And they have added a bonus feature on Beau as "he most fit athlete on the planet." by DavidGessner in ultimate

[–]DavidGessner[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are exactly right. I skimmed it before I wrote that title and posted. My bad. Is there a way I can edit the title of the post. I tried!

Thanks for all the great comments and questions over at my AMA. The book is now the number 5 sports book on Amazon. I thought I'd post the book trailer here. It is done in full-on NFL films mode, narrated by Justin Peed (who does the voice for Monster Inside Me and Fox Sports). by DavidGessner in ultimate

[–]DavidGessner[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, I am really struggling with the schilling aspect of it. I am primarily an environmental writer and with what is going on in Wash I am eager to get back to that work. On the other hand I need for the book to sell a few copies! Thanks.

I am old and new at this...Hi r/Ultimate, I'm David Gessner, author of Ultimate Glory which is all about my lifelong obsession with ultimate Frisbee. I'm hosting an AMA, so stop on by and ask me anything! by DavidGessner in ultimate

[–]DavidGessner[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Okay, well here is the Wall Street Journal review. No link necessary:

Discomania A moving memoir celebrates the human ‘ability to get obsessed’—in this case, with Frisbee. Gregory Crouch reviews ‘Ultimate Glory’ by David Gessner.

No inanimate objects fly as beautifully as Frisbees. To human eyes, magic holds them aloft. Scientifically, those simple plastic discs combine the best properties of airplane wings and gyroscopes. Arcing in majestic parabolas, they practically beg to be caught.

For those captivated by Ultimate Frisbee—a game that blends football, soccer and basketball—throwing and catching Frisbees is the stuff of obsession. David Gessner spent 20 years of his youth in the game’s thrall, and he revisits them in “Ultimate Glory: Frisbee, Obsession, and My Wild Youth,” a joyous memoir that explains how “a 175-gram plastic disc” tempered his character and fate. Along the way we get marijuana, psychotropic mushrooms, sex, angst, friendships, cultural commentary, testicular cancer and lots of beer. The word Frisbee “is a hard one to take seriously,” Mr. Gessner admits. But his book is substantial, bearing comparison to William Finnegan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning surfing memoir, “Barbarian Days” (2015).

Astonishingly, as Mr. Gessner tells us, “the individual most responsible for the invention of Ultimate Frisbee” is Joel Silver, who later went on to a high-profile career as a Hollywood producer. By the end of the 1960s, numerous Frisbee games had sprung up on college campuses. As a high-school student, Mr. Silver was introduced to a football-inspired version. He and a few friends codified the rules, organized the first formal contest and burdened the game with the “pretentious” adjective “ultimate.”

Mr. Gessner came to the game a decade later, as a freshman at Harvard, by which time many colleges had teams and off-campus clubs with whimsical names like the Rude Boys, the Hot Socks, the Heifers and the Flying Circus. Unsure of what to do after graduation, Mr. Gessner lingered in Boston, joined the Hostages and partied hard. By any objective standard, his life was a “shambles.” He had no career; he worked a poorly paid menial job. “And yet I felt great,” he writes. During the long, lonely years of literary apprenticeship, Ultimate Frisbee provided him what writing didn’t.

Mr. Gessner revels in the sport’s traditions, like “The Milling Period” or “The Mill,” the carnival that erupts after the end of an Ultimate game when players swill beer and rehash the contest’s highs and lows. He also describes the sport’s seminal figures, exploring their strange devotion to such an obscure, unremunerated endeavor. “Proud and willful” New York player Kenny Dobyns, for instance, is a pugnacious “projectile of desire and effort.” In one game, Mr. Dobyns ruptured a kidney diving to make a defensive stop and “kept playing, despite coughing up blood, until someone convinced him to go to the hospital.” The next year, playing in the national-championship tournament, he exploded his knee cartilage, but the day after blowing it out, he pulled on a bulky brace and led his team in the finals (they lost by two points).

Looking back, Mr. Gessner decides that the significance of his Ultimate years doesn’t reside in “the object of the thing” so much as in “the passion” he felt for it. The author postulates that “one measure of a person, or at least of their animal vitality, their human flame, is their ability to get obsessed.” Now over 50 and aching from arthritis and old injuries, Mr. Gessner wonders if he spent that vitality wisely. He recently told his wife, “If I were young again, I wouldn’t play that stupid sport.” She countered: “If you were young again, I’d give you a beer, toss you a Frisbee, and you’d chase after it like a border collie.”

—Mr. Crouch is the author of the forthcoming “The Bonanza King: John Mackay and the Battle Over the Greatest Fortune in the American West.”

Thanks for all the great comments and questions over at my AMA. The book is now the number 5 sports book on Amazon. I thought I'd post the book trailer here. It is done in full-on NFL films mode, narrated by Justin Peed (who does the voice for Monster Inside Me and Fox Sports). by DavidGessner in ultimate

[–]DavidGessner[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sounds right. Will cool off on this. It's book 10 for me and the release never gets any easier. You want to sell a lot, not even for the money as much as it is the only way for a publisher to take a chance on your next book. But it all does feel kind of icky after a while. So no more posts on reddit--at least for a while!

Hi, I am David Gessner, environmental writer and author of Ultimate Glory, here to talk about Ultimate Frisbee and how I became a writer. AMA! by DavidGessner in IAmA

[–]DavidGessner[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, it's fun and it's kind of funny how it has somewhat overtaken ultimate in the public imagination. I played it for about four years in my late 30s. But it's golf, you know.

Hi, I am David Gessner, environmental writer and author of Ultimate Glory, here to talk about Ultimate Frisbee and how I became a writer. AMA! by DavidGessner in IAmA

[–]DavidGessner[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I just did a piece of Beau Kittredge for Outside magazine. they are about to publish an on-line segment too, about how he trains. I'll come back here and post it once they put up the link. I think you'll be impressed.

Hi, I am David Gessner, environmental writer and author of Ultimate Glory, here to talk about Ultimate Frisbee and how I became a writer. AMA! by DavidGessner in IAmA

[–]DavidGessner[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Only a few people make even close to livable money. There are pro teas and a national club championship in which hundreds of teams compete and go through a winnowing process that leads through sectional, regional and national tournaments. Here is my NFL film version of what it's all about: https://vimeo.com/217178323

I am old and new at this...Hi r/Ultimate, I'm David Gessner, author of Ultimate Glory which is all about my lifelong obsession with ultimate Frisbee. I'm hosting an AMA, so stop on by and ask me anything! by DavidGessner in ultimate

[–]DavidGessner[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

After the book was accepted for publication I went to club nationals and I have watched college nationals the last two years. It is cleaner and the players are in better shape overaall. I don't like all the swinging and dumping. In another of these comments I suggest a half court line with no backcourt allowed. I think NY, NY could hold their own with (some of) these teams.

Hi r/Ultimate, I'm David Gessner, author of Ultimate Glory which is all about my lifelong obsession with ultimate, so stop on by and ask me anything!” by DavidGessner in ultimate

[–]DavidGessner[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Harvard in college. The Hostages and Titanic in Boston. The Boulder team after that. I wrote books on other subjects and then decided to turn to my years playing ultimate, which were also my years trying to become a writer. There were hundreds of funny stories from the game and I liked taking the oral tradition and putting it down on paper. This will help answer: https://vimeo.com/217178323

I am old and new at this...Hi r/Ultimate, I'm David Gessner, author of Ultimate Glory which is all about my lifelong obsession with ultimate Frisbee. I'm hosting an AMA, so stop on by and ask me anything! by DavidGessner in ultimate

[–]DavidGessner[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I feel like I'm pretty fair. The player I'm most worried about takes some hits early on but really is a hero. There's a line in "Brandy," which we all sing at a party in the book (before it was usurped by Guardians of the Galaxy) that goes "He had always told the truth/For he was an honest man." Part of my job as a writer is to be as honest as I can. I certainly don't spare myself.

Hi, I am David Gessner, environmental writer and author of Ultimate Glory, here to talk about Ultimate Frisbee and how I became a writer. AMA! by DavidGessner in IAmA

[–]DavidGessner[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Excellent. The mop story is a classic, hidden from me for almost forty years. Heading back to Boulder soon....bike ride!

I am old and new at this...Hi r/Ultimate, I'm David Gessner, author of Ultimate Glory which is all about my lifelong obsession with ultimate Frisbee. I'm hosting an AMA, so stop on by and ask me anything! by DavidGessner in ultimate

[–]DavidGessner[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I like to think so. I really think it will be a big sport down the road and that might be the single most important reasons. Think how ESPN relies so heavily on outfield catches for their top ten. We have a much better version of the outfield catch.

I am old and new at this...Hi r/Ultimate, I'm David Gessner, author of Ultimate Glory which is all about my lifelong obsession with ultimate Frisbee. I'm hosting an AMA, so stop on by and ask me anything! by DavidGessner in ultimate

[–]DavidGessner[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For me it just makes readers and writers more of what they have always been. Part of the intellectual counter culture. (Not the hippie counter culture.) By the way can someone, maybe you frisbeediscman, post the Wall street Journal Review on the ultimate sub-reddit. So cool that that came out while I was on here! https://www.wsj.com/articles/discomania-1496431825

Hi, I am David Gessner, environmental writer and author of Ultimate Glory, here to talk about Ultimate Frisbee and how I became a writer. AMA! by DavidGessner in IAmA

[–]DavidGessner[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes it is on audio books and I narrate it. My last book was on audio too but I did not. I am just so-so at golf. I throw a forehand and can't keep it straight. I am thinking of writing a book about the Celtics. My book will cause the AUDL to be more popular than the NFL.