With respect to a certain Reverend, I also had a dream.  And my dream brought together men and women of all races, creeds and colors too.  But nobody said anything about which hand you throw a frisbee with.

This past weekend, after years of trying to put together an all left-handed team and failing miserably, my dream finally came true.  I found another person who shared my all-lefty desire.  Diesel, despite that righty backhand he’s so fond of, is also a southpaw, and found a tournament up in Fresno known as Last Call for Fall.  As in, Nationals are over, so let’s run around one last time before you all go completely out of shape.

 Deisel, demonstrating a lefty throw.  Photo courtesy of the Associated Press.

(Fresno, by the way, is the 36th largest city in the Nation.  What???  Fresno?  Cities smaller than Fresno include Miami, St. Louis and Cleveland.  How did this happen?)

So now that we had our tournament, and our team name Right Minded, the only thing left (no pun intended) was to rally the troops.  Mind you, there are nearly 40 lefties who play in L.A. alone (why do you think I ask this question on the Summer League registration form?) and of course more in the bay area.  But getting them to play, not so easy peasy.  Despite the potential for a good-sized team, only 12 die-hards made it up on Saturday.

Our roster:  Abbie Goodhue, Alli Moffa, Andy Bandit, Arianne Johnson, Ariel Kumpinksy, Becky Abe, Dr. Brad Rosen, Brass Rod, Claire Mowbray, Diesel, Jason Edelman and Makoto Kojima who defected from the Bay Area team TFT at the last minute.  He was their captain.  You gotta love that commitment to the lefty cause.

Now, all you righties probably think, how cute, how novel.  But it only underscores how little you appreciate the way we’ve been a persecuted minority - forced to assimilate to your right-handed world.  We’re like the plain bellied sneetches.  We look the same as you.  But you treat us as (I swear this is not a pun) second-hand citizens.  Where were the left-handed scissors in school?  The left-handed desks?  Good luck finding a lefty baseball mitt in gym class.  Guitars, cameras, golf clubs, guns, arm-wrestling contests.  All designed for righties.  When you say “he has two left feet”, that hurts man.

But enough about that.  I just wanted you to feel guilty for a minute.  I love you silly backwards righties.  Back to the tournament.

Only eight teams came to play, mostly I assumed from Fresno and the Bay Area.  We were the only L.A. team.  And we were seeded overall #1 no less.  I guess they saw Diesel in the Summer League finals too.

Our first game in pool play was against Misery Loves Company from Stockton.  Now, don’t expect me to remember any great moments.  I didn’t write any of this stuff down, and I did get pretty drunk Saturday night, likely destroying the brain cells that would’ve remembered the exciting plays, so I’m not going to recap the specifics.  Just brief overviews.  I’ll skip a lot of the important details.  Just like the Warren Report.

We were all kind of wondering how soon it would take teams to notice that we were all lefties, and how many points before they started marking us the other way.  I set the over-under at 3 points.  But even though we tried to keep our affliction under wraps, word got out about us before the tourney started.  It’s tough too, because normally being a lefty ultimate player is a big advantage, getting to primarily throw your backhand.  But not in this tourney.  I think I threw more forehands in this one weekend than I have the entire rest of my ultimate career combined.  That’s frightening if you’ve ever seen my forehand.

Well, despite knowing we were all lefties, Misery Loves Company didn’t force us the correct way most of the first half.  And it cost them as we took half 8-1.  They wised up later and went on a bit of a run, but we held on 15-9.  Makoto (Mak) was particularly impressive with his laout dives onto what can only be described as a grass-dirt hybrid.  Honestly, I’ve seen more green in Sam Regnier’s bank account.

Game 2 was against Cactus Bomb, a group of college kids from U.C. Merced.  If you’ve never heard of that university, it’s probably cause it was just created five years ago.  I’ve had grey hairs older than this school.  (Why do I say these things?)  A fun team no doubt.  Very spirited.  But very new at ultimate, and we took it 15-1.

That left the 1v2 game against Death Panel, mostly a group of That’s What She Said players from the Bay Area.  This was the first test for our formidable group of southpaws.  They clobbered us pretty good in the first half.  I think it was 8-2 (funny how you’re not as clear on the score when you’re losing).  But we had a little 4-point run in the 2nd half to bring it to 9-7, the closest we got.  I think the final score was 15-10 or something like that.  And with that, onto quarters.

Every team played in quarters, cause that’s what happens when your tournament only has 8 teams, and we played Underground Rodeo, from wherever it is that they’re from.  Not a bad team, but noticably drunk by the time we got to play them.  And for those who love flair, all I will say is… black man, green mask, pink cowboy hat.  It’s on you now.  I’m out.   Once again, a blow out first half, and we traded points in the 2nd half to win 13-7ish.

Semis and finals would be played on Sunday.  But overall, a good day.  3-1.  The party was actually pretty decent.  It was at this pizza place, and most of the teams were there I think.  I was already quite plastered by the time we got there, so….. um….. not really sure what happened so much.  I remember there was whip cream on my face at some point.  I think I felt up a Canadian girl.  I was clearly not in my right mind.  (OH, that was honestly not a pun.)  But whatever else happened that night.  I don’t know.  It was hazy.  Ask Diesel.

Sunday was semis, and we were down to 10 players, cause Ariel and Alli got hurt.  But we were told that Slap from Fury was on her way.  Unfortunately, she didn’t quite make it until game 2.  We played in Semis against the top seed of the other pool, Body Shots.  They’re one of those teams where someone goes, “oh, it’s a mix of players from blah blah blah and blah” and you don’t even know any of the teams they’re talking about, so you just say “wow, they must be good then” so you don’t sound incredibly ignorant.

Not a great game for us.  Although we did score 6 points, more than any previous team scored against them, there’s not much you can say about a 13-6 game except, let’s go back-door 2nd place game!!!  You see, this was kind of a wacky format, where you played double elimination to 2nd place, which happened two rounds after finals.  I know, it’s complicated.  All you need to know is we won our next game 10-8, and our next game after that 13-11, and that put us into the 2nd place game against Death Panel.  But they had just lost a marathon finals, and forfeited 2nd place to us.

So woo hoo!!!  A group of lefties finished 5-2 in 2nd place.  Not bad.  If maybe we had a full squad I think we could’ve won this thing.  Maybe Kief doesn’t go on a date Saturday night instead of coming out to support his brethren.  I don’t know.  Who am I to say?

Anyway, it was a lot of fun.  Especially fun to hear people yelling at their teammates that they’re marking the wrong way all the time.  And it was nice for a change to play in a tournament where noone yelled ”he’s a lefty!” when I touch the disc.  There were plenty of left-handed jokes all weekend, and we learned about some famous lefties, like Napoloeon, Kermit the Frog and Bart Simpson.

I should mention here that we weren’t 100% left-handed.  Becky Abe is actually right-handed, playing the other way for us, because we were at one stage down to only 3 committed women, and one was coming off an injury.  Sometimes you gotta cut a few corners to realize your dream.  Just ask Barry Bonds.

So I’ll leave you with this final thought.  Next time you see a left-handed person.  Don’t ridicule them for their crippling defect.  Maybe try a little compassion.  Shake their hand.  Give them a high five.  And when you do it, I think you know which hand to use.  Just try not to think about how that’s the hand they diddle themselves with.

Lefties rule!!!