Tuneup, end of an era (btw, there is no curse)
No, I don't know whether this will be the last Chicago 'Tune-up' (apologies to Adam, but it is still the Tuneup). But my streak of attending every single Tune-up from the beginning in 1994 will be broken this year. I believe that I could quite possibly be the ONLY player in the elite bracket (if not all the brackets) to go to every single tune-up (much less with the same team). I tried to hold on as long as I could, but the growth of the west, the fact that they NEVER travel to this tournament, and the existence of top quality tournaments like ECC and Santa Cruz that DoG is finally travelling to knocked this tournament off of our itinerary.
In retrospect, taking a look at the roster of teams that is going, despite the absence of the Big Iron from the west (north and south), it still appears to be a very competitive tournament, although I have to admit it seems like it will crown the best of the rest (including DoG in that list currently). My money is on Sub-Zero to pull it out for once, with Machine, BAT, and Potomac joining them in the semis (go Central). Note that I didn't arbitrarily go with the highest RRI ratings. And hopefully Sub-Zero won't disappoint me by ONLY being good against DoG these days.
As for the Tuneup curse, what everyone always conveniently forgets is that DoG won the inaugural Tuneup in fall 1994, and then won our first champies (is that word going to get traction:)?) that same year. Of course, we never won Tuneup again until 2000 for a whole host of reasons including small squads, etc., as you will see in my recollections below, but the curse is a fiction, or at least didn't start until '95. The key is to find the seminal event which would have caused the curse.
Memories (borrowed/memory jogged heavily from Jim's DoG tournament summary page
'94 Not a huge number of teams, but Chesapeake and Rhino were there, and Rhino was an expected semifinalist at nationals (and Chesapeake ended up being a semifinalist). This was the first of our dominant victories over Chesapeake, who played EVERYONE else really close, but NEVER had a good game against us, pretty much no matter what we did, clam, zone, man, whatever. It was the weirdest thing.
'95 My car got to the fields like 2 minutes before gametime, only to find out that another car had been there way earlier, and had gone out to breakfast, to show up 10-15 minutes into the game. After trying to manage the game through timeouts and various delays, we squeaked the game out against Chain with a 3-goal run. Meanwhile, the Chain/Seattle game was epic, as at game point, John Gewirtz literally swept/boxed out the Chain long cutter on a huck, preventing him from making a play in a gross but almost uncallable foul, only to have a Chain teammate sweep by and catch the garbage maybe two feet from the back of the endzone, 5 yards from where we were all watching, in a TREMENDOUS heckle moment. And all this on double game point. Otherwise, get spanked again by Cojones in one of our many tournament losses to them this year.
'96 It is weird to review the tournament summaries and dredge up team names, along with all the suppporting baggage, from the past. We rarely played the Port City Slickers, but never had the kinds of ugly matches that other teams seemed to have with them. Hard to believe it was because they respected us..., especially since they were points away from making semis at champies that fall. We got destroyed by Portland, struggled as usual with lesser teams, this time Lemon from Cincinatti/Cleveland. While beating Double Happiness in pool play, we were unable to continue the streak and got smoked in the finals. Fortunately, that was the last time we would see them that year, as they got eliminated from champies by Saucy Jack at Regionals (this brings up another self-aggrandizing/humorous side note. At nationals that fall, during pool play we went down to Saucy Jack 13-4 in a game to 15 in a pretty severe upwind-downwind game. We bore down, and actually came back to win like 15-14. And after the game, the main Saucy Jack handler comes over to where 3 of us are sitting on the ground futzing with our cleats, and says to me, 'When I grow up, i want to throw just like you.' Boy, that was fun.)
'97 Despite being fresh from not having played at Worlds, or maybe because Seattle HAD played worlds, we lost to them in the finals despite having a pretty full team. Fortunately, this didn't carry over to nationals as we beat Sockeye in the finals for the 3rd straight time after jumping out to a 7-0 lead.
'98 This was our worst team/performance ever, as we brought only 8 DoGs, and had 4 other pickups, including some from friends of Jims from the Pittsburgh area. We had 6 games on Saturday which were all close, ending up 2-1 in first pool, then 1-2 in the power pool to get knocked out of the A division. First time ever in the B division of ANY tournament, and not only that, we ended up losing in the quarters of that division to Red Tide in a gmae we went down early 8-2 before tying it up at 10's only to lose on all-universe point while pulling. This was back when Kenny and company were still playing with the Tide. The one virtue was that Sunday was pretty uncrowded, and we ended up drinking QUITE a bit during semis and finals while heckling from the clubhouse. They also set up a very long slip-n-slide for the first time, and I ended up being the first person to do the standing slide (after slipping and falling the first time, to everyone's amusement). Ah, good times.
'99 Had 20 of our DoG/Dark Horse 25 person merger team. Apparently it wasn't enough as Furious George beat us in pool play and then in the finals. This was the one and only time Furious would make it to Tuneup (that I remember). Fortunately, this double loss, similar to Minnesota Worlds '98, wasn't enough for them to beat us at champies, leading to another (and so far, final) very satisfying Nationals victory.
'00 OK, so maybe the Tuneup curse got added after the '94 season, as we win for the first time since '94 and ultimate lose at nationals. We keep up the form, winning a couple of 1 point games, and just avoid the B pool for the second time despite a heroic effort by Zaz and Mike Glass of Chicago, who torches us for some HUGE blady forehands and backhands. That guy definitely has some cojones.
'01 I can still remember how terrible the weather was on Sunday, as they debated cancelling the games. The wind and rain finally let up a little bit, we lose a seeding game against Sockeye, and then play against Sub-Zero. We are getting CRUSHED in this game, down by like 4 points, in a very windy and rainy (and cold) game, before a Sub-Zero guy drops an upwind pull. The D scores that point, and proceeds to finally wake up, running off enough points for us to squeak by. As Jim says, up to this point, Sub-Zero was still in the Phil Mickelson category, but they would finally get the monkey off their back at Nationals, beating us in pool play. Worse, no matter how we have done against other teams since, and the final placement between Sub-Zero and us at ANY tournament, they ALWAYS seem to give us a great game, probably sitting at .500 since that point. Well, I guess most importantly, we won our 3rd tuneup, and yes, strangely enough, did not win Nationals again. Jordan and I also win the tournament party, as we go LATE into the night on Saturday at the fields, including dancing on the trunk and hood of somebody's rental car (they were there also) along with a small coterie of other people.
'02 Ahh, nothing notable to say about this one. Lost in the finals to Pig, one of our rare losses to a DC team.
'03 While the ultimate result is better than the B pool quarters loss, we lose a pool play game to 9 players from Goat, only forcing 3 turnovers on them the entire game, and none after the beginning of the game. This is one of the more humiliating losses that I am a part of, as they perfectly imitate the role of early DoG, playing efficiently and beating larger teams by minimizing mistakes and pouncing on the other team's mistakes (which should still be enough to win Nationals, except that we can't minimize our mistakes these days).
'04 Highlight was crushing Ring in pool play 13-4. Unfortunately, another team shed the Phil Mickelson title as BAT beat us for the first time Sunday morning in a seeding round. BTW, after losing to Doublewide this weekend at Santa Cruz, I'm not sure who is left that is worthy of the Mickelson name. And of course, we lost to Sub-Zero at Tuneup (now the Chicago Heavyweight Championships) again. However, Machine made it to the finals of their home tournament (first time!). We leapt out to a 8-2 lead, but behind the huge hucks and huge leaps and huge grabs led by the Subzero DoG-killer Turtle himself (Eric Lonsdorf), Machine came back and we ended up BARELY squeaking by for a two point victory for our 4th title, and at this point, conceivably last.
Random memory (unknown year).
This was one of the early ones, but we were staying at a hotel with a bunch of other players, and this hotel had a HUGE round hot tub. There must have been at least twenty people in the hot tub, even distributed between DoG players and (Philly? Chicago? can't remember). We ended up getting into a HUGE ro-cham underwater shotgun. What was incredible was that it took just one throw to eliminate everyone that threw (like i said, at least 12 other people), and have just Bim (Jim Johnston) and I remaining. Of course, this was met with a huge uproar and much buildup. After discussing strategies, and appropriate delays, Bim promptly threw out fire, extinguishing my hopes of winning. Of course, what Bim didn't know was that I actually wanted to lose/win the honor of doing my first underwater gun. Having never done one, and not having lost a gun for years, it seemed an appropriate time to expand my repertoire. I acquitted myself admirably.
In retrospect, taking a look at the roster of teams that is going, despite the absence of the Big Iron from the west (north and south), it still appears to be a very competitive tournament, although I have to admit it seems like it will crown the best of the rest (including DoG in that list currently). My money is on Sub-Zero to pull it out for once, with Machine, BAT, and Potomac joining them in the semis (go Central). Note that I didn't arbitrarily go with the highest RRI ratings. And hopefully Sub-Zero won't disappoint me by ONLY being good against DoG these days.
As for the Tuneup curse, what everyone always conveniently forgets is that DoG won the inaugural Tuneup in fall 1994, and then won our first champies (is that word going to get traction:)?) that same year. Of course, we never won Tuneup again until 2000 for a whole host of reasons including small squads, etc., as you will see in my recollections below, but the curse is a fiction, or at least didn't start until '95. The key is to find the seminal event which would have caused the curse.
Memories (borrowed/memory jogged heavily from Jim's DoG tournament summary page
'94 Not a huge number of teams, but Chesapeake and Rhino were there, and Rhino was an expected semifinalist at nationals (and Chesapeake ended up being a semifinalist). This was the first of our dominant victories over Chesapeake, who played EVERYONE else really close, but NEVER had a good game against us, pretty much no matter what we did, clam, zone, man, whatever. It was the weirdest thing.
'95 My car got to the fields like 2 minutes before gametime, only to find out that another car had been there way earlier, and had gone out to breakfast, to show up 10-15 minutes into the game. After trying to manage the game through timeouts and various delays, we squeaked the game out against Chain with a 3-goal run. Meanwhile, the Chain/Seattle game was epic, as at game point, John Gewirtz literally swept/boxed out the Chain long cutter on a huck, preventing him from making a play in a gross but almost uncallable foul, only to have a Chain teammate sweep by and catch the garbage maybe two feet from the back of the endzone, 5 yards from where we were all watching, in a TREMENDOUS heckle moment. And all this on double game point. Otherwise, get spanked again by Cojones in one of our many tournament losses to them this year.
'96 It is weird to review the tournament summaries and dredge up team names, along with all the suppporting baggage, from the past. We rarely played the Port City Slickers, but never had the kinds of ugly matches that other teams seemed to have with them. Hard to believe it was because they respected us..., especially since they were points away from making semis at champies that fall. We got destroyed by Portland, struggled as usual with lesser teams, this time Lemon from Cincinatti/Cleveland. While beating Double Happiness in pool play, we were unable to continue the streak and got smoked in the finals. Fortunately, that was the last time we would see them that year, as they got eliminated from champies by Saucy Jack at Regionals (this brings up another self-aggrandizing/humorous side note. At nationals that fall, during pool play we went down to Saucy Jack 13-4 in a game to 15 in a pretty severe upwind-downwind game. We bore down, and actually came back to win like 15-14. And after the game, the main Saucy Jack handler comes over to where 3 of us are sitting on the ground futzing with our cleats, and says to me, 'When I grow up, i want to throw just like you.' Boy, that was fun.)
'97 Despite being fresh from not having played at Worlds, or maybe because Seattle HAD played worlds, we lost to them in the finals despite having a pretty full team. Fortunately, this didn't carry over to nationals as we beat Sockeye in the finals for the 3rd straight time after jumping out to a 7-0 lead.
'98 This was our worst team/performance ever, as we brought only 8 DoGs, and had 4 other pickups, including some from friends of Jims from the Pittsburgh area. We had 6 games on Saturday which were all close, ending up 2-1 in first pool, then 1-2 in the power pool to get knocked out of the A division. First time ever in the B division of ANY tournament, and not only that, we ended up losing in the quarters of that division to Red Tide in a gmae we went down early 8-2 before tying it up at 10's only to lose on all-universe point while pulling. This was back when Kenny and company were still playing with the Tide. The one virtue was that Sunday was pretty uncrowded, and we ended up drinking QUITE a bit during semis and finals while heckling from the clubhouse. They also set up a very long slip-n-slide for the first time, and I ended up being the first person to do the standing slide (after slipping and falling the first time, to everyone's amusement). Ah, good times.
'99 Had 20 of our DoG/Dark Horse 25 person merger team. Apparently it wasn't enough as Furious George beat us in pool play and then in the finals. This was the one and only time Furious would make it to Tuneup (that I remember). Fortunately, this double loss, similar to Minnesota Worlds '98, wasn't enough for them to beat us at champies, leading to another (and so far, final) very satisfying Nationals victory.
'00 OK, so maybe the Tuneup curse got added after the '94 season, as we win for the first time since '94 and ultimate lose at nationals. We keep up the form, winning a couple of 1 point games, and just avoid the B pool for the second time despite a heroic effort by Zaz and Mike Glass of Chicago, who torches us for some HUGE blady forehands and backhands. That guy definitely has some cojones.
'01 I can still remember how terrible the weather was on Sunday, as they debated cancelling the games. The wind and rain finally let up a little bit, we lose a seeding game against Sockeye, and then play against Sub-Zero. We are getting CRUSHED in this game, down by like 4 points, in a very windy and rainy (and cold) game, before a Sub-Zero guy drops an upwind pull. The D scores that point, and proceeds to finally wake up, running off enough points for us to squeak by. As Jim says, up to this point, Sub-Zero was still in the Phil Mickelson category, but they would finally get the monkey off their back at Nationals, beating us in pool play. Worse, no matter how we have done against other teams since, and the final placement between Sub-Zero and us at ANY tournament, they ALWAYS seem to give us a great game, probably sitting at .500 since that point. Well, I guess most importantly, we won our 3rd tuneup, and yes, strangely enough, did not win Nationals again. Jordan and I also win the tournament party, as we go LATE into the night on Saturday at the fields, including dancing on the trunk and hood of somebody's rental car (they were there also) along with a small coterie of other people.
'02 Ahh, nothing notable to say about this one. Lost in the finals to Pig, one of our rare losses to a DC team.
'03 While the ultimate result is better than the B pool quarters loss, we lose a pool play game to 9 players from Goat, only forcing 3 turnovers on them the entire game, and none after the beginning of the game. This is one of the more humiliating losses that I am a part of, as they perfectly imitate the role of early DoG, playing efficiently and beating larger teams by minimizing mistakes and pouncing on the other team's mistakes (which should still be enough to win Nationals, except that we can't minimize our mistakes these days).
'04 Highlight was crushing Ring in pool play 13-4. Unfortunately, another team shed the Phil Mickelson title as BAT beat us for the first time Sunday morning in a seeding round. BTW, after losing to Doublewide this weekend at Santa Cruz, I'm not sure who is left that is worthy of the Mickelson name. And of course, we lost to Sub-Zero at Tuneup (now the Chicago Heavyweight Championships) again. However, Machine made it to the finals of their home tournament (first time!). We leapt out to a 8-2 lead, but behind the huge hucks and huge leaps and huge grabs led by the Subzero DoG-killer Turtle himself (Eric Lonsdorf), Machine came back and we ended up BARELY squeaking by for a two point victory for our 4th title, and at this point, conceivably last.
Random memory (unknown year).
This was one of the early ones, but we were staying at a hotel with a bunch of other players, and this hotel had a HUGE round hot tub. There must have been at least twenty people in the hot tub, even distributed between DoG players and (Philly? Chicago? can't remember). We ended up getting into a HUGE ro-cham underwater shotgun. What was incredible was that it took just one throw to eliminate everyone that threw (like i said, at least 12 other people), and have just Bim (Jim Johnston) and I remaining. Of course, this was met with a huge uproar and much buildup. After discussing strategies, and appropriate delays, Bim promptly threw out fire, extinguishing my hopes of winning. Of course, what Bim didn't know was that I actually wanted to lose/win the honor of doing my first underwater gun. Having never done one, and not having lost a gun for years, it seemed an appropriate time to expand my repertoire. I acquitted myself admirably.
posted by Alex de Frondeville at 7:25 PM
5 Comments:
It will be hard for your buddies to travel to the West Coast for a weekend tournament, no matter what the competition. I'd predict that the Santa Cruz tourney weekend is so tiring for East Coast teams -- without delivering commensurate benefits -- that as a result Tune-Up/CHC will grow in 2006!
Actually, I didn't find that the travel was particularly onerous (at least the trip out), as we were up way too early Saturday morning, and had a leisurely morning to get to the fields. The reverse, coming East, would have been a lot worse. As for the benefits, considering none of Condors, Furious, Jam, and Sockeye have gone to any tournaments outside the west coast (including Colorado Cup!), it was well worth the trip. Sorry to say it, but dem's the facts. Nonetheless, I hope that CHC can stay and grow as you say. I just find it hard to believe that any of those west coast teams will make it until the east starts winning some championships again.
Goat loss was in semis.
I think it's time to retire "Phil Mickelson."
The term "champies" loses its effectiveness when used this frequently.
Another random memory: we're near the cars after one of the tournaments, and a bunch of us are throwing around a 3/4 empty 2 liter plastic Coke bottle, just waiting for it to hyperfizz. After yet another throw, it lands and just explodes, shooting off right past someone's head (Bim's?) and continuing to fly oh 30 yards. We look stunned, then erupt in cheers a second later.
Good stuff. Since 01, I think the record between zero + dog is (I think) 4-5 in your favor. I can only recall 1 victory by more than 2 goals, your @ natties in 03.
(1-1 in 01, dog wins @ tune up, zero @ natties, 0-0 in 02, I believe, 2-2 in 03 split @ easterns, zero @ tune up, dog @ natties, 1-0 in 04 zero @ tune up, 0-2 in 05, dog @ easterns + colorado)
I'm sure once Jim consults his notes, he will be able to reproduce the exact scores of those games.
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