Ridgebacks) and scent hounds (like Beagles) will instinctively take off in pursuit of prey, despite years of training, and may never come back. Retrievers, on the other hand, tend to return. It’s in their nature. Of course, if you’ve read Part I you know that I didn’t choose Poppy. She did, however, choose me.

Dogs are pack animals, and as a social order, the pack works because it has a leader. Dogs removed from the pack still look for a leader, and in the absence of one, may assume the role themselves. Spend some time watching the Dog Whisperer to see what I mean. A single dog in a family will usually identify a member of the family as the leader of the pack. It won’t necessarily be the one who feeds the most or walks the most or plays the most. But whoever it is, the dog will focus on that person and respond to his or her motions and emotions above those of everyone else in the family. In our little family, Poppy chose me.

When my girlfriend and I broke up in the winter of ’96, she left Poppy behind. Initially, the stated reason was because she had moved into an apartment that didn’t allow pets, but even when she relocated, she left Poppy with me. She knew, as I did, as Poppy did, that in so far as Poppy was concerned, I was the leader of the pack. Still, in leaving behind the dog she had picked out, the companion she had chosen to help her through a difficult time in her life, she had done an extremely unselfish thing, and a thing for which I will always be grateful. I’m sure I never told her that.

So that’s why Poppy and I ended up together in North Carolina in the winter of ’98, heading over to my sister’s house for a holiday visit shortly before Christmas.

It would be the height of understatement to say that my older sister Denise, the eldest of my three siblings, is a bit high-strung. It would be more accurate to say that her life is one prolonged panic attack tempered by brief intervals of high anxiety. What this means is that pretty much any event in her life is potentially disastrous, and the first and best response to anything out of the ordinary is to scream. That is why, when she opened the door in December of 1998 to find me and Poppy on her doorstep, she reacted as if I had a bloody axe in one hand and the head of her older son in the other. Poppy, as even-tempered a dog as I’ve ever seen, was in no way unsettled by my sister’s screams. Obedient as ever, she reacted as she had been trained to, and that was unfortunate.

Once Poppy had mastered all the basic tricks, I had to move on to others to keep her sharp (and me amused). One of my favorites was the dog biscuit balanced on the snout, held there patiently waiting for the snap of the fingers that told her it was OK to flip the biscuit in the air, catch it, and gobble away. I would leave the room, come back, and leave again, and still she waited. I would fake the snapping motion but make no sound, and still she waited, the saliva dripping down in long strands from her jowls. It was a trick I had seen a friend’s dog perform many years before, and I was very proud of Poppy for mastering it. My girlfriend had different ideas.

An avid hockey fan, she wanted to train Poppy to “five hole” people. For those of you unfamiliar with ice hockey, the five hole is the spot between the goalie’s legs, and “five holing” someone is sending an object, any object, through their legs. It was standard practice at that time for us to throw discs, beer cans, and the like through the legs of friends and foes alike. But to “throw” a dog through? That would be brilliant.

As trainable and eager to please as Poppy was, it didn’t take her long to learn to respond to the command “five hole” by walking through the legs of whoever gave the command. Soon thereafter, she learned to respond by walking through the legs of whichever person was pointed out, much to our delight. So delighted were we, and so pleased was Poppy to experience our delight, that in time the whole trick got a little confused. She began to “five hole” anyone she saw, even complete strangers, hoping to elicit the same delight. Moreover, she would “five hole” them with her whole body wagging back and forth in expression of her happiness at pleasing us. Meanwhile, the person being “five holed” could only awkwardly attempt to maintain his balance while simultaneously wondering why 70 pounds of gyrating dog was passing between his legs.

So there we were, in a charming little cul-de-sac in Raleigh, NC, its tidy houses festooned with festive decorations twinkling their holiday cheer, my sister’s panicked screams piercing the air as she seemed to ride a bucking brown dog backwards around her front porch. Merry Christmas.

Once I convinced my sister that letting Poppy attend the party would not result in her shitting on the carpet, her fleas getting in the carpet, or her eating up the carpet, she somewhat reluctantly let us into her home. What followed is a story I lived more times than I can count. Poppy was perfect. She lay on the floor next to me and didn’t budge unless I told her to. She never begged, no matter how close someone came with food. She never barked, growled, whined, or otherwise made a sound. And when my niece and nephews petted, poked, pulled and prodded, she didn’t flinch, not even when my sister’s toddler climbed onto her back and yanked on her ears.

While the party was in its extended good-bye phase, and we were all variously chatting in small groups and making our ways to our cars laden with Tupperware, my sister confided that despite her calm demeanor (remember, this is her speaking) she was certain that having a dog in her home would result in some calamity. Precisely what calamity she wasn’t sure, but most likely one involving a small child bleeding profusely from the gaping hole where a limb used to be and Poppy running around the house with the bleeding limb in her mouth. Although I didn’t say it at the time, I feel certain that the most upsetting part of my sister’s imaginary calamity was not the prospect of one of her children being permanently disfigured so much as the quandary of how she was ever going to get all of that blood out of the carpet.

Fortunately for everyone, the imagined calamity remained just that, and my sister was left standing on her front porch and marveling at Poppy’s exemplary behavior. In fact, in what was probably the most unexpected praise she ever received in her life, my sister remarked that the only way she could ever see herself getting a dog would be if that dog were Poppy.

At once embarrassed and beaming with pride, I responded by saying the best thing I could ever say about her: “She’s a good girl.”

Good Girl - Part II

2008-08-22T10:12:00.000-07:00

It is often said that a dog is a practice child. For certain childless couples at least, I believe it’s true. Cooperatively caring for a dog can be a good indication of whether or not a couple might be able to do the same for a child. Like a child, a dog requires its owners to think of another living being before themselves. There’s certainly plenty of help for parents of both children and dogs in the form of books, DVDs, web sites and the like. I doubt, however, that there are many books that suggest you crate train your children, so perhaps the analogy begins to fall apart there. Still, having recently spent a weekend in Massachusetts with several former teammates and their offspring, such a book might have come in handy. Finally, many parents and dog-owners to be pledge to take equal responsibility for the coming burden but wind giving anything but equal effort.

So it was that, having had my girlfriend unilaterally decide that I would be part owner of a dog, I found myself responsible for both the last walk of the night and the first walk of the morning for our sweet little chocolate lab with the not yet well-developed bladder control. Having read all the right books, we knew about crate training, taking the water away shortly after the evening meal, and walking her soon after play and sleep. What we didn’t know was how to explain the elevator.

Most of us have woken up with a strong, perhaps very strong, need to relieve ourselves at one time or another. The stronger the need, the more troubling the delay, be it a long walk down a hallway, or an exasperating wait for a roommate to vacate the facilities. Well imagine if reaching the facilities required a walk down a hall, a long wait for a strange, windowless room whose doors always open onto a different room, and another long walk down another hallway. Oh, and you’ve only recently been potty-trained. Now you’re getting a picture of what it must have been like for our sweet, little Lab puppy as she tried desperately to hold on long enough to get outside before emptying her bladder.

For a picture of what it was like for me, imagine that it’s a pitch black 5AM in November, you’ve been awakened by a high pitched whining, your last act before going to bed was also a bleary-eyed puppy walk that seems to have happened mere moments ago, and the person who’s responsible for putting you in this predicament is sleeping soundly in a nice cozy bed. And you wonder why I’m single.

Early on it was pretty hopeless. We’d barely make it to the elevator doors before she was squatting. Once we got into the elevator, if she started to squat I’d swoop her up into my arms, and the experience was so surprising that it literally scared the pee right back into her. The downside being that once outside, it usually took a good long while for her to calm down enough to be able to take care of business.

Eventually, the swoop into the air was no longer all that surprising, and I suppose had become almost comforting, so much so that she took to lying in my arms and spraying her urine in a fountainesque stream wherever she happened to be aiming at the time. At first, appalled, I did anything I could think of to stop her. In time, realizing that the hand is not an especially effective mechanism for stopping urine flow, I resigned myself to watching the waterworks.

If anyone reading this happened to reside at 304 E. 20th Street between November of 1994 and February of 1995 you have my apologies. I had every intention of cleaning up when we returned, but somehow the prospect of crawling back into bed was a little too inviting. I’m sure you understand.

In time, she mastered her movements, and we were on to the next level of training.

By any measure, she was a prodigy. At eight weeks she sat on command. By twelve weeks she could sit, lie down, stay, and roll over. Shortly thereafter, she responded to both voice and hand commands, and when she added playing dead to her repertoire, she would do so in response to a silent firing of a finger.

I took her to work with me, where her disposition and intelligence made her a favorite. Our company shipped a lot of packages COD, and every morning the UPS man would bring a cardboard envelope with checks. Our receptionist trained her to carry the UPS envelope to the bookkeeper’s office, where the bookkeeper would take the envelope from her mouth and reward her with a treat. In time, not satisfied with one treat, she would return to the bookkeeper’s office, retrieve the empty UPS envelope from the trash can, slink out of the office quietly, then trot back in with much fanfare and offer the empty envelope to the bookkeeper. Like I said, a prodigy.

Her first tournament was Turkey Bowl ’94, when she was a mere 11 weeks old. We competed under the name Elwood Hound, and won the tourney when, inspired by her presence, I made a layout block and threw the game winning hammer. Her last tournament was Terminus ’99, the only event I ever played with Ring of Fire. Perhaps sensing that this was a one time deal, she made a complete nuisance of herself, slipping her collar and running across several fields mid-point, something she had never done before. In between, she went to many more tournaments, but a couple stand out.

Mother’s Day ’96. She meets Steve Mooney’s pure bred god-knows-what dog and gets into a fight with it. Awesome.

Some random springtime affair where Adam Zagoria, unprepared as usual, secures his dog to my dog’s corkscrew. Having spent the better part of the day being annoyed by Zagoria’s mutt Jasmine, she finally reaches the breaking point and rips off a piece of Jasmine’s ear. Priceless.

A friend of mine once sent his dog to obedience school, and later proudly displayed the certificate he had been awarded for “Longest Down Stay.” What a joke. In the winter of ’97 I took her on a trip to Vermont, and found myself without a place to keep for a snowboarding day trip. I found a doggie day care close by and dropped her off, paying the extra $20 for two outdoor play sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. When I returned to pick her up in the evening they refunded me the $20. Despite their efforts, she had simply refused to go out and play. Leaving her that morning I had told her to stay. She wouldn’t leave until I came and released her.

It was the only time I ever put her in a kennel.

She showed similar devotion some years later, when I competed in a tournament at ECU in Greenville, NC. I arrived at the tournament only to discover that dogs were not allowed at the fields. With no way to secure her in the bed of my 1991 Ford F-150 pickup, I simply told her to stay. And stay she did, all day long.

If only women were as devoted.

Good Girl - Part I

2008-08-16T18:46:00.000-07:00

She came into my life on a cold November morning, from the front seat of a 1994 Acura Integra parked on East 20^th St. Her soft brown fur was moist with her own pee, and her little body trembled from fear. Ten years later, on a crisp October afternoon that heralded the coming fall, the rustling of leaves through my garden was broken by the insistent sound of a pickaxe striking North Carolina clay. How can ten years go by so fast? At such times I find the western conception of time as a linear progression, marching along at a steady gait, utterly preposterous. Surely Native Americans have a better handle on time, seeing it as fluid and flowing, like a stream, rushing here, swirling there, a succession of rapids and eddies leading to moments where two events, separated by years, sit side by side.

We grew up with cats, which is probably why I always wanted a dog. My mother, a true cat person, always told us that cats and dogs can’t live together. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized she was lying. So we grew up with cats, a Siamese and a jet black mix, and found them to be worse than useless. They didn’t entertain us, or play, or guard the house, or kill mice or do much except eat, sleep, piss and shit. While we, of course, had to clean the litter box, live on tattered furniture, and on special occasions have our early morning walk to the bathroom punctuated by the indescribable experience of cold cat puke squishing through our toes. On those mornings I understood why the only thing my father ever said about the cats was, “I’m just waiting for them to die.”

And die they did, after many years of waiting. The black one went first, and when the beloved Siamese died, some years later, my father was elated, my mother inconsolable. It was our first experience with the profound anguish of a person who has lost a beloved pet, and we had no idea that in addition to bringing on extreme sadness, it can cause a person to do some pretty outlandish things. So it was that on the day my mother had her precious Willow put down, she went directly to the pet store, and came home with two Siamese kittens. As if that weren’t enough, when my father stepped through the door that evening he found us sitting around the dining room table feeding those kittens filet mignon. He was livid, and probably thought he couldn’t be angrier, but that’s because he didn’t know what was coming.

The following week a package arrived wrapped in brown paper, the kind of packaging that in those days was primarily used for shipping items of “adult entertainment,” and while the contents of this package weren’t pornographic per se, they probably qualified as obscene. Seems my mother had made a stop between the veterinarian and pet store and, her world off kilter from the depths of her sorrow, had somehow thought it reasonable to see a taxidermist. Yes, precious Willow was back from the dead, and my father was back to waiting. His waiting would continue for a very, very long time.

My parents are no longer together for a variety of reasons, but I’m pretty sure the stuffed cat didn’t help.

So like I said, I had always wanted a dog. I even worked as a dog walker while I was in high school, and was absolutely certain that once I was on my own I would get a dog. Of course that was before the Pooper Scooper Law.

On August 1, 1978, the Yankees beat the Texas Rangers to climb to 6 ½ games back of Boston, and New York passed the country’s first Pooper Scooper Law. The Yankees proceeded to lose the next three. That should have told us something right there.

Over the course of the next few years, I watched closely the practices of the dog owners in my neighborhood. Most went with the plastic bag over the hand that they turned inside out after collection, and while this method seemed exceedingly efficient, there was something disconcerting about the thought of grabbing a pile of steaming dog poo, even if you did have a ply or two of plastic protection. Others, who perhaps felt as I did about grabbing the pile, went with the newspaper technique, watching carefully for the dog to assume the position, and then quickly leaning over to thrust a section of the newspaper under its butt just in time to catch the falling feces. When well-executed, the newspaper thrust, catch, fold and dispose is easily the most elegant of the poop scoop methods. Yet one only has to see it go awry once to know it’s not for them. I mean, is there anything more embarrassing, for both parties, than a person bent over at the waist holding a piece of newspaper under a dog’s ass as it skitches awkwardly down the street trying to get the hell away from the lunatic trying to catch its shit with a newspaper?

So I decided not to get a dog after all, at least not until I had moved out of the city. My story was that I wanted a substantial dog, like a Rottweiler, and I couldn’t be so cruel as to confine such an animal to a small, New York City apartment. But it’s closer to the truth to say that, while I did want a substantial dog, I wasn’t all that keen on handling its equally substantial poop.

This brings me to the fall of ’94, my girlfriend who had recently moved to New York from Boston, her desire to get a dog, and our discussion of the relative merits of such a move. I made a convincing case. My lease would be up in February, and we had already decided to move to Westchester. Buying just any old dog from an unscrupulous breeder or worse, a pet store, can bring on all sorts of complications. It’s better to go to a trusted breeder, wait for a new litter, and have your pick of it. She, for her part, had given up her life, including an apartment she loved, a car she loved, and a city she loved, and come down here to live in my apartment, hang out with my friends, and listen to my convincing arguments. She didn’t say it at the time, but I’m pretty sure she was thinking the whole thing had been one big mistake, and maybe, just maybe, a dog could save it. But in the face of my overwhelming logic, she relented. We would get a dog in 3 months when we moved out of the city.

The following morning she went to a doctor’s appointment, in my car, and called me from the road on her way back. “I bought a puppy,” was all she said. “I’ll go to the pet store,” was my reply.

wtf

2008-08-09T21:38:00.000-07:00

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?

Miles Away and Worlds Removed

2008-07-24T16:01:00.000-07:00

New York – Summer 2008

From every dingy basement on every dingy street
I hear every dragging handclap over every dragging beat
Thats just the beat of time-the beat that must go on
If you been trying for years-then we already heard your song

All these years later, so much has changed. Then I wore an army surplus coat, walked Amsterdam Avenue, and had the local street dealers greet me with a sneering, “Hello, Officer,” a misperception that almost certainly kept me out of trouble, but in those days might well have gotten me shot. Now I wear a suit, walk Fifth Avenue, and there aren’t any locals, just gobs of map-toting tourists taking advantage of the weak dollar and looking for a Hard Rock Café. As the late, great George Carlin put it, “If it’s tourist season, why can’t we shoot them?”

Back then I listened to the sounds of the street, steam hissing through cracks in unseen pipes, unseen people hissing unintelligibly, a symphony of decay. Now, like every other disconnected transient I swore I’d never be like, I walk the streets with earbuds planted firmly, sliding past rather than wading through, untouching and untouched. So different, but still the same.

The Summer of ’81 saw The Clash descend on New York for three weeks of shows at Bond International Casino. Anyone who cares probably already knows the story, so I won’t belabor it. Suffice to say that the Times Square they came to, saw, and conquered is long gone, conquered yet again by ESPN, M&Ms, and Planet Hollywood, controlled now by the very corporations The Clash railed against. Back then it was controlled by pimps, dealers and hustlers. Then came Giuliani Time, when America’s Mayor swept the squeegee men and other nuisance criminals from the streets of Times Square to make it safe for the Virgin MegaStore. That’s New York. Only the city is constant; the players are ever-changing. Like the Flemish fields of central Europe, battlefield for centuries, where armies fought for fleeting supremacy, held on long enough to heal their wounds, then fell to the next group. Only the blood was constant. The uniforms were ever-changing.

I left the streets of New York for the lawns of suburbia in the winter of ’95, settling in Harrison with a girlfriend and a chocolate lab puppy. Two years later the girlfriend was gone, and another year after that so was I, in the cab of a U-Haul with the lab no longer a puppy and North Carolina in my sights. We drove all night, although I did most of the driving, and arrived just in time for an early morning ice storm to drop a chunk of a long-leaf pine on the leased Jeep Grand Cherokee I had on a trailer. Welcome to North Carolina.

Despite the harsh welcome, I never imagined I’d move back here. I just couldn’t see myself coming back to this life, a life where you have to fight for everything, where everything is a struggle. What I didn’t realize until just recently is there’s something inside me that needs that battle.

I taught high school English in North Carolina for a little over five years, and in five years, I didn’t miss a single day in the classroom. I came early, stayed late, and taught “bell to bell.” I challenged my students and challenged myself, and for a time those challenges were enough. But eventually it started to bother me that so many of my colleagues neither challenged themselves nor their students. They came late, left early, took sick days as quickly as they earned them, and generally did the absolute minimum. Then, at the end of the month, they got the same check I did. Still I battled. I taught a class that had an End-Of-Course test, and when my students were sufficiently prepared I went into other teacher’s classrooms to help prepare their students. And when the scores were high enough to earn us bonus money, the same slackers who surfed the internet while their students slept got the same bonus check I did. I began to feel bitter. I wanted my efforts to be rewarded and their failures to cost them. I wanted my performance to mean something more. I wanted to compete. In effect, I wanted to be on a Flemish battlefield, and watch my lame-ass colleagues have their limbs chopped off. Figuring that wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon, I quit. Then I did what I never thought I’d do. I moved back.

It took all of three weeks for me to feel right at home, or at least comfortable enough to cross the street against the light and flip off a honking cab driver without looking at him. The gesture amused the orderly masses gathered on the corner, diligently waiting for the walk signal. “Oh lookie there. A real New Yorker.” Three weeks for my stride to reflect my contempt for anyone who doesn’t walk quickly enough, move purposefully enough, or know enough to rotate their torsos to allow them to slide through the oncoming foot traffic in a crosswalk without breaking stride. Fucking tourists. Three weeks to scrape away ten years of North Carolina, of please and thank you and after you and as you wish and be my guest and not at all and hey. Now, six months later, I can hardly remember what it feels like to smile in public.

I’m not sure it has to be this way, just as I’m not sure that all those years of pounding our opponents into submission while simultaneously trying to humiliate them were entirely necessary. But we did love the battle, and at this point it’s probably safe to say I need it.

So here I am, after all these years, back in New York, walking the streets listening to The Clash on my Blackberry. If that isn’t an oxymoron it ought to be. I used to say I have no regrets, but it’s a lie. I’ve got regrets by the bushel; I just choose to keep them to myself.

Ten years ago, soon after I moved to NC, a couple of young Ring players tried to entice me to join their team, using as bait the chance to keep Boston from equaling New York’s run of five straight titles. Needless to say, it didn’t work. I didn’t care then and I don’t care now. We won a bunch. They won a bunch. And now people play Masters and Grandmasters and sit by the phone waiting for the Hall of Fame to call. So much for the battle.

But there is one thing that does get my goat. When I walk the city streets I listen to every song from The Clash, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, and London Calling. Every song except one. That’s something I don’t forgive them for, and never will.

The Battle Endures.

New York: The True Genesis Revealed

2006-11-24T15:08:00.000-08:00

I have been amused by the recent flap related to a certain team from California not qualifying for Nationals even though many of the team’s players had already bought plane tickets to Sarasota. Lest you should think that by mentioning it now I am in some way thumbing my nose at that team, I should point out that I was not so amused as to actually determine which team it was. My amusement actually comes from a memory this incident dredged up, a memory of an incident that was potentially far more humiliating than buying a non-refundable plane ticket.

In the weeks that followed the recent and untimely passing of Curtis Wagner, an original member of New York, Pat King hit upon the idea of getting the old crew together to mourn Curtis, celebrate the 20^th anniversary of the founding of The Greatest Team In The History Of The Game, and pass countless hours doing the only thing we loved more than beating our opponents into submission: rehashing the beating of our opponents into submission. It should come as no surprise to those who observe the way the world works that we could very easily be planning to get together in celebration of nothing at all. If life teaches no other lesson, it teaches us that the line between success and failure, between victory and defeat, between the Greatest and the Stupidest is preciously thin. At the time when Pat King’s email was making the rounds of cyberspace it had been 20 years since an event that no one has ever celebrated, an event that mercifully faded into obscurity just when it seemed to be poised to become the most embarrassing moment in the history of a sport whose history would not be written for another 18 years or so.

To set the scene, the fall of 1985 saw the rise of the Chicago Bears, as one dimensional a team as ever there was. Behind a dominating defense, they charged to a title with a marginally talented quarterback and a behemoth of a man running the ball in goal line situations. Somewhere along the way they recorded the Super Bowl Shuffle, and the world learned that their meager offensive skills were in no way supplemented by artistic talent.

During that same fall, KABOOM!, another marginally talented team, finished a surprising second at the UPA Nationals, losing in the finals 21-19 to a significantly better Flying Circus squad. Over the following year those two seemingly unrelated events would come together to bring about another event that almost humiliated an entire team into early retirement, and indirectly gave rise to The Greatest Team In The History Of The Game.

In the spring of 1986, northeast colleges graduated a bevy of talented ultimate players with family ties in and around New York. For reasons that can only be guessed at, upon returning home they opted to form a new team, Spot, rather than join the established area powerhouse, KABOOM!. The folly of their choice soon became evident when they won that year’s Easterns (at the time a very prestigious tournament) while KABOOM! went down in a fiery quarterfinal crash. With Titanic a perennial juggernaut out of Boston and Spot threatening to become the top dog in New York, you would have thought the members of KABOOM! had reason to be worried. After all, this was before the introduction of wildcards, and there were only two spots available for those three teams. But the gap between how talented the members of KABOOM! were and how talented they thought themselves to be was a veritable chasm, and just when they needed to assiduously apply themselves to the task of preparing for that fall’s regional championships, they opted instead to do as the Bears had done before them. Yes, when confronted with the very real possibility that they might not even qualify for 1986 Nationals, KABOOM! recorded The National Shuffle. How’s that for hubris?

Liz Queler is a singer, songwriter, and musician who is talented enough to make a living at it, but back in 1986 she was an ultimate player who foolishly pledged her support to the misguided musical efforts of some fellow players. If she remembers it at all, it is probably when she wakes in a cold sweat from a nightmare episode of This is Your Life, with the entire professional music community learning with dismay that she once sang backup on The National Shuffle.

Patrick King is perhaps the most musically gifted corporate attorney you’ll ever meet, and one of the smartest people I know, so it was surely a low point when he hatched the brainchild that would become The National Shuffle. Still, we gleefully followed along. With Pat leading the way, and Liz providing talent, support, and a 4 track tape recorder, The National Shuffle was born.

As I remember it, Liz manned the equipment and Pat acted as what must have been passing for a producer, even going so far as to pound our more rhythmically challenged teammates on the back in time to the beat so that their portions of the song had at least some semblance of rhythm. In the meantime, I sat close by frantically writing and re-writing lyrics that were being recorded mere moments after I had penned them. At no time do I remember thinking that perhaps our actions might be seen as foolhardy. For reasons I can’t possibly understand, we were so sure of our imminent success at regionals and subsequent trip to Nationals in Texas that we even went so far as to give ourselves stupid “cowboy” nicknames. And you thought buying a plane ticket was bad?

That fall’s regional tournament was held on the Purchase College campus in Purchase, New York. Titanic and KABOOM! met in the winners final with Spot patiently waiting to take on the loser for the second spot to Nationals. As I mentioned previously, there were no wildcards at this time. There also were no games to 15 or ninety minute time caps. In fact, battles between top teams often stretched into multi-hour affairs that were more wars of attrition than displays of ultimate prowess, and this one was no exception. KABOOM! received the pull with the game tied at 21, double game point. Five turnovers later Titanic punched it in for the epic win.

We had the disc to win three times, but we couldn’t close the deal. Now we had to face a younger, more athletic, more talented team that had been watching us kill ourselves for the last hour of the game. Our front line players were exhausted, and our subs were largely untested. Oh yeah, and we had stupid cowboy nicknames and had recorded The National Shuffle.

A combination Spot victory and KABOOM! humiliation seemed inevitable. In fact, had someone been taking action on the game, I doubt anyone would have bet on us, least of all us. We knew better than that, although we hadn’t known better than to record that stupid song. But a funny thing happened to Spot on the way to their first Nationals appearance; they forgot to show up.

In a game whose outcome still has me scratching my head twenty years later, the fresher, younger, more talented Spot team lost to a demoralized and exhausted KABOOM! team 19-12. Why? Is it because we were motivated by the fear of the lifelong humiliation we would suffer when word of The National Shuffle got out? Maybe. Who knows? But what I do know is that if Spot had won that game the ultimate landscape in New York would have been dramatically different the following winter. With an Easterns victory and a Nationals semi-final or final appearance in their first year (we can assume they would have done at least as well as we did), would Spot have had any motivation to entertain the idea of a merger with KABOOM!? It doesn’t seem likely, and it therefore doesn’t seem likely that the dynasty that would become the Evil Empire would have been brought to life in a dingy bar later that year. And if there were no New York in 1987, what would have happened at Nationals that year and what would that have meant to the players in Boston? I guess we’ll never know, and we have The National Shuffle to thank for that. Our egos were just too big to realize how foolish it was to record that song, and our pride too overwhelming to allow us to lose once we had done so.

Perhaps that’s the problem with those guys in California. Maybe they just don’t have pride enough to back up their egos. Then again, all they did was buy plane tickets. Big deal.

Not Pretty

2006-10-22T10:36:00.000-07:00

For those who have never enjoyed the experience, perhaps the most appropriate way I can describe having a catheter inserted is that it gives a whole new meaning to the expression “going in through the out door.” That and it hurts an awful lot. For me the procedure took place in the emergency room of Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, with my brother and a former teammate, Kevin Granath, waiting nearby. To hear them tell the story, they were listening to a doctor give them various details of my injury, prognosis, and the immediate plans for my admittance when, from behind a curtain, they heard a terrifying scream in a voice they knew was mine. Instinctively they turned their heads only to have the doctor admonish them. “Don’t look. It isn’t pretty.”

Fast forward two weeks. My blood count has stabilized allowing me to keep my kidney, my stay in the hospital is drawing to a merciful close, and it’s time to have said catheter taken out. Remembering what it had felt like going in, I’m not exactly looking forward to the procedure. Then in walks an angel.

I’m sure you can imagine the number of nurses one is likely to see over the course of a two week stay in a hospital. Considering my stay began in intensive care and I spent the first few days scared out of my wits, it’s certainly plausible that I don’t even remember half the people in whose charge I had been, but I would have remembered this one. She was beautiful, with an easy smile, dark brown eyes, and a soothing voice that, like a warm bath, seemed to melt all my concerns away. She moved with a practiced assurance that was professional without being insensitive, and almost before I knew what was happening she had done what she came to do. All I felt was a brief tingling sensation. She even cleaned me up with a quick sponge bath for good measure. I remember noticing at the time that her eyes had never left mine, a fact I found astonishing considering the task she was engaged in. As I have reflected on the moment, however, I’ve come to the conclusion that perhaps the catheter removal procedure is not all that challenging, and that, given the occasion, she probably could have done it with her eyes closed. Still, at the time it struck me as remarkable, and only added to her allure. That was 1984, and I still remember her name: Danielle Turri. Imagine that. I can still name and readily describe a woman whose only connection to me was that she pulled a tube out of my penis twenty-two years ago. Men are truly bizarre creatures.

What followed was three months of bed rest, a period when, through the courtesy of the creatively challenged programming geniuses at WPIX-11, I saw every episode of The Odd Couple, Star Trek and The Twilight Zone several times over. It’s also when my father sat at the foot of my bed for a heart-to-heart for the last time.

It was soon after I had come home, and I guess he just wanted to make sure he understood what had happened. Not being one to beat around the bush, he got right to it.
“So that’s it for this Frisbee game, right?” When I replied that it most certainly was not it, and that as soon as I could I expected to be back on the field, he got very quiet. It was the kind of quiet we had all come to recognize over the years, a quiet that was always followed by something that, like my catheter insertion, wouldn’t be pretty. One time in particular such a quiet was followed by him hurling a glass ashtray against the tile wall in the kitchen. You might say my father’s temper is volcanic. On this day, however, his response was quiet, frighteningly so, and all the more effective for it. “Just so you understand, I will never come see you in the hospital again.”

If I had looked at the situation from his perspective, I might not have been so shocked. Although I took the injury in stride, the truth is I could easily have died. In fact, had the tournament taken place farther away from New York or Pat King’s father not been there to diagnose it, I almost certainly would have gotten into a car for the road trip home and bled to death internally on the way. Talk about a buzz kill. Surely somewhere deep inside my father’s emotion concealing titanium shell he had an inkling that he might have lost his youngest child, and it scared him. But there’s more to it than that.

Sent to military school at the age of eight, my father had spent his entire youth being forced to participate in sports for which he had no particular passion or aptitude. His boxing “career” is emblematic of what athletic activity meant to him. He fought 14 times, lost every bout, and was left with a nose that has been broken many times and looks it. It’s hard enough for people who enjoy mainstream sports to understand the mindless dedication of the ultimate athlete. But for my father, a man who sees little point in sports of any kind, it was truly impossible to understand why, having dodged a nearly fatal bullet, I would go back out and chase a piece of plastic around. Looking back now, I can’t really blame him.

At the time of course I had none of the understanding that comes with the wisdom of experience and maturity. I also didn’t believe him. Shows what I know. Just over a year later I blew my ACL in the semis at nationals, and was again admitted to the hospital following a tournament. This time it was Lenox Hill, on the east side of Manhattan, and this being in the dark ages before arthroscopy was widely practiced, an ACL reconstruction required a stay of a few days. True to his word, my father never came by, not even when, as a result of an infection, my stay was extended long enough to include my birthday.

So it came to pass that when I celebrated my 24th birthday in Lenox Hill Hospital my father was not in attendance, although Dan Weiss was. Having helped guide his Flying Circus team to a 21-19 victory over us in the finals, Dan had come to New York to see family. In a move that shows the kind of class Dan has in abundance, he stopped by the hospital to wish me well. My memory of the event is a little hazy thanks to the morphine, but it was the tail end of the party, and I seem to remember Dan hesitating when offered some birthday cake. It was an ice cream cake, and after a short time in a small hospital room filled with people, it had melted into a sweet, gelatinous mass that, like my father’s temper and my catheter insertion, wasn’t pretty.

Be Positive

2006-10-12T21:28:00.000-07:00

From my room at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in the Washington Heights neighborhood of upper Manhattan, I could, if I craned my neck, see the lights of George Washington Bridge. Of course, bleeding internally and with a catheter inserted, craning my neck was more than a bit of a challenge. Still, I did it, and even now I'm not sure why.

As bridges go, the GWB is an engineering marvel and probably the most travelled of the Manhattan bridges, but it pales when compared to either the Brooklyn or Queensboro bridges for aesthetic beauty. But on a cool, crisp fall night in September of 1984, the GWB was all I had. Waiting to hear if the freak injury I had suffered earlier that day would cause me to lose a kidney and thereby end my playing days, I think seeing the bridge gave me hope. The twinkling lights seemed to draw my eyes across the Hudson to New Jersey, and though I had never then and still haven't ever thought of reaching New Jersey as an especially significant accomplishment, on this night the idea did seem inspiring. When my doctor visited me later that evening to tell me the news, he chuckled at my bed-ridden calisthenics. Though I returned a half-hearted smile, I was terrified.

As Doctors are wont to do, he said little and committed to nothing, telling me that it was basically a wait and see game. If my internal bleeding slowed by noon the next day, he'd let nature take its course, in essence allowing the kidney to heal itself. If not, he'd remove it surgically. In answer to my query about surgical repair of the organ, he again chuckled, explaining that trying to repair the fibrous tissue of a kidney would be like trying to sew closed the holes in a block of Swiss cheese. Making his way to the door, he made one more mention of my blood count and its need to stabilize. Nervous, alone and scared beyond measure, I asked a question so preposterous that even twenty some years later I cringe in embarrassment at the recollection. I asked him my blood type, explaining that I had never known what it was. He called the answer over his shoulder as he stepped through the door, and the answer seemd to hang in the air long after he was gone. B+ is what he said.

Shortly after that I called home. It was after midnight, and my father answered. I explained the situation, repeating what the doctor had said, and he asked how I was in a groggy, sleepy voice. I lied, saying I was fine. I felt no better after the call. I'm not sure what I expected my father to say to give me comfort the doctor himself hadn't been able to provide, but I lay there thinking that surely there had to be some reason to feel good. That's when I heard the echo of the doctor's last words: B+. B positive. Be positive. Somehow, in that fearful moment in that darkened room in that old hospital with no one there to provide solace, I found what I was looking for in a play on the words associated with my blood type. Such is the desperation of the injured who've been told by the best medical personnel available that there's nothing much they can do but wait and see. Be positive. Follow the lights of the George Washington Bridge to northern New Jersey. Gaze beyond the bridge to see the outline of the cliffs of the Palisades against the dark but sparkling water of the Hudson. Close your eyes and try to sleep, knowing you'll wake to one of two possible futures. I think back to that night and marvel not at how different my life might have been, but at how little I understood the significance of the moment. With the vaguely contented mind of a simpleton who smiles at a joke that is far beyond his powers of perception, I drifted off to a remarkably good night's sleep secure in the comfort provided by the misinterpreted words of a fatalistic physician. Be positive.

And I was.

Three Stitches in Time, Then Nine

2006-10-08T19:59:00.000-07:00

The first true game of ultimate, with seven players to a side, that I ever played took place on the Sheep Meadow in New York's Central Park in the late 70's. Prior to that day my experience with the game was confined to three on three affairs played on a patch of Central Park dirt near West 93rd Street, the "field" defined by a an asphalt path on one side, a stand of trees on the other, and imaginary lines between lampposts at the ends. It was there that I first learned the thrill of out-jumping a taller player for a goal, or sprinting the length of the field to haul in another of my brother's beautiful throws. So when he announced one day that we were going to the Meadow to play a real game on a full size field, I was thrilled.

I realize now that what we were going to was a pick-up game, the kind of loosely organized, all are welcome event that I wouldn't bother with now on a bet. But back then, to me at least, it couldn't have been more exciting if it were being played between nationally ranked teams in a stadium packed with fans. Such is the folly of youthful exuberance.

It has been close to thirty years, so the details are hazy at best. In fact, all I really remember is that Andy Borinstein was there, and the first point I played was on offense. I use the term point rather liberally, because in truth I only "played" for about fifteen seconds, a period of time I spent sprinting around aimlessly at full speed. The field was unimaginably huge, and with no asphalt, lampposts or trees to guide me, I had no idea where to run. But run I did, as fast as I could and with no discernible purpose, right up until the point when I ran headlong into another player.

I note with some amusement that to this day I not only have no idea who the other player was, I don't even know if we were on the same team. I might have figured it out once I got my wits about me, but by then a crimson runnel was already flowing from my face. I made my way off the field awkwardly, bent at the waist and cupping handfuls of blood away from me so as to keep from staining my shirt. Once on the sideline I was relieved to see Brian coming off the field to check on me, knowing full well that my older brother would take care of me. In all fairness, he did place a reassuring hand on my shoulder as he examined the gash I had bitten through the left side of my upper lip on impact, but I'll never forget what he said next: "It's not too bad. You can make it home on your own, can't you?" Before I could answer, he was back in the game.

That was the day I learned the two most fundamental truths about ultimate. First, once you've learned the game, it doesn't take long for you to place it above family in order of importance. Second, it is a non-contact sport in name only.

Brian was right; I was able to make it home on my own. After cleaning up at a water fountain and being given some tissues by a kind stranger, I rode the M10 bus twenty blocks up Central Park West to our apartment building, then stopped in at the 14th floor office of Doctor Nora Gottschalk, a kind old German doctor whose family practice was located two floors below our family's apartment. She put three stitches in my upper lip and sent me home with the first of many scars I would receive over a nearly thirty-year career in the game.

In a strange twist of fate, Dr. Gottschalk would die senselessly some years later, run down by an M10 bus while crossing the street.

Over the years I would continue to bleed for the game, both internally and externally. In the fall of '84, I split my kidney colliding with Paul Sayles(?) after making a layout block on a Kevin Cande hammer at yet another meaningless Purchase tournament. The incident earned Paul the moniker "Trog-Buster" from his Static Disc teammates, and it earned me a trip to the emergency room of Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, where I might well have died from internal bleeding if not for the intervention of one Dr. Thomas King, famous father to the even more famous ultimate legend, Pat.

An amusing side note: Pat's father loved the game and often went to tournaments, both big and small. At '86 Nationals in Houston, Matt Jefferson suffered a dislocated shoulder. Accompanied by Dr. King to the nearest emergency room, Matty J was seen by a physician who had stopped reading Dr. King's book to attend to him.

Yet another amusing side note: While many believed that Matty J had suffered the injury while playing, he had actually suffered it the night before in an elevator at the hotel when a drunk and belligerent Nob Rauch, angry because Matty was wearing an opponent's t-shirt, grabbed him by the arm and threw him to the floor. Those truly were the days.

We played the following nationals without Matty (can you blame him?), but Nob still drank and I still bled. In a pool play game against Windy City, I ran down and caught a lead pass from Dan Weiss just before Ironman, on a futile poach block attempt, crashed into me head first. Fortunately for me, I had enough time to turn my head slightly. Unfortunately for Iron, he didn't. He came up from the ground with blood pouring from a gash that was rumored to take more than a hundred stitches to close (hence why he's not called Ironhead). I stayed in the game, threw a score, then walked off the field with a strange feeling of moist warmth running down my neck. Seems I had completed the point oblivious to the fact that my ear had been torn, an injury whose nine stitch remedy was, like me, paltry compared to Ironman.

Watching video of the collision later, I was struck not by the blow but by the sound it made, a hard, hollow, and sickeningly wet sound, like two coconuts colliding at high speed with a thick raw steak between them. Exquisite.

I played semis and finals the next day with a bandage wrapped around my head, looking like the fife player from the Archibald M. Willard painting, The Spirit of '76. Pat, in sympathy, wrapped his head in an (almost) equally bizarre manner. We won nationals for the first time that day, but for many years before and many years since, I've been bleeding.

Melancholia

2006-10-07T08:17:00.000-07:00

I've had a piece percolating for days now, and I had expected it to be ready this weekend. It was only a matter of sitting down and pouring it out. In my mind, it had everything: pathos, ethos and logos. It would cover my most recent experiences at regionals and how an inadvertent collision had resulted in a gash to my upper lip, a gash so reminiscent of one I suffered the first time I ever played that it bookended my career perfectly. That piece will have to wait. Curtis Wagner died, and a piece of me died too.

I can't say I knew Curtis well, because I didn't. We were teammates only briefly, and I expect we actually lined up on opposite sides of the field more than we did on the same side. I knew precious little about him personally, although I knew enough to think that his girlfriend and he were a perfect fit. Little surprise that they remained together all these years.

Of all of us on New York, Dave Mathison knew him best. He has written a marvelous memory that you may wish to peruse, although you do so at your own peril. It is that memory that has sparked the fires of my melancholia, and has me wondering what the hell happened. I'm sure my feelings are so familiar that they exceed even the most stereotypical crises of middle age in banality, and yet, because they're my own and unfamiliar to me, they sting deeply. Curtis Wagner died. He has been absent from my life for close to twenty years, so his loss is not one I should feel so deeply, and I suppose in truth I don't. What I feel, what cuts me so is what his death means. I look at a picture of us after our first nationals victory. We were so young, so bold, so confident. We believed in ourselves, in our greatness, in our invincibility. Over the years, whenever I've seen that picture, I still believed. But today, with Curtis gone, I saw it differently. Like a man who looks in a mirror and for the first time sees what he truly is and not what he used to be, I feel old. More to the point, I feel lost.

Several years ago, I embarked on an extensive renovation of my three-bedroom ranch house here in Garner, NC. Renovation doesn't even describe it. I completely gutted the place down to the frame and rebuilt it. The task compelled me to learn an entirely new set of skills and took far longer than I ever imagined it could, but eventually I managed to (almost) finish it. So now I live in a home that is light years removed from my old one. The differences are too many to recount, but the one that strikes me today is the loss of memories. Gone are the photos of old friends from New York. Gone is the picture of Pat, Blair and Crib from the post-game celebration of that first title in Miami, glowing with the satisfaction of accomplishment. Gone is the photo of Davey-Dave Mathison and me arm in arm, smiling broadly, standing in front of the scoreboard from the semifinals of Worlds the following summer, when our late game blocks had brought us back from the brink of disastrous defeat. Our smiles suggest we had it all along. We were young. We were bold. We were confident. We were full of ourselves, and something else to boot. But what ties those photos and all the others from that time together is the very thing that made us, makes all great teams, successful. We were one. No, we weren't best friends and we didn't always know each other that well off the field, but we were one between the lines.

Oneness. That oneness is what prompted me to put those photos up the day I moved into this house in December of 1998, even though the events they depicted were ten years gone by. Although I didn't know it then, the loss of that oneness is what allowed me to so easily take them down and pack them away when I began the renovation some years later. They remain in that box, in storage in my attic. Physically, they are a few yards away. Figuratively, the distance is considerably greater. Dave Mathison posted the group photo from nationals with his poignant memory of Curtis. I hadn't seen it in years. We were so young, so confident, so bold. We were one. Now one of us is gone. Some day, perhaps some day soon, there will be another. What will I feel that day? Will I be able to feel at all? Tomorrow is promised to no one. Nor is oneness.

Dave Mathison wrote that Curtis' passing makes him feel like going out and playing again. I have no such feelings. Instead, I want to go up into my attic and open up a box. I know I'll find some old pictures in there. I'm hoping to find something else as well.

One More Time (Part III)

2006-09-20T19:42:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning of the first tournament I've attended since Potlach more than three years ago (has it really been that long?), and who's the first person I see? Parinella. In truth I had actually seen him almost as soon as we got in the car, riding along next to us with his wife and child in the back. At some point he made a right and we went straight. Someone in the car (probably Bliss) suggested I follow him. I said nothing but went straight. Like I would ever follow Parinella.

So we got lost again and tried to call our teammates to no avail. But we did get Mick from Ring on the line, and although he was on a platform in NC waiting to catch a train he did offer some advice to help us get to the fields: "Keep going." Who said those Ring boys were a bunch of dummies? At some point we made a right (as in correct) turn and got to the fields just late enough to miss the pre-game drills but not so late as to cause a stir (in other words, right on time). We played a team in red with a name that might have included the word "tofu" but I can't be sure. Then we played a team in white named Luggage or Attache. They had a couple of guys named Scooter and Biff, and a girl named Brandi or Candi or Mandi or Sandi. They were better than the Tofu team, but we beat them too. And then things started to get weird.

The next team had names on their jerseys. The girls had names like Randy and Chesty and Eager while the guys had names like Grumpy and Flaccid and Incontinent. Before the game their captain asked if he could flip with me, as though it meant something to him. I declined. I think his name was Doofus. Then we started to play the game and they started beating us. At first it was just a little beating, like getting spanked by your dad when his heart isn't really in it. But pretty soon it was more like inmates during a prison riot taking advantage of the table turn by getting a 25 to life's worth of licks in on an especially sadistic prison guard. At some point we called timeout, and I suggested a change in strategy only to be shot down unceremoniously by a guy 20 years my junior. It was an odd feeling, having some know nothing out of nowhere cut me off and dismiss my input as though I had just stepped out of a Chevy Impala with a hamstring injury and no significant wins in the past 12 years. Stranger still was what happened after we stepped back on the field with the time honored admonition to "play harder" still ringing in our years. We got humiliated, with no fewer than eight people, including the Huddle Hun himself, dropping passes that hit them right in the hands. We lost by a bunch which meant we had to wait two hours to play a pre-quarter. Oh joy. So Bliss has the brilliant idea to go get some lunch and coffee and I figure that sounds great so I grab my bag and as I'm walking to the car I watch her back out and pull away.

Is there anything more heinous than a two hour bye on a cold, windy field when you could be having a nice lunch and drinking coffee but instead you're eating a cold sandwich on soggy bread sold to you by a clarinet playing kid with acne raising money for his high school band? And all the while you're asking yourself "What the hell was I thinking?"

So, the pre-quarter is against the Annapolis All-Stars, (as if there were enough quality players in Annapolis that they could actually field a team of all-stars) and by then the wind had really picked up. Our field for this one was upwind/downwind, which had an old, slow guy like me figuring I'd get some minutes because, well, wind tends to make throwing more important than running. Little did I know I'd get almost all my minutes on a single point.

It was early, and the all-stars had already notched one upwinder to give them an early lead, so we were trying to answer back with an upwinder of our own. Trouble is we were flat, and the deer-in-the-headlights look that had accompanied the flurry of pathetic drops in our previous game was popping up all over the place. The prospect of playing for ninth place was starting to look very likely, and I felt certain I'd be getting very drunk very soon. And then we played the point.

An accurate count is not available, but I'll bet there were 24 turnovers PER TEAM. We were looking to throw enough short passes to get a good look deep, and then heaving it into the by now howling wind and hoping for the best, so it wasn't surprising that we were turning it over. I have no idea what the "all-stars" were doing. I mean, they were going downwind for chrissakes. Fortunately for us they couldn't convert any of their two dozen chances, and with most of us ready to start puking or feign injury, Alan Hoyle launched one last prayer that I managed to chase down for the score. And while it's rare in ultimate that you can point to a single goal scored (other than the final one) and say it decided the game, this one surely did. We rode it and the subsequent momentum to a comfortable win, and the fall-stars moved on to dominate the 9th place bracket (or at least I hope so for their sake). But before we file this game away, let me tell you a little story.

Annapolis going upwind and some dude fires a forehand to YoYo streaking (or as close to streaking as she gets while clothed). As a group that includes YoYo, her defender and a few others gathers under the pass that is now floating about midfield, I watch an Annapolis guy sprint from near where I'm standing on the sideline a good 25-30 yards, take a running leap, and hurl himself into the group at close to full speed. The play was utterly reckless, totally dangerous, and sent the two women in the group crashing to the ground. As YoYo calls foul, I hear an Annapolis player (who coincidentally is YoYo's boyfriend) cry out from the sideline, "nice bid!" Can you believe it? Nice bid? Later on the same point, the same guy attempts to get a poach block by laying out into the path of our own Princess Liz Mahanna, clipping her in the side of the knee and sending her limping to the sidelines. Questioned about the wisdom of playing so recklessly, Mr. Nice Bid replied, "I didn't see her," a fact which surprised no one since it was clear he hadn't looked.

As a former club player known for hurling his body around on a regular basis, I make a conscious effort to tone it down when playing mixed gender ultimate. You simply have to. In most instances, men weigh more, run faster, and are stronger than the women we're sharing the field with. It is incumbent upon us to play responsibly and let certain plays go because to do otherwise is to risk causing a potentially serious injury. Ultimate is non-contact, but we all know unintentional collisions happen all the time, and their unintended consequences can be devastating. As a member of the Raleigh Llama at '99 Nationals, I watched a teammate get carted off the finals field in an ambulance unconscious as a result of a play that couldn't have been avoided. It was terrifying, but that shit happens. What shouldn't happen is people who ought to know better putting others at risk making "nice bids" that are anything but.

So, the scare with Princess aside, the day ended well, and for the first time I was actually starting to enjoy my farewell tour. We packed up our bags, and I actually found myself eagerly anticipating spending an hour or two at the fields, drinking free beer and chatting amiably with Jim, the Count, O'Dowd, and the rest of the dozen or so people at the tournament I actually knew. Sadly, it was not to be. In my time away from the game things have really changed. Today's player does precious little partying, and rarely does one get a whiff of kind bud while walking the fields during a bye. While I was ready to treat the tournament as a cocktail party, pressing the flesh while I sipped the suds, my teammates couldn't wait to pile into the cars and get back to the hotel. So, in a moment that suggested that perhaps the world had shifted on its axis, I found myself reluctantly leaving a frisbee party, and lamenting the loss of an opportunity to spend a few more minutes chatting with Alex DeFrondeville. Yes, my farewell tour had finally begun to be enjoyable, and in so doing had taken me into some truly uncharted waters. I left the fields glancing wistfully over my shoulder at the gathering of players huddled around the keg, the Count clearly identifiable among them. Somewhere, Blair O'Connor must have felt a strange and inexplicable stinging sensation.

One More Time (continued)

2006-09-16T20:50:00.000-07:00

At one point in my young life my family moved every couple of years, a natural byproduct of my father's employment in network television news, a field where climbing the ladder generally means being sent from one miserable assignment to the next, ostensibly to hone your skills but more likely to see if you've got the stomach for what is surely one of the harshest careers out there. One such move landed us in Highland Park, Illinois, a place that is, like Naperville, a suburb of Chicago. I don't remember all that much about Highland Park. We lived on Summit Avenue, my best friends were Joey Bernardi and Herman Moriano (both from the wrong side of the tracks town of Highwood), and somewhere across those tracks was an abandoned house that, in my memory, had an inexhaustible supply of windows to break with rocks. Yet even those meager memories, dim and distant as they are, are a heck of a lot more compelling than anything the current town of Napervile has to offer.

I have now been to Naperville at least a half dozen times, and I can not name a single distinguishing feature or identifiable landmark. In fact, so indistinguishable is Naperville's seemingly endless succession of strip malls from those encountered in any other sprawlurb I've ever visited that it is entirely possible that, like the Apollo 11 astronauts, I've never actually made the trip. And while the thought of being the victim of such a hoax might be galling to some, when confronted with the possibility that I have never actually seen the real Naperville I can only say, would that it were so. But no, I have been there, not once but twice thrice, and like Native Americans who believed that still pictures took a piece of their souls along with the image, I feel somehow lessened for the experience. And though it's true that the time spent in that vacuous void is a chunk of my life I'll never get back, I can temper the pain of that realization somewhat by vowing never to return. So it is perhaps the first positive development in the farewell tour of glory gone awry that I can safely say that although a poor decision made in haste has forestalled my farewell to ultimate, a wise decision made with certainty has precipitated my farewell to Naperville, and not a moment too soon. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

When last we left off I was lugging Bliss' bag around while she tried in vain to lead us from the Midway Airport reantal counter to our car. To say that Bliss is directionally challenged is putting it mildly, and circumstances are not improved by another of her odd little quirks, an inability (or unwillingness) to listen to, hear, or remember spoken directions when they're given to her. Add to that her refusal to even look at a map, insistence on sitting in the co-pilot's seat, and the delight she takes in pointing out every wrong turn the driver makes, and you begin to get a picture of what I was in for as I settled into the driver's seat of our rented Chevy Impala for the drive to Naperville. Oh yeah, and I wasn't wearing my contacts, which means I couldn't read a sign until I was so close as to render its information useless. Like I said, good times.

Remarkably, finding the hotel was really quite easy, after I had made no fewer than three wrong turns within a mile of the airport, each met with a smugly satisfied "Good job" from my altogether useless co-pilot. We pulled into the Holiday Inn sometime after midnight, and the parking lot was crawling with ulti players tossing the bee. I parked as far away as I possibly could and entered through the side door. Then came the best part about playing coed, and what is at least for now the absolute high point of my farewell tour; I was sharing a room with three women. How cool is that?

Before you let your minds run away with you, let me make it clear that this is not about hooking up. Rooming with women means the room smells nicer, stays cleaner, and every waking moment won't be accompanied by the SportsCenter soundtrack. It also means that someone will probably bring you coffee in the morning, and when you're winding down in the evening by doing some quiet reading, there's a good chance someone will be doing something craftsy across the room. In truth, it's not like being at an ultimate tournament at all, except for two telling factors.

First, there's still a good chance that your restful night's slumber will be all but ruined by snoring so loud you'd swear it came out of a 300 pound longshoreman. Second, you still need to get into the bathroom first or not at all after breakfast. Wives and girlfriends swear their husbands and boyfriends to secrecy on this one, but seeing as how I'm neither I can tell you without equivocation that women lie, and their shit really doesn't smell like flowers.

One More Time

2006-09-15T18:34:00.000-07:00

A few years back (probably more than a few, really) I hit upon the idea of having my own farewell tour to ultimate, something like what Kareem did but without the rocking chairs, cars, and thousands of adoring fans. My plan was to hand pick the tournaments and teams, and enjoy a leisurely, long goodbye to the sport to which I have given so much of my life. At the time I think I might have even scratched out a short list of events on the back of an envelope, a list which no doubt included such Northeast classics as Hingham and Clambake, the Mid-summer bash they call Potlach, and perhaps even mentioned Poultry Days. If memory serves, at some point I revealed the most important element of my farewell tour plan to former WSW'er Corey Sanford in an email. That most important element, an element that is critical to all retirements on the planet, is timing. How do you know when it's time to walk away? For me it was easy. I wouldn't leave on top, nor would I leave after dragging my aging carcass around at Open Nationals in one last, vain attempt at recapturing glory. No, I would leave after spending a year trotting around at a series of primarily coed and singularly entertaining events while wearing my age on my jersey. In other words, I would leave at the end of 2006.

Well, that was the plan, and at least a few elements of the plan worked out. First, and most importantly, I lived to see my forty-fourth year. Second, I remain healthy enough to at least play at playing in a somewhat reasonable facsimile of what accomplished players do. Finally, I have taken enough time off recently that I am not so sick of the game that the thought of going to a tournament makes me want to vomit. So what happened? How did my farewell tour of glory turn into my worst nightmare? Well, the truth is I'm still trying to piece together all the details, but I'm pretty sure it was my sister-in-law's fault, that she and my brother were co-conspirators, and that the whole thing was pretty much doomed from the get go.

For starters, the tour began at Winter League, when Bliss' half-baked plan to get me on her team instead landed me on the GeeWhizMan's roster. For a brief snippet of the special brand of misery that experience entailed look no further than the story of Sausage Boy and the Travel Callers. I suppose I should have known then that things would get worse before they got better, but what could I do? Cut and Run?

The next stop on the tour was Cape Fear Spring League (like I said, from bad to worse). Although things looked promising when I was picked by the legendary Tully Beatty, I soon realized that every other captain at the draft must have been on crack. Beatty managed to get a team that included me, Mike and Amy Gerics, Leah Rehill, Kevin Rhodes, and about 27 other people. Which meant that my two hour drive to games usually netted me about 8 points of a blowout victory over a bunch of guys who drink better than they play (and don't do either particularly well). I would call the whole thing a complete washout if it weren't for a blast from the past, Ben Baldwin.

I had the opportunity to coach Ben when he played for the SUNY Purchase Atomic Dogs in '89-90. Ben was a hard runner and very enthusiastic, but his forehand lacked touch. Still, he is most remembered for having to sit out a big spring break tourney in Wilmington because he had his flick finger smashed in a hotel room door by a teammate who took exception to Ben peeping in on him and his girlfriend. Sixteen years later, Ben's flick still lacks touch. I did not, however, ask about his hotel habits.

So there I was, two tourneys into the farewell tour of glory, and what did I have to show for it? GeeWhiz and Peeping Ben. How the mighty had fallen. Undaunted, I signed on to play next with a newly formed and as yet unnamed coed team in the Carolina Kudzu Classic (an event which employs a rather liberal definition of the term classic). We matched up in the semis with a combination Backhoe/Ring squad that was certain to pummel us, an outcome made all the more enticing by the delightful weather and the bottle of Maker's in my cooler. Just when it seemed the farewell tour was about to hit stride, one of my many turnovers was greeted by the overzealous heckling of one TJ Cawley. I say overzealous not because he was loud, obnoxious, or even funny. No, I say overzealous because he violated the prime directive of heckling; he was serious. Later, after the game, he confided that the reason he finds my turnovers so appalling is that he came into the game looking up to me but he can't abide the sheer volume of turnovers I produce. He earnestly explained that I could give so much back to the game if I would just play a more conservative game, the kind of game he plays. Did I mention his name is TJ? 'Nuff said.

Three events, three disasters, and with no money in the bank to sport a ticket to Potlach or the gas for Poultry Days, no reasonable expectation for things to get better. And with Bliss cajoling me to sign on for the fall, and that little voice inside my head saying, "You must be out of your effing mind," I made the fatal mistake. I signed on for the fall.

Which brings me to the second Friday in September at Midway Airport in Chicago where earnest, young ultimate athletes are tossing the bee at baggage claim and I am fighting a profound urge to launch my lunch. It's nearing midnight, we're waiting on bags, teammates, and a rental car. We have a room somewhere but no directions to it, and my sister-in-law, who is to blame for it all, has a bag the size of a small car packed to bursting with beads and jewelry making apparatus, the better to pass the time between games with. What am I doing here? I'm forty-four years old. More to the point, I'm old enough to know better. What the hell am I doing here?

So I lied. So sue me.

2006-09-03T19:20:00.000-07:00

Yes, I lied. I said I would post during the summer, but I didn't. And now the summer is gone, school is back in session, and I'm back to working like a dog. (Although truthfully, my dog never seems to do much other than sleep and eat. In fact, he's sleeping at my feet right now.)

At some point somewhere back in the distance, someone (is that vague enough for you?) mentioned that I should write more about my experiences as a teacher. In fact, I have done so on many occasions for the Raleigh News and Observer. One of them can be found here, and by clicking on the offerings in the right margin you can see a few more. If you prefer to listen to similar pieces I've done for our local NPR affiliate, you can find them here. I'm rather partial to the Mule Days piece, and the one on the Dress Code has a certain quality, but in truth they all pale in comparison to the real thing. I don't mean Coca-Cola, of course, but classroom teaching. If you've never done it, you can't possibly know what it's like. During my only ultimate podcast (which was lost as the result of severe technical incompetence) a fellow podcaster suggested I should be coaching ultimate. When I replied that I prefer to focus all my energies and talents on teaching, it was suggested that pretty much anybody can do that, but I am "uniquely qualified" to coach ultimate. I still smile when I think about the comment. The truth is that just about any bozo with a PE degree can take the UPA's coaching package and turn two dozen marginally skilled teenagers into a passable high school ultimate team in a fortnight of practices. Classroom teaching is another animal altogether, and I have little doubt that when it comes time for my fellow podcaster's little ones to begin their formal education, he will come to realize the folly of his comment.

I am now 6 days into my fifth year as a high school English teacher at West Johnston High School in Johnston County, North Carolina. While teaching is my primary responsibility (and the only one I am paid for by Johnston County Schools) , I am also the Director of our Freshman Academy, which means that I am in no small way responsible for everything that happens with (or to) our incoming class of freshmen, the class of 2010. As of Friday, that group numbered over 660, and was growing every day. I have learned more about public education in four years than I could ever share, but if there is one, all-important thing I have learned it is this: in public schools, the difference between a great education and a virtually worthless one can be as simple as who is standing in the front of the room. The dearth of available teachers coupled with the phenomenal population growth in our area means that we're pretty much looking for any warm bodies we can find to put in our classrooms. When you add tenure to that equation, you get the regrettable reality that any classroom you walk into might present a marginally qualified long-term substitute, a painfully jaded veteran counting the days to retirement, a wet-behind-the-ears but earnestly eager first year teacher barely staying afloat, or someone like me. If you think that the students in those classrooms are getting the same education, you must be on crack.

So, why do you care? Well, you may not, but those of you who have been patiently waiting for me to begin posting again can blame public education (and my unwavering devotion to it) for my prolonged silence. When I wasn't working full-time in the NCSU Forent Entomology lab over the summer, I was putting in volunteer time at WJHS, trying to get things in order for the upcoming year, a year which is now fully upon us in all its chaotic glory. Now that we're in session, I work 12 hours a day, five days a week, while continuing to put in 30 hours a week at NCSU on nights and weekends. It's a grueling schedule, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I love what I do, and it never feels like work. In fact, I believe it's what I was meant to do. I bring the same passion, intensity, and indomitable spirit that I brought to ultimate into my classroom, although I rarely spike my textbook. Still, when my students look into my eyes I have little doubt that they see the same thing my teammates once did, and what they see helps them to believe in themselves. The funny thing is, for four years they had no idea about my ultimate past, that I was once as passionate about a piece of plastic as I now am about their futures. Of course, that was before ESPN classic.

I first heard about the program from a fellow teacher who called my cell phone. That night a friend called while watching it. Do I need to tell you she was in hysterics? Soon my email inbox was overflowing, and the furor has still not died down. Copies on DVD now regularly make the rounds at school, and hardly a day goes by without someone in the hallway whispering with mock curiosity, "Whatever happened to Kenny Dobyns?" Although several people have promised me a copy, I have yet to see it (I don't have cable), but I expect I'll have a good laugh at my own expense when I do. I deserve to be ridiculed. I was over the top, out of hand, and preposterously self-obsessed. Still, I don't shy away from it. It is an accurate depiction of what I was, of what I felt I had to be in order to be successful. I may have been wrong, but we were successful. And now, all these years later, I'm just as over the top, just as out of hand, and just as obsessed. Thankfully, though, the focus of my efforts is no longer self-aggrandizement nor ultimately hollow victories. Now my opponents are apathy, indifference and ignorance, and while their names might lack the cachet of Windy City, Tsunami, or Titanic, they are significantly more formidable. And although I'll never again hoist a trophy in victory, there are days (quite a few of them actually) when I feel similarly elated, and significantly prouder for the accomplishment.

So, the question stands: Whatever happened to Kenny Dobyns?

He grew up. Finally.

long time no...

2006-06-01T15:06:00.000-07:00

Yes, it has been a while. The previous flurry of activity on my blog coincided with my winter break from teaching high school. With our first end-of-year exam scheduled for tomorrow, it won't be long before I will once again be hunched over my keyboard with a bottle of Maker's Mark close at hand, pounding out prose for the proletariat, throwing pearls before swine, at once exasperating and exhilirating any and all with time and the inclination to waste it. My heart's aflutter at the prospect.

And yes, for those of you with whom printing conventions carry undeserved significance, I will endeavor to make more judicious use of the shift key.

Until then.

you can't take it with you

2006-01-16T22:11:00.000-08:00

every year's end, the new york times publishes an exhaustive list of all the national champions in just about every sport in the sunday edition that falls closest to new year's day. for all i know this has been going on for many years, but it was not until the the late 80's that i began to take notice, an expansion of my world view that coincided with new york's run of championships that began about the same time. i must admit to some small sense of satisfaction at being included in a publication of such stature, and that the times recognized our accomplishment once a year did, at least for a day, lend us an air of legitimacy that we lacked for the other 364. ultimate was still unrecognized by, and unrecognizable to, just about everyone we knew who didn't play, and therefore we were still the lowly peasants of the sporting world. but we were kings for a day, and that, as they say, beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

one year, however, the times made a decision that had the potential to vault us from obscurity to celebrity (or some facsimile thereof). they decided to run a sidebar in that year's list of champions highlighting the accomplishments of local champions who were all but unknown to the world at large despite being legendary in their respective sports. i have no idea how the decision was made, who was involved, what the connection was or even the year in question, but i still remember, and will so long as my faculties remain with me, which local champion shared the sidebar with us: one wall handball champion joe durso of brooklyn.

researching the sidebar, the writer contacted me and joe and asked us some standard questions. what's it's like to be so successful and totally unknown? do you long for recognition and exposure? the usual fare. i was interviewed first, and i basically said it didn't really bother me because i hadn't gone into ultimate expecting to be famous. interviewed second, durso not only said that he wished for and deserved widespread recognition, he also took a swipe at ultimate by saying something to the effect of "hey, i'm an athlete. i don't play a sport with a limited skillset like frisbee." wouldn't you know the times ran that quote.

when the piece came out, several of my teammates were upset. one in particular, amos himmelstein, was incensed enough to write a strongly worded letter to the paper. i, on the other hand, didn't really care. over the years we were written about quite a bit. some of it was accurate, some of it less so, but none of it ever really made all that much of a difference, and i had long since stopped caring what people thought about us. i put the piece out of my mind, and because i didn't keep a copy, assumed i would never see it again. i was sorely mistaken.

while coaching the suny purchase atomic dogs in 1989 and 1990, i had the pleasure of having one arthur a. aidala on the team. artie was not much of an athlete, and he was most definitely not an ultimate player. what he was, however, was the most highly motivated, coachable, infectiously enthusiastic player i have ever been around, and an instrumental member of the team. he came up with many of our cheers, never got down no matter how little he played, and roamed the sidelines keeping everybody pumped up throughout every game. in fact, he can be seen in the video of the 1989 open national finals game between ny and tsunami, stepping onto the field to congratulate cribber (a former purchase teammate) after a goal.

i liked artie from the start, and in a strange piece of foreshadowing, i knew from the day i met him that we would be friends for many years. we have been. we still are. in fact, whenever i make a return visit to new york these days, i stay with artie. it was on such a visit that artie arranged the encounter that will tie all of these memories together.

it was christmas, and arthur is a social creature, beloved by all who know him in his bay ridge neighborhood, so spending the holidays in his company required me to accompany him as he "made the rounds," as it were. most of the visits took place at delis, pizzerias, restaurants, and many other local establishments arthur has been frequenting for years. the encounters were brief, filled with warm feelings, and evocative of a time that, for those who have not lived their entire lives in the same ten square block area of bay ridge, has all but disappeared. as one who lives in a part of semi-rural north carolina where walking onto a neighbor's property in search of a stray dog once brought me face to muzzle with a loaded gun, i rather enjoyed the experience with arthur. so when he asked if i minded stopping by a friend's apartment, i said no without hesitation.

the apartment was a small, one bedroom affair with a view of new york harbor and the verrazano bridge. while arthur and his friend exchanged hugs and loud, profanity-laced greetings, i looked around. one wall of the living room was covered floor to ceiling with sugar bowls arranged meticulously on a series of mahogany shelves. two other walls were covered with "art photos," framed photographs that, had they not been shot in black and white, would be called pornography. the rest of the living room was a cluttered mix of bric-a-brac of predominantly asian origin with an occasional african piece thrown in. it was while i was panning across the room taking it all in that my eyes landed on a collection of trophies, plaques, medals and laminated newspaper and magazine articles arranged in an alcove that could only be described as a shrine. stepping closer i noticed that all of the trophies were for handball competitions. looking even more closely, i noticed that one of the laminated articles was from the new york times, and that my name appeared in it. arthur's friend was none other than joe durso, the one wall handball champion who had disparaged ultimate as a limited skillset sport in the new york times some ten years earlier.

what followed was a somewhat awkward and altogether surprising series of revelations. although a frequent visitor to joe's apartment, arthur had never looked closely enough at the article to notice my name. because joe held every other athlete on the face of the earth in contempt, he had little recollection of having cast aspersions on me all those years ago, and seemed entirely unremorseful once reminded of it. taking the high road, i assured him i held no grudge whatsoever, but allowed as how he was in serious need of an interior decorator's assistance.

we spent the better part of the evening at joe's, and on subsequent visits i have seen him at arthur's place or out on the town. in the years since the times article was published he has lost none of his bitterness. he still laments his fate as an obscure champion, and sincerely feels that he is in every way deserving of the kind of recognition michael jordan once received, arguing that he is an equally talented athlete. given the slightest provocation, he will haul out and display every article ever written about him. asked about the current crop of handball greats, he sneers that he's better than every one of them. listening to him go on about his past success, the misery of his obscurity, and the unfairness of a world that still refuses to recognize and adequately reward his greatness, i am struck by the futility of his endless quest for respect, and i pity him. imagine being so concerned about what others think that you allow yourself to experience so little lasting joy in what you accomplish. talk about a living hell.

i was reminded of all of this recently when two things occurred, both of them somewhat loosely connected to ultimate and rsd. the first was jeff brown's mention of a prized photograph of him and me in usa today where through some mistake our names were jumbled. the other was a comment made during a podcast where someone suggested that it must be strange for me to teach at a school where no one has any idea about my illustrious frisbee past. it occurred to me then that while joe durso is an extreme case, many champion ultimate players suffer from the same melancholy. in the absence of mainstream acceptance, they cling to scraps of fleeting fame, seek out the company and comfort of those who recognize the significance of their accomplishments, and dream of a day when the world at large will recognize their greatness. i can't say i know of a sugar bowl collecting ultimate player, but i have seen many a shrine to past glory, and i'm quite certain that it wouldn't take much in the way of provocation to bring out the scrapbook, if you know what i mean. i just don't get it.

during our reign, i lived and breathed the game, and i truly believed that was necessary for us to be successful. looking back i'm not so sure, and i am more than a little embarrassed by some of the decisions i made, some of the family events i blew off for tournaments, and the utterly skewed value system i had at the time. but i'm older and wiser now, and while i can't go back and change the decisions i regret, i can be thankful that i've lived long enough to make up for lost time. i have no trophies, and no frisbee pictures adorn my walls. my past glories exist only in my memory, and were it not for a pair of misguided authors, they would have died there with me. i'll pay them back if i get the chance.

it's true that neither students nor faculty at my school have an inkling of who kenny dobyns is. in one of the more bizarre comments i have ever heard, my fellow podcaster said, "but they have no idea who you are." in fact, they know exactly who i am, although they don't know who i was.

so what?

20/20 revision

2006-01-09T19:40:00.000-08:00

so, another quarter is heard from, as jeff "dick" brown brings his considerable acumen to bear on the thorny issue of history, or, as he calls it, revisionism. seems jeff was sick and tired of reading what i was writing, so he decided to do something he never does (because he hates rsd) and reveal the truth. and after we had already wasted all that time on lies.

yes, friends, jeff was standing "right there" when it all happened back in 1993, and he was quick to reveal that in truth i struck the first blow (surprise, surprise) and that he thinks i'm a prick (no surprise, no surprise) and that everything that happened to me was warranted because i had started it all. he added a few jabs at our style of play (cheating) and how they were sick of being pushed around (justifiable response to unspirited behavior) so steve didn't back down when i hit him first and jeremy gave me what i had coming when i retaliated at steve for not backing down when i hit him first (yes, the logic does seem to break down a little in that section, but i think by then jeff was in over his head and simply grasping at whatever was out there that might keep him afloat). as a final tip of the hat in the spirit of fair reporting and fair play, jeff allowed that joey deserved every bit of cribber's head butt. what a gracious jeff that dick is.

not that we really need to go over it in too much detail, but jeff is, not surprisingly, totally mistaken. when i pointed that out to him in an email, even detailing the scene when, bleeding from the lip from jeremy's blow, i insisted that steve tell jeremy that he had started it all, jeff had an interesting reaction. "whatever," he wrote, sounding much like the fourteen-year-olds i teach when they discover that they're wrong. he added the question, "so, what? steve whispered it to jeremy or did the whole o line know?" i got the feeling he wasn't really interested in the answer when he added "i just thought it would be nice to say hello, but i was wrong." and not for the first time either.

what i'm still trying to figure out is precisely where in the i'm sick of your revisionist version of events because the truth is you hit him first which makes you a liar and your team a bunch of cheaters communication i was supposed to unearth the "hey. how're you doing?" i've looked several times, but i'm still not sure.

so let's give that horses' carcass a break, but not before we ask one question: if jeff, who was a member of the team and was standing "right there," never heard from moons that he had started it all, then how many of his teammates did moons allow to leave that field believing that he (moons) was guiltless and we (ny) had showed our ugly and evil nature by precipitating a brawl that deprived them (boston) of their right to a good, clean spirited game in which they would surely have been victorious?

while we're pondering that one, let's speculate as to just how joey giampino feels about this latest (jeff's) attempt by a former teammate to throw him under the bus. for years after that ill-fated contest, you couldn't throw a rock at a frisbee party without hitting some member or former member of the boston ultimate scene who was all too eager to blame the whole 1993 debacle on joey and his misguided efforts to bring toughness to beantown. they were, of course, singing a different tune when they beat us at regionals that fall by 7, but we never really did our best cheating until nationals-everyone knows that. still, the treatment joey received courtesy of his former comrades in arms was reminiscent of what happens when, waking up in a haze after a night of heavy drinking, you roll over to discover you're lying next to that not very attractive girl who looked a whole lot better when you were drunk. then, as you begin to slide quietly out of bed to make your getaway, you realize with a start that you're in your own bed.

yes, joey got the "i really have to be going, my nephew's fifth birthday party is today, i have to go to church, my niece's baptism is in an hour, leave your number and i'll call you, yeah it was great, i had fun too whatever your name is, don't bother freshening up, you look great, don't bother waiting for the elevator the stairs are faster, please don't tell anybody where you're coming from on your way out, bye" treatment in a big way. and you always read that boston is such a friendly town.

guess you can't believe everything you read.

so parinella gave me a chuckle when he said that joey teammates' hadn't rushed to joey's defense because he was the instigator with crib. perhaps that's what jim was thinking. lenny, however, had a different reaction, as he jumped in with both horns and insisted that cribber had to be thrown out of the game. never mind that there were no observers, no yellow/red card system, and no precedent for making such a decision. "cribber's gone," he yelled. realizing that in fact crib probably was, for our purposes, gone, i called his bluff.

"fine," i said, but jeremy's gone too." to no one's surprise, he rejected the offer, and the game continued.

and you're telling me you'd really rather read that history book? whatever.

notes from the fallout shelter

2006-01-05T20:11:00.000-08:00

my newsletter came in today's mail. i only recently started receiving it again even though i'm a lifetime member. seems they lost track of me when i moved seven years ago and stopped sending it. guess it took me a while to notice something was missing.

so anyway, i flipped quickly through, glancing at the pictures (of course, there were none of me)before settling down to read it over a dinner of roasted pork loin and winter root vegetables in a maple-mustard glaze. sadly, i found but one article that i was even remotely interested in reading. it was kyle weisbrod's piece, which made me aware of the situation involving the names of coed teams (i'm sorry, mixed teams) at nationals and the upa's request to have them changed. as a founding member of we smoke weed, this was a topic i found interesting. of course, after finding that kyle never reveals what the names of the teams were before they were changed (perhaps he assumes we all know? nah.) i quickly lost interest. besides that, all i did was look at the pictures, and then only briefly.

boy am i glad i have a lifetime membership. it would suck to have to pay for this thing.

so, am i the only guy out here who looked at the kati halmos poster and noticed her athleticism right up until the point when i realized it was a centerfold, and then started to check out her butt?

so that got me interested again and i read the pufahl award interview. what does spirit of the game mean to kati? patting your opponent on the backside and sharing ass pats with your teammates.

i took her poster down.

check this out: of the 38 players listed on the rosters of the teams in the mixed finals, 23 shared this amazing stat: their turnovers equalled or exceeded their goals caught, goals thrown and d's combined. and that's even with two stellar players having double digit turnovers, which would seem to leave very few for the rest of the players to share. nope. talk about a swillfest. (interesting aside here...although the numbers seem to tell a different story, the reporter for the finals writes "Brass Monkey played their best game in the finals.") in defense of the players, i've heard it was windy, and perhaps the conditions are to blame for the turnovers. after all, i have it on good authority that when it's windy your teammates seem very far away.

speaking of which, how about getting discraft to print a warning on all discs like the one that appears on rear view mirrors in cars: warning-in high wind your teammates are closer than they appear.

but here's another angle: maybe it wasn't the wind at all. maybe the reason they put on such a shameful display in the finals was because they had been forced to change their names by the upa. maybe it was an identity crisis that led to a crisis of confidence. thinking i might have something here i did some digging. it turns out that a groundbreaking research study done at a prestigious university at some point in time revealed that baseball players whose names were removed from their team jerseys immediately prior to playing a game recorded significantly lower batting averages and in turn reported that the baseball seemed very small. a follow-up study has yet to be completed. hmmmm.

so, after a few days without posting to rsd, the furor seems to be dying down. it's a good thing too. i don't think i could stand seeing ad hominem one more time. looking back i have to say i'm quite pleased. the four posts over two days generated a total of 90 some posts before a week was out. if you subscribe to the theory that for everyone who posts there are 100 who read but don't, that's an awful lot of people with nothing better to do. of course, there's no justifiable reason for subscribing to such a preposterous theory.

more amusing even than the number and passion of posters was the volume of email i received. the highlight of that wasted bandwidth was one of the history book's writers taking time out from his vacation in st. martin to inundate my inbox with messages that questioned my loyalty to him, ultimate, humanity and the yankees. in one especially impassioned moment, a four line paragraph called me cruel, harsh, weak, and cruel. clearly, after all that writing for the history, he was running short of adjectives.

i won't violate the spirit of the game and post a private email, so i'm afraid you'll just have to imagine how good the rest of them were based on that brief snippet. and again, in case you forgot, he could have been on a beach in st. martin.

speaking of spirit, or more accurately etiquette, is it customary to find readers copying your blog and posting it onto rsd, rather than simply directing people to the blog? i'm new to the game, so my inquiry is sincere. it seems a little shady to me.

guess that's all for now. with school back in session it'll be hard for me to find the time to keep posting regularly (either here or on rsd) but i'm having so much fun i'm going to keep it going as long as i can. it won't be easy, but i think i owe it to the sport.

it ain't easy being me.

2006-01-03T16:27:00.000-08:00

i can't remember the exact year, but it had to be early 90s. i went to fools to play with the dwarves because, well, i'm kind of a stubby little guy myself. still, most of the dwarves were stubby guys i had always played against, and arriving at the fields that first morning i was a little nervous about what kind of reception i might get. but i had a good gameplan, which was to have fun, fit in, be short and laugh a lot. well, it seemed good at the time.

i hadn't been at the fields for more than five minutes, hadn't even put my cleats on yet, when one of the original dwarves (taco?) saw me and said enthusiastically, "we've got dobyns. now we're definitely going to win."

fast forward to fall 2005 in raleigh, nc. after a three year break from winter league (and a 28 month hiatus since i last threw a disc) i decide to put my name in this year's draft. in truth, my sister-in-law had concocted a good plan. she suggested that, as she was a captain, i should sign up saying i would only play in two games and couldn't make the season ending championship tournament. she was sure she would be able to pick me up in a later round and i could play with her and my brother. well, it seemed like a good plan.

i was chosen in the first round, the fifth overall pick.

in a post to rsd today, eric zaslow unwittingly made a very shrewd and timely observation. he commented that i'm clearly concerned with my ultimate legacy, a comment that, as he meant it, is totally false. i couldn't care less about my ultimate legacy as he describes it, the collective opinion of a vast and faceless majority who don't know me and never will. (on a side note, if i really were all that concerned about how history sees me don't you think i might have bristled at the description of me in the history: a comical napoleon?) i am, however, concerned that the legacy of having once been great will dog me to my dying day, and that the one thing i really want to do when i go out on the field these days is the one thing i might never be able to do-have fun.

at our most recent winter league game we were involved in a close game for a change (we had won our previous two rather easily), it was a beautiful day (although the fields were a little sloppy) and i was having fun. after catching a short pass near the sideline, i wound up and threw an absurdly big backhand fake and heard the call: "travel." i turned to my defender, and i was probably smiling when i did so because that's always been one of those calls, particularly in league play, that i think is kind of absurd. noticing that a big glop of mud had splashed up onto the rim of the disc, i reached out to a teammate on the sideline to wipe it on his shirt. at that point my defender says, "why don't you wipe off your ego while you're at it, old man." i turned and for the first time really looked at the guy. he was my height, portly, with a beard, wearing a visor, and obviously very fired up about something. and then it hit me; he was fired up about covering me. all i wanted to do was have a little fun, not get hurt, and get back home in time to cook an almond torte i was taking to a friend's birthday party that evening, and this guy was out for blood, and willing to talk trash to get it. in winter league.

so, why the pity party? why now? well, the recent reactions to my rsd posts have ranged from the "you're unnecessarily harsh," which i deserve, particularly as it relates to my post about jessi's research, to "you owe more to the game considering your stature and reputation," to which i say nonsense. after two hospital stays (one in intensive care), two knee surgeries, and countless cuts contusions, bumps and bruises, i owe this game nothing. it's one thing to say a professional athlete who has parlayed a playing career into a tidy living owes a bit of respect back to the people who lined his pockets, but all ultimate ever provided me was a place to compete. in return, i brought everything i had to the table every time i played. if you ask me we both kept up our end of the bargain. we're square.

so now, nearly 30 years after i first played 3 on 3 in central park, i occasionally sit down at my computer and post some comment on rsd for the sole purpose of amusing myself and the small handful of like-minded people out there who read along. so what? i like to go out to winter league and haul my aging carcass around while throwing at what must surely be about a 50% completion rate. so sue me. i ruffle some feathers and poke some fun and tweak some noses and never take myself any more seriously than i take anyone i'm making fun of. sew buttons on your underwear. is it really such a crime? and why shouldn't i do it? because once, long ago i was great and my team won and people looked up to us (or alternately hated us and wanted to see us perish in a fiery car crash)? i'm not buying it. zas and zags and tony and joe may be selling it, but i'm not buying it. not even if they throw in a free copy of their book(s).

to flame or not to flame

2006-01-01T14:41:00.000-08:00

recent rsd post references world games team member and backhoe player jessi witt's doctoral research in cognitive psychology. seems she's looking into the effect perception has on athletic performance, specifically how much bigger the ball seems to good hitters in softball (and, one would assume, baseball). the post contains a quote from a livescience.com article posted on msnbc.com in which witt likens the effect to her own experiences as a world class ultimate player. she goes on to explain that when she's throwing against the wind her cutters seem far away, but when she's throwing with the wind her cutters seem very close. am i the only one who has a problem with this? how did it actually get published in anything?

what jessi is talking about has absolutely nothing to do with perception. the truth is that it's harder to throw into the wind and easier to throw with the wind. she is probably neither strong enough nor skilled enough to reach the cutters when she's throwing into the wind, so they are, effectively, farther away. by contrast, nothing about the environmental conditions makes the softball any easier to hit for the good hitters. therefore, jessi's comment is totally beside the point, and the fact that she thinks it is relevant suggests she doesn't really understand her own research. so, do i post this on rsd?

and while i'm at it, do i also post that pretty much anyone on the team other than jessi will tell anyone willing to listen that jessi was easily the worst player on the team and really had no bisuness being on the team at all? talk about coming back with a bang, not to mention pissing in your own pool, figuratively, of course.

not that i've ever really cared what the people around here think. besides, i rarely swim.

beginnings

2006-01-01T13:09:00.000-08:00

in the winter of 1994, judy fisher, my then girlfriend, alerted me to an item on a frisbee newsgroup that purported to have been written by a member of my ultimate team, cojones. the post was rife with misspellings (a facet i later learned had been affected deliberately to lend the piece authenticity) and generally trash-talked its way to a prediction that we (cojones) would beat boston's dog in the coming national championships. we did not, and it turned out that the post was actually written by a member of dog as a ruse to psyche his team up. what is funny is that at the time no one on cojones knew about the newsgroup, rec.sport.disc. we were not nearly so techno savvy as the boston bunch, so they had been able to concoct and execute this elaborate ruse without us ever knowing about it. it was only judy's keen eye (she was also from boston) and her divided loyalties that allowed the ruse to ever become known.

some years later, i began to post to rsd with relative frequency, and eventually became a habitual poster of some reknown. in other words, i followed a trail blazed by boston some three years earlier, and i freely admit it.

this morning i found parinella's blog, read it with some amusement, and noted that he had written about me with a seemingly sincere certainty that i would never see it. i did see it, i did respond, and in turn i did set up this, my own blog.

having noted that jim has been blogging here since august of 2004, i have shrunk the time it takes me to follow in jim's footsteps from slightly more than three to slightly more than one year.

in the words of p-funk, gaining on ya.