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June 2008
No Guts No Glory

No Guts No Glory

Yoopers invented Guts Frisbee way back in 1958. Today folks are whipping the saucers at one another all over the world, but the game's U.P. DNA still guides the action.

Jun 10, 2008 Lynda Twardowski

(page 3 of 4)

Despite a history of undercover operatives, showmanship is a natural manifestation of Guts. The disc demands it. By design, a Frisbee's trajectory is never wholly dependable: the thrower's arm speed, the direction of release, the forward or backward spin applied to the disc, the speed and direction of the wind, all conspire to make catching the frenetically spiraling Frisbee an athletic and acrobatic feat. Dramatic dives, face-plants and cartoon-like blurs of knees, elbows, tennis shoes and dirt--these things you can count on.

Credit "Steady Ed" Headrick for making what aerodynamics there are possible. Head of research and development at Wham-O Manufacturing in California in 1964, Headrick needed to do something with the warehouse of plastic left over from the rapidly receding Hula-Hoop craze. He decided to modify the Pluto Platter, patenting in 1967 a series of rings on the disc top to enhance its stability in flight, then refining its shape so it could slice the air like a switchblade. One year later, prompted by Bob "Boots" Healy's taunt that U.P. Guts players were the best, Headrick assembled a team, the California Masters. He brought his gang and his new disc to the U.P., won, then did it again in '69.

Headrick died in 2002 at age 78. Before he passed away, he made a final request: that his ashes be molded into memorial discs and distributed to friends and family. As he told a New York Times reporter the October before he passed, "When we die, we don't go to purgatory. We just land up on the roof and lay there."

Hancock Driving Park, a mangy mid-summer turf of thirsty grass and dirt, is corralled behind a chain link fence next to Hancock Bottling Co., the Livestock Showing Swine Barn and a baseball diamond. Just after noon on the final day of the 50th IFT, crowds are stacked six deep around the park's three Guts playing fields. The smell of sizzling brats wafts through the air. A loudspeaker crackles: "The beer tent is now open. 69B must be enforced. Come and get your beer." A handful of spectators amble over, but no players. They're on the fields, smacking gloves against their thighs. Tossing blades of grass to check the wind. Guzzling jugs of water between plays and shouting as the Frisbee fires at their faces: "Hands! Hands! Catch, catch, catch! Bag it!" And, when they dump a disc: "@*%$!"

Has Guts gotten serious? Evolved in its intensity? For some, definitely. In the 60's and early 70's, Guts was a great reason to party. The game was at the height of its popularity, and crowds of 5,000 plus came for the show. Giant tent cities sprang up around the IFT field, and players tossed Frisbee all day, partied and shouted their team's name into a bonfire-peppered darkness all night.

But quietly, casually, athleticism became the name of the Guts game. The catalyst? Swollen fingers point to the IFT's 1973 Duel at Dawn, held that year in Copper Harbor. It was the championship match between the two-year-titleholder Highland Avenue Aces, and the Bosch Beer HuntHers. Falling darkness had aborted the finals game the night before. So at dawn, under the shadow of Brockway Mountain and the landing lights at Copper Harbor Airport, the game resumed--fierce, brutal and bloody. At one point, a Bosch guy, gushing buckets from his nose, was offered a time out. Legend has it he grabbed a discarded wad of paper from the ground, shoved it up his nostril and simply growled, "Throw it." That game was, recalls Mel Visser, IFT's resident bagpipe player, "one of the finest athletic contests I have ever witnessed." After Highland Avenue won, Visser climbed to Brockway Mountain's lookout and, as the morning mist lifted, began bleating the first somber notes to "The Battle's Over."