Call and Response

Have you noticed how any time a certain call is made in ultimate, that about 80% of the time, it's followed by a matching response, almost with some sort of stimulus-response relationship? I'll give you an example.

Defense: "Pick!"
Offense, something to the effect of: "You have to be within ten feet, man."

The pick call is one of my least favorite in ultimate, along with the travel call. Intentional, basketball-style picks should not be legal, but these are not a problem in ultimate. I think the current pick call rewards mediocre defense. Say I'm chasing an offensive player who is ahead of me. He passes through a certain point on the field, the next second, another ambling player passes through that point, obstructing my path to the player I'm guarding. Now, because I was playing mediocre defense, I now have the opportunity to call pick and catch up with the player I was guarding. Now you say, "but you can't call pick unless you were within ten feet" or "you can only catch up the distance you lost by the pick". Now I say, yes, that's what the rules may say but how often is it played out like that?

Here's some more.

Offensive player makes a catch on the line: "I was in!"
Defensive player: "I think you were out"
Offensive player: "I know I was in"
Defensive player 50 yards away: "I had best perspective, you were out"
Offensive sideline player: "It's his call!"
Defensive player 50 yards away: "It's not his call, it's best perspective"
Defensive player: "Yeah, and keep it on the field!"
And so on.

Have you ever noticed that there's only one or two people on a given team that actually makes calls against their own team? Any time a close play is made, immediately each team polarizes to the decision that will benefit their team and totally ignores the evidence to make an unbiased call. The ones that aren't assertive enough to flat out say that the play was in their team's favor offer repeated statements like, "I think he was in", "yeah, I'm pretty sure he was in", never flat out saying the rigid, "I know he was in", as if in some way that might be unspirited.

Speaking of spirit, what is that anyway? What a poorly defined, often abused and misinterpreted word in the ultimate vernacular. Spirit can mean anything to anybody. When it comes down to it, is it just a hippy sounding word for sportsmanship? I should probably look in the ultimate rules at this point, but I'm not going to. Now, does spirit pertain to treating your opponent with respect? Here's situation, it is more "spirited" to beat an opponent by a lot of points and treat them as a worthy opponent the whole game, or to take it easy and let them score some so they don't feel bad? Most of the ultimate community may consider it unspirited to just kick the crap out of an opponent. Does spirit involve being friendly with your competitors? Does it involve having an unbiased attitude towards callmaking? Does it mean you cheer after the game and share beer? And why is it always one of the last place teams that always gets the "spirit award"? Is it because they transcended ordinary human competitiveness and pettiness to "just have fun"? Do spirit award winners make ultimate more enjoyable? I'll have to create an entire post about this later.

Back on track:

Defense: "Stall!"
Offense: "No, I got the throw off in time."
Defense: "It's at the "t" in ten." (Someone always has to say this "t" in ten thing.)
Offense: "Contest"

Defense: "What's the score?"
Offense: "11-7"
Defense: "No, it has to be odd because we started down there"
Offense: "No, it's even because you started up here at halftime"
Defense: "No, it was 10-5 when we were there, so now it has to be odd"

Now I have to admit that I rarely know the score myself and frequently have to ask teammates what the score is, but is there any other sport where the score comes into question so often? And please, could people quit using this even/odd stuff to explain the score? Usually, the first person to speak is wrong and screws everybody else up for a bit before the score is figured out.

Well, time to wrap this up. After you have read this, I want to stress that I'm not a rules guru. I have read throught the rules about once per year, but do not know the 10th edition inside and out, nor do I care to. I prefer to play games with the fewest number of calls as possible, and in my opinion, the best games and personal opponents are the ones that have an implicit agreement that some contact or unintentional fouls, travels, and picks may occur and since it goes back and forth, it is better to avoid calling them than to have to call each one. The purpose of the post was supposed to be a little comical in nature and to point out how some calls in ultimate almost always have the same responses. In the end, it might sound more like me griping about certain aspects of ultimate. Oh well, take it as you may. Later.