Apologies for re-using a facebook quip as this post's title, but it just came so naturally* ... anyways, the winning actually did not come easy at all, as with the newfound RSVP rules and plenty of time to set lineups beforehand, I managed to craft a sort of speed/athleticism/hucking (Garret/Griesy,Dheintime, now back in town) v. hands/smarts/work-it-up (Joe/J-Ro/Dixon) matchup that could not really have been more balanced. The latter crew, including your narrator, took the free pizza, winning 13-14, 13-11, 3-2 in one of the best SLUG-fests in recent memory. Hot (90 to 104 degrees F over the course of the morning), humid (~40%**), and windless was the day, and the 14 on 14 matchup featured few turns and a whole lot of solid play. Good times on the pitch.* - As many folks with a late nineties pop rock upbringing and a limited handle on classic vocal jazz, the first time I actually heard this song was in this form:
When really, one should probably hear this one:
Or this one:
first.
** - "Humid" is relative.
But wait, I'm sure you're asking, wasn't Mr. Jones knock knock knockin' (let-me-hear-you-LOUD!) on purgatory's door like, two days ago? True that, but I've felt semi-decent the last two, did a little ellipticalling / very, very moderate weight-lifting the other day without incident, so I feel like I might be turning the corner. So I played a limited amount today, did my best to stick to O points, and generally hung back relative to my normal game. The effects of not having run / being run down for the past two weeks still lingered; on one of the first points of the day, BP put up a huck for me, and Paul - with whom I'm normally at least even in terms of speed - blew right by me. Ugh. I got my sea legs back after a little while and managed to contribute with some cuts and scores and such, including one semi-big layout snag of a hammer, though it was overall a quite odd day - despite primarily playing handler and hanging back, I can't remember putting up a single huck, and I really only broke the mark for big gains a handful of times. Otherwise it was just possession play and a few endzone cuts, letting some of our other dudes* step in and take the bigger chances. Probably not the ideal contribution for me to make, but it worked out, and I only had a single turn on the day - a breakmark throw intended for Ebay that got mysteriously poach-D'ed by Ken, who, um, let's just say had his man, my teammate, been properly positioned, would not have been anywhere near there. I have to take the blame, as it's my job to see Ken, but you generally don't expect the guy who's supposed to be five yards behind you to be five yards in front of you in the break lane with his defender. I'm just sayin'. None of this mattered as we got the disc back and scored - huzzah - but I'll own my gaffe, I suppose.
* - It's tough for people to figure out, I think, where they stand in the pecking order of licensed-to-thrill risk-taking rights. Garret, for example, our gunslinger who played his college days at Carleton, knows that he has full blessing to take crazy shots (within reason), as the cumulative effect of the open game and huck scores outweigh the occasional turn. And there's that key word, "occasional." We had a player-to-remain-nameless who should be just taking care of the disc conservatively make seven decidedly unoccasional turns in the first game and a half, and when you're losing games at cap by one and there are generally few turns overall, that kills. "Know thyself," FSNAD, is the lesson** here, methinks.
** - Speaking of lessons - I felt like a crappy captain today as I got frustrated with the above behavior and let the guy know it, only it clearly did nothing to help - he kept doing it - and probably pissed him off. I continue to struggle with the encourage / correct / scold aspect of things, as I don't always get who will respond best to what and what's actually called for in different situations. I especially struggle because I know e.g. back in high school football, I didn't respond well to "scolding." It didn't really help, as I already had a good grasp of what I had done wrong, so the yelling after the fact educated me zero and made me feel terrible 4,000. With Sprawl, I should do a better job of remembering those teenage feelings, lest I be (gasp) a hypocrite (not to mention it sorta requires me to be perfect with my decisions if I'm always coming down on people for every little bad one, and yeah, I'm not going to claim to be 100% with my decisions (see school comma med)). And I did make an effort today, thinly disguised as it probably was, to give people more positive feedback and not just snap at mistakes.
All of that said - one, when the same mistake happens over and over (a repeated violation of our "same-thirds" rule was one of the culprits this morning), it's not clear to me that the person knows that or how he erred. So some sort of big, emotionally impacting yelling is an attempt to grab their attention, not just an act of venting. And two, I consistently read things like this regarding on-field/court leadership:
Throughout his career, [he] has never shown much leadership. Because of his tumultuous upbringing in [city] ... his whole role in life is to appease and not make waves ... Even in high school at [school] in [city], as great as he was, he was never the leader, never the player who got in your face and told you to pick it up or get off the court. That title went to a diminutive little player named [teammate], who was tough and resilient and fearless. I don’t think it has been that much different in the pros. [He] is not the kind of player to furiously demand a new coach or general manager ... He does not get in the face of a teammate who is playing below his level, and even if he does it carries little emotional weight. In short, he does not have that assassin mentality that defined [legend] and defines [future HOFer] and translates into true greatness.
That's culled and redacted from this rather scathing article by Buzz Bissinger at Vanity Fair, and if you can't tell, it's about Glen Frey's new best friend LeBron James. The point of quoting it is this: the line between utterly pretentious "I don't make mistakes so why do you?" asshole and leader who refuses to accept less than full effort form his teammates is a fine one, and I don't know if I ever toe it correctly. It's additionally difficult to know whether it's a line worth towing - it's pretty clear that the "legend" referenced at the end, based on his HOF acceptance speech, anyways, was and is an insufferable jerk. That may be worth it for NBA rings, but we're not exactly in that stratosphere with Phoenix club Ultimate. Regardless, this kind of fire/intensity that constantly teeters on the brink of ass-hole-ay is downright glorified in sports, largely assumed to be effective, and, as noted above, necessary for "true greatness." And I'm trying to do nothing if not be great - what, would I want to be "lesser?" There's an art to this, sure, one that I fail to master often, but hopefully it's something that's overall positive I bring to Sprawl.
Still, good to have Dheintime back in town to balance it out...
So yeah, I survived, played reasonably well, and actually have felt no ill effects since. Not from the sickness, anyways - one of the things my doc recommended to absolutely prevent any anemia-related energy problems was not to take NSAIDs. So I didn't engage in my habitual Ultimate-associated "Vitamin I*" pill-popping, and wow, the knee-swelling, um, swelled accordingly. Between that and a bruise on my hip from the aforementioned hammer-grab-layout, I've been hobbling even more than usual today. Good to know that two weeks off doesn't help the joints very much...
* - Ulty slang for ibuprofen. It's fair to say that Ultimate players generally abuse ibuprofen, and I'd be curious to see if we were all running around with more ulcers than the standard population because of it. I try to keep it to a minimum and only use it to combat inflammation, not to mask pain, but given my proclivity for inflammation, that's added up to quite a few bottles over the years. I've never had any overt Vitamin-I associated GI troubles or anything, though the doc's probably right and cutting back won't hurt. Still, cold turkey has got me not running very well, so I'll have to come up with a better solution for the upcoming weeks...
But yeah, great, great SLUG, good to be back on the field with the peeps after a little time off. After the sweat-fest, we hit up Venezia's per usual and caught part of the 3rd place game in the World Cup. Pizza and loud cheers for shots/goals and debates over whether intentional handballs constitute cheating. Good laid back lunch end to a great morning, and on the personal level, good to know that I'm still operating on something of a reasonable athletic level despite the recent viral unpleasantness. I was definitely not 100% - you could I was feeling - no, don't bother - but hopefully things are on the up and up. We shall, as always, see.
OH, and - how about the first redesign of The Ballad in what, four years? I have to retract that Beck said my blog was ugly - apparently, I asked her if she thought it was ugly, and she replied, "well, it's not what I would do." So correction: she merely strongly *implied* that it was ugly. But the real push came when Ulty friend and graphic designer Lisa heckled the blog's look. We can't have experts disapproving, so I changed the scheme entirely. Hope you dig.
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