The late 80's early 90's pre DoG

Continuing the previous thread, I wasted my time going to the European Championships in 1989. The site was OK, in Denmark, but now the French team was in full denial. I showed up a week before the tournament, and was in no way allowed to play with the team that ended up coming in last place. Just OK to watch, now I remember how much I hate getting hurt, because it means you're watching and not playing, and nothing sucks more than that. So let's fast forward to the next tournament, 1991 Worlds in Toronto.


For some background, in 1988 I wasted a fall season playing for Wild Veal in New York city while I was trying to find a job post graduation and substituting at my old high school in the interim. That spring, I got an engineering job at General Electric in Lynn, MA, and moved up north. I think I went to one Titanic practice, then tried out for Z, and was eventually cut mid spring by Ted Munter (?!?), probably much to Dennis McCarthy's glee. So I moved on down the food chain and tried out for Earth Atomizer. I think they let me play with them because I went to all their practices and was the most psyched guy on their team, including spray painting my hair in 3 different colored stripes for Easterns in Staten Island. Woo-hoo! I think we ended up 7th or 8th at Easterns, but the key achievement was taking down Z that spring, and one of the most satisfying moments was getting a layout block, yes, you heard it, a layout block on Ted Munter on a swing pass. Hell, that was probably the last straw and contributed to their eventual breakup that summer and absorption by Earth.

In the meantime, playing summer pickup/practices at Newton North High school, I ran into this really fast guy wearing really short and goofy running shorts. After introducing myself, I found out that we worked at the same GE facility. And thus began a VERY long relationship with a Mr. James "Tiberius" Parinella. I ended up dragging him out to Earth practice and he started playing with us. I'm sure he'll chime in with some revisionist history, but at least that would mean somebody is reading this...

That fall Z disbanded and we picked up some of their low-lying fruit, including Dennis McCarthy and Mike Kizilbash. This also led to the formation of the Tea Party, whose travels are somewhat covered here.

http://www.ultilinks.com/dog/tea.htm

Thus began the saga of the little engine that could, as Earth Atomizer proceeded to go to Nationals the next two seasons in front of Graffiti as the 3rd place representative from the northeast, culminating in missing the semis of nationals by 3 points in 1990. And the following summer were the first club world championships in Toronto.

4. 1991 Club World Championships - Toronto, Canada - Earth Atomizer
I pull out my trusty stats book to help prod my memory from that tournament. The biggest pitfall was that the place we were staying wasn't so close to the fields, removing some of the intimacy of the tournament. In fact, we had to have cars (booooooooo!). In the course of the week, we (Earth Atomizer) played 12 games against tough and not so tough competition. After shrugging off an early pool play loss to Philmore, 14-13, we marched (slowly) through some more close games before losing to the LA Iguanas in a VERY ugly match. We had had a pretty nasty game with them at Nationals the prior fall. Stayed close throughout most of the game before they won 15-13. Memorable event, at around 10-8, LA was playing zone, and at one point, I was cutting back through the cup, and Big (TALL blond dude, sort of an A**), looked over his shoulder, saw me cutting in, and totally dropped his shoulder into me as I was cutting through. You can imagine the argument that ensued. Well, bully for them, because they ended up out of the semifinals, whereas Earth, the plucky little outfit, ended up as a surprise entrant into the semifinals. To make the semis, we had to beat Titanic, and did so, 14-11. Another memorable event, somebody threw me a leading floater up the line into the endzone. EK (Eric Kehoe) who was covering me at the time, went up a little early and took me out as I was going up. I called foul and he didn't contest. However, when it was explained to him that under the rules for that tournament, that meant it was a goal, he immediately switched his call to contest. Again, you can imagine the argument that ensued, as I am not the person to take these things lightly. Fortunately, we still won the game. With Iguanas getting crushed by Titanic earlier in the tournament, we were expecting to come in second in the pool on the 3-way until Iguanas lost to the Santa Barbara in the final round, vaulting us to #1 in the pool. We were ecstatic, looking forward to playing Windy City in the semis for a real grudge match dating back again to Nationals the previous year, where they knocked us out of the semis in a close match. Well, NY and Windy were still playing as we were walking off the fields, so we sat at the top the hill to watch in a glorious setting sun situation. Well, lo and behold, Windy was winning the game. Memorable even. NY sets up their sideline isolation play where the entire team goes to the far sideline and the deepest person in the stack starts cutting to the same sideline as the thrower and the thrower puts it out there LONG before it is clear the cutter is even open, which they had always run to perfection. However, lo and behold, a Windy player poaches off his man, flies across the field and gets a HUGE layout block on this throw, and Windy rides this play onto victory, winning the pool and setting up Windy-Titanic and NY-Earth.

Well, it seemed our fate was sealed when Goody (Steve Goodfriend) dropped the opening pool. And it never really got better from there as New York ran away to a 21-8 victory. And, of course, Titanic beat Windy, taking the spot in the finals that should have been ours (only mostly tongue in cheek), so that we could have gotten pasted by NY in the finals instead of them. I think they lost 21-13 or so.

The international teams we played were the Winnipegans from Canada, Team Finland, the Swiss, and later in the tourney, the Swedes 19-7. Who knew that this was to be the first of many encounters with our Nordic brethren.

More memorabilia. I remember after the Philmore loss totally losing it on Duncan Berkeley. He and I had an interesting relationship at the best of times, and I forget what started this one, but it was rumored he was moving to Rochester, so of course I had to use this timely information in my rant, like 'Get the (&*#^$*&# out of here and go move to Rochester, you're not wanted here' and similarly childish stuff. If you have never really lost your temper, it is VERY cathartic and cleansing. Granted you may have to do some damage control for what you said. I think I've really lost it maybe 2 times in my life (as opposed to just arguing and yelling, which is VERY different), that time and another time with my older brother, and that one was also REALLY cathartic. You feel very lightheaded and relaxed when it is done when you let out all those repressed emotions. My arguing on the field is very different, although there are some who may disagree. That's all for now.