Bailout, Blue Eyes, Wine & Baseball

- posted by Bill

Musings from the weekend. Wanted to put something in the blog and thought I’d offer some thoughts from the weekend even though it may not have much, if anything to do with Ultimate.

For those of you who have worked in the Coast Guard, with the Coast Guard or some other service sector organization you may have heard the expression “Your poor planning does not constitute an emergency on my part.”

Well, in reality, if often does, usually from the top down. And so it seems, it has happened on a grander scale as I’m perusing through the 110 page “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA) 2008”. Now, even though it doesn’t state it in any of the “purposes” of the bill, we all know it is to bailout Wall Street which has gotten itself into some unfathomable amount of debt which can not reasonably be explained or paid off in any other fashion. I heard this weekend that credit is basically frozen right now for items such as houses, cars, college tuition, etc…you know, only the non-important luxury items of our society. Is anybody else having “3 Stooges” movie flashbacks every time they see the trio of Bush, Paulson, Bernanke parade across the TV?

Okay, speaking of movies and television, let’s talk about something more pleasant while I try to figure out how to have all my assets transferred to the Bank of Venus or traded in for bales of tobacco and soy beans in preparation for our return to an agrarian economy. Want to bid a Buzzard farewell to Paul Newman who died this weekend. My Top-5 Newman roles were Henry Gondorf in The Sting, Butch Cassidy in Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, Dodge Blake in Message in a Bottle, Fast Eddie Felson in The Color of Money, and Doug Robers in The Towering Inferno.

And I have a movie recommendation for the rest of you Buzzards. For any of you who enjoy British humor, not the Benny Hill genre slapstick but the more dry “Colin Firth-ish” type, you need to go rent or have Netflix deliver Death at a Funeral. If you have ever had to endure a dysfunctional family gathering of any kind, wedding, reunion, holiday, or funeral, this will make you laugh out loud that somebody had it worse than you.

I watched it Saturday night after having sloshed around at the Smith Mountain Lake 20th Anniversary Wine Festival. When I say slosh, I’m referring more to the rain, than the drinking, though not excluding the latter. My personal favorite from the 28 winery tents of Virginia wines was the 2007 Viognier from Veritas Winery. I confess that I’d never even heard of Viognier before going but it’s my new favorite white. Also, my shopping spree (and all the other soggy festival attendees) on wine was arguably a more effective way to “maximize overall returns to the taxpayers of the United States” than this ridiculous EESA 2008…Don’t you like how the wording of this bill’s purposes makes it sound like it’s some humanitarian effort for the middle class citizenry rather than the “golden parachute for the wealthiest 1%” that it really is.

Speaking of wealthiest 1%, in the world of professional athletics, there were some interesting notes this weekend beginning on Thursday with USC’s (please don’t try and tell me they aren’t paid) loss to the Beavers of Oregon State. And there were some good pro games too. I caught the 2nd half of the Redskins-Cowboys game on tv (a rarity for me to sit down and watch sports on tv for that long anymore), and as a former Redskin-aholic, I enjoyed that outcome. I also notice from the highlights that a guy named Brett Favre completed 70% of his passes yesterday and had 6 TD passes! Not bad for a “washed up” QB.

Apparently some good baseball action this weekend as well. The Brewers are going to the playoffs for the first time since 1982! I watched them beat out my beloved Orioles that summer by a game in the AL East with a lineup that included four future Hall of Famers on that team, Don Sutton, Rollie Fingers, Robin Yount, & Paul Molitor. Good to see them beating out the larger market choke artists of Shea Stadium.

Okay enough rambling. Let’s have a great game today.
Pull!

Welcome to Autumn

- posted by Bill

This run of 14+ games is starting to spoil me. When was the last time we got stood up by two players and didn’t miss them? Okay, well when I say “didn’t miss” I meant, we still had plenty to play, not that we didn’t want you guys there…

Listen Todd, I know it was your first day back after about a month of leave but in case you need a small reminder I found the perfect bumper sticker for you…

We had another great game on the first day of Autumn which ironically seemed much warmer and more humid then our last days of summer last week.

Want to welcome out Tim2 (look you already get a nickname since we have an established Tim), and welcome back to George and to Kelly who made a surprise visit and who obviously is in the spirit of the above bumper sticker, giving up the job search for Ultimate today.

We had some nice collisions today. Brook and I had a rude intersection after I had tapped a high pass into the air and that tried to recalibrate the landing. Rodney took out Scott on a slide tackle in the end zone and Brian clobbered Bob on one pass along the sideline (though apparently not hard enough as Bob caught it anyway).

In fact, with that grab and another one in which Bob outran Phil half way up the field and all the way across the end zone for a score took some credibility away from the “old stiff and sore” routine that Bob would like for you to believe. Jason found the words the more common belief among his fellow Buzzards, “Bob’s full of it! I’m not buying that bum ankle story anymore. He’s outrunning everybody.”

Will and Mark also joined us but somebody forgot to explain another Ultimate rule to them…if you’re going to be late, you don’t get to stretch. Again, it’s nice to have so many people playing right now that you can start without everybody that RSVPs.

By the way, anybody think that if the BPUC can increase our debt to income ratio a little higher that we’d qualify for the current Federal buyout of all things private. You suppose this is what Alexander Hamilton had in mind when he established the Department of Treasury? You suppose anybody will challenge Ben Bernanke to a duel?

Brook's Photostream...

- posted by Bill (all photos courtesy of Brook...well except this one to the right, he's not that good)

Yesterday was another great game and we had 18 players! So we had some photographers out there and got to sub players in and out, the weather was great, what more could you ask for? I'll let the photos speak for themselves...well mostly. I'm attaching some of the better ones here but you can look at all of Brook's photos...well, all the ones I kept posted on my Flickr site.





MikeC gets a eyewitness view of Brian and Rodney going up for the disc...this doesn't turn out quite like you might think. Check out the Flickr for the rest of the story.

Annette looks a little perplexed.

Bob getting off a throw as Phil tries to lay out to stop it.

Will beats Phil to the corner of the end zone.

Erik and Brad both go vertical for the disc.

Thunder leading Annette & MikeC in a Conga line.

Jason running down the field.

Eli getting airborne.

Brad chasing down the disc.

Hollan and Bill stretching for disc.

New Math and Avian head shops...

- posted by Bill

“8 + 7 does not equal 17 Bill”. Okay, to be fair I can add, but somehow I’d gotten into my head that a regulation game was 16 players and when I start adding or subtracting from that point I actually got the math right but my baseline data was flawed. Which is a ridiculous excuse but actually what was going on in my head yesterday afternoon as we were coming back into the locker room after a great game of 8 on 7.

As we wandered out yesterday, I noticed the grass had not been cut and that there were a gaggle of Canadian Geese just sitting on our field. They quickly took flight noticing the approaching Buzzards but they left us “presents” all over the field. Is it just me or does goose feces have a disturbingly similar aroma to cannabis? Had they detoured over Northern California? You know, as professional Law Enforcement officers, we weren’t too sure what our jurisdiction over the geese were or if we had extradition agreements with Canada so we decided not to pursue that action and instead just pulled the disc to start our game.

Since I’ve been playing with this group it’s been my observation that the extra person makes huge differences in games with 7-11 players. Not usually so much with anything more that that because often it gets so crowded that you can just kind of zone the other team when you’re down a player. But what is not supposed to happen is that the team short a player gets a lot of long scores because in theory the extra-player team can always have a “safety”.

Yesterday was the exception to that Ultimate axiom. The gold team, stacked with the legs of JQ, Bob, Hollan, & Will exploded for a run of early scores on deep passes. Despite the attempted force lessons of yesterday, our green team could still just not effect the defensive theory of “forcing middle” and gave up pass after pass down the sidelines.

We also gave up two toe dragging end zone sideline scores to ballerinas Rodney & Will. Kevin almost came down with one of his own for green but called himself out on the back line. Mercifully, Ultimate Karma provided for an immediate gold turnover after that and we got a nice short score but it was one of very too few for green yesterday.

Erik did manage to pull in a few scores yesterday for green but I would submit that at least two of those were on “missed” throws to other players that he just found himself in the right position for. I know this because the first one came out of my hands and was headed for JasonK whom I could just not find the range to yesterday missing him by about ½ arm’s length on at least 3 passes in the end zone.

Good to see some guys back out yesterday that have been missing some lately…Brian & Mark. Thunder keeps trying to quit us for a day or two of rest, then checks the temperature at game time and realizes the addiction is just too strong and winds up wandering out to the field.

Alec, a newer addition to the Buzzards, and I were talking on the way out to the pitch yesterday and he asked how late in the season we play. I told him we played all through the winter last year and he asked for clarification.

“So you move inside at some point?”

“No we stay out” I said. “It’s only really bad on those high 20’s, low 30’s days with icy drizzle.”

“You’d have to trudge through 3 feet of snow in the winter where I’m from.” Alec observed.

“Oh? Where did you come here from?”

“Maine”

Well welcome to D.C. Alex. I grew up in the Northern Virginia suburbs and have lived in this area parts of about 25 years of my life and I can only remember 2-3 snowstorms that ever dropped that much of the white stuff. I think you’ll find our winter games practically mild by Maine standards.

Of course after a great defensive block on a mark yesterday, Alec was glad it wasn’t winter yet. He took a mean shot of disc off his hand.

Today is picture day boys & girls. Remember to brush your hair and tuck your shirts in before you come out today and Hollan has hopefully brought his camera. Phil, I hope you brought a clean shirt. The one you’ve been wearing that reeks of weekend beer and goose droppings is wearing thin.

"What's a crop?"

Posted by Bill

Great game of 7 on 7 yesterday. The wind was blowing 15-20 mph and we really had to work on our short game but the teams were pretty well balanced and play was good.

Strong winds don’t deter some people from trying long passes. Your's truly got one to sail nicely early in the game and it wound up going off Brook’s fingertips in the end zone but encouraged by that near miss I kept hucking away, at one stretch about 4 times in a row down the field trying to hit Tim with one as he seemingly kept sneaking behind the defense. But either the wind would pick it up or I’d turn over the flick, or zip one into the defender’s arms and never found much success with that. Of course I was relieved to see I wasn’t the only one having trouble. JQ let loose with one of his golf slice shots that he likes to start out of bounds and come slicing back in to a man running deep…well it sliced back in, all the way across the field, and then all the way out on the other side…mad wind!

So he and Bob tried to stick to their short game for the most part and handled well, feeding Hollan, Tom, Erik, Jason & Fred as they found lanes to cut in.

There was some really good defense being played yesterday and even when you thought you had a throw in, sometimes the wind would hold it up long enough for the defender to get there. Phil made a great play on one nice zip throw from Bob to a cutting JQ in the corner and got his hand up to knock it down.

For the gold team, Rodney did manage to find Thunder early in the game for a nice mid length score that looked like it was headed over Scott’s head until he jumped a little, got a hand up, deflected the disc and it came down in his arms as he tumbled to the ground. And Mike at one point, after some frustrating discs off fingertips and throws in the wind, triumphantly spiked the disc after a score late in the game.

We tried to use the windy day to work on some formations and mechanics but when two of the more “experienced” players shouted back to directions of “force middle” and “shift force” ….” What’s the middle?” and “Shift what?” I realized that maybe we hadn’t practiced either of those things much or Rodney and Phil’s collective ability to pay attention was waning.

I was reminded of the scene in “Field of Dreams” with Costner’s character, Ray Kinsella and his ruthless, foreclosing brother-in-law Mark:

Mark: "Admit it, Ray. You've never liked farming."

Ray Kinsella: "That's not true."

Mark:"It is true. You don't know the first thing about farming."

Ray Kinsella: "Yes I do. I know a lot about farming. I know more than you think I know."

Mark: "Then how could you plow under your major crop?"

Ray Kinsella:"What's a crop?"

Uh….”What’s a force?”

For the sake of the discussion…in general terms the word “force” refers to the direction you are either trying to get the handler to look to throw, or the direction you are trying to make the person you are covering run to. And usually, the marker is trying to force the handler to throw to the middle as the rest of the defense forces the cutters to a respective sideline.

Then you have commands like “switch force” which you can use if the marker is forcing to sideline to get them to move their force direction for a few seconds so that the defender can catch up to a cutter that may be headed for that sideline, especially near the end zone. The basic idea is to force a team to throw a long ways across the field.

Maybe we’ll take 5-10 minutes prior to game time today and just work on a couple formations.

Thanks everybody for a great game yesterday. Weather is going to be perfect today. PULL!

Farewell KellyG!

Tuesday was Kelly’s last game with us as she is leaving HQ. It was a good game to leave on. We had 15 people out there, overcast, not too hot, and NO SOFTBALL!

It’s nearing the end of transfer season and the Buzzards have done well. We certainly miss Swinny, Travis, MattC, Frank, JasonN and others but we have reloaded well. A bunch of new people have joined us this summer…I don’t know whether or not they’ve been here and just not playing or have transferred in but welcome to Bo, Mike, Dan, BobH, JasonK (back for a 2nd stint), George, Brian, Erik, Fred, Will, Eric, Paul, & Mark. Adding at least a dozen new players and only losing a handful works out to a really nice surplus as evidenced by the 8 on 7 game we had Tuesday.

Anybody else notice when you play with that many that you don’t get a lot of cross the field passes completed through traffic. I ripped one loose the other day to realize MattP was standing between me and where I wanted the disc to go. I saw Thunder and Kevin also finding several passes unintentionally coming there way.

Ultimate gets a good cross over from other sports as we have drawn from Flag Football, Soccer, Volleyball & Softball and whenever you get players from those other sports you make some prejudgments as to their strengths based on that. The football guys tend to have good field vision, the volleyball folks know how to position and jump, the softball players adjust well to discs in the air, and the soccer folks run and run some more. Then in Ultimate those skills start melding together and you find guys like Fred on Tuesday…a soccer guy if I’m not mistaken, finding his grip all of a sudden and pulling down everything thrown to him on Tuesday.

With that many people we, on the green team at least, attempted to run a few things from the stack and that worked with varying degrees of success. One of the things we did seem to do pretty well was to utilize the dump pass. In fact one of the new guys, Mike, used it quite well on at least 4 occasions that I noted. Never mind Rodney’s whining Mike. Anytime he doesn’t get the disc on a play he thought he should have he gets a bit agitated. We’ve learned to just ignore him. If some of you want to see some fairly simple diagrams of stack plays as well as some other useful basic info, check out the U of Oregon’s Ultimate Basics page.

Looks like another great weather day for us today. Hope to have a good game.

Pull!

Diagonal pitch, crazy 8's

~ posted by Bill

Okay, I’m updating, I’m updating! I’m always surprised to find people actually miss reading this when I leave it fallow for too long.

Last week I was forecasted to write a blog…singularly about me, as I’d had an atypical all around good day of disc. Now, narcissistic as I am, and really, as easy as this blog realm is to really make it “all about me”, I would be very remiss not to mention we had a great game last week before the holiday of some all around good play by several people.

I can’t even really remember what day it was. We were softball and soccer free on the south field, which by the way has begun to take on its August concrete-like properties, and a couple folks from NDU or ICAF joined us. This game almost wasn’t called at all as we only had 7 for sure and I really wasn’t feeling like running on a 3-man team. But replies back from Will, Hollan, Mark, et al. said “Let’s play, who cares” so I reluctantly called the game at the last minute and we wound up having 11 out there as two others besides our McNair brethren joined us.

Splitting up the teams was a bit of a challenge. I had no idea what to expect from those two. Both played well but J.Q. was a complete ringer and I just really got lucky picking him for my team. Todd also was pleasantly surprised to find he had somebody running to the end zone when he had the disc in hand to throw. He had some serious wheels and made the rest of us look pretty good on several plays including a behind the back toss I managed to get close enough to him to run down. It was noted my paltry 20% completion percentage on such tosses were actually worth the disbelief factor when it actually works.

Hollan may have had the play of the day making me look like a better thrower than I actually am, once again. I had cut loose on a high arcing flick that was coming over Will’s shoulder into the end zone. At the last second Will actually got a hand up and deflected the disc…back up. Well when the disc stays up, guys that hustle make plays and Hollan had stayed with it and sliding across the back of the end zone came down with a great catch.

Anyway, that was pre-Labor Day weekend…after the holiday, we came out on the field yesterday, many of us needing to purge some 3 or 4 day weekend toxins, or, in the case of Phil and Rodney (returning from long absences) even more.

I called the game yesterday after 11 responses, one actually cancelled but 5 on 5 sounded good. We got out to the south field to find two softball games strolling on right after us and crunching us for space so we went with the diagonal pitch layout and 16 people actually showed up!!! After about two trips up and down the already condensed field, we decided to play 6 on 6 and have 2 subs each, introducing some to the “last back” tool of Ultimate. I’m not sure this actually functioned as designed and often times just a couple needing air or water went off the field after a score. It was hot, and the substitutions worked well.

Welcome out to some new faces even though a couple of you have played already I may not have officially greeted you…Mike, Paul, Eric, & Bill. Great to have all 4 of you out there yesterday. Welcome back Rodney & Phil. I had forgotten how much I missed the great attitude and Spirit of the Game until standing next to Rodney on the sideline yesterday listening to him comment on the softball game next to us “Next time down the field we ought to chuck the disc right upside his head, get out of our #&*@ing enzone you *@&!”....nice.