The parks and beaches are now filled with the games of summer and though there may be someone somewhere playing catch or hitting golf balls just for fun, most of these games are highly competitive.
Observe the fervor of the volleyball games taking place between North and Fullerton avenues, the grunts on the handball courts at Rainbow Beach at 76th Street or the sometimes vicious chatter on the softball diamonds in Grant Park.
It would probably surprise most softball players to learn that their sport was born in Chicago, not of blue-collar roots but inspired by bored blue bloods.
It was Thanksgiving Day 1887 and 20 men sat in the Farragut Boat Club on the South Side. They were receiving telegraphed reports of the football game between Harvard and Yale universities. After the game, these men started banging around a boxing glove with a broomstick, giving birth to the sport of softball. (A monument near the site of the boat club, at 31st Street and Lake Park Avenue, commemorates the day.)
Once upon a not-so-distant time, the Frisbees that flew through the summer air did not seem likely to be used as anything other than tools of pleasant diversion.
But that changed and, as you can see from Osgood’s photo, some people take it very seriously. The characters he captured are playing a game called Ultimate. And while these folks were in the south end of Grant Park, other parks are dotted with similar competitions.
“Combining the nonstop movement and athletic endurance of soccer with the aerial passing skills of football, a game of Ultimate is played by two seven-player squads with a high-tech plastic disc on a field similar to football,” according to the ultimatechicago.org Web site, going on to inform us that “Ultimate is governed by Spirit of the GameTM, a tradition of sportsmanship that places the responsibility for fair play on the players rather than referees. Ultimate is played in more than 42 countries by hundreds of thousands of men and women, girls and boys.”
We talked to some of the players and to a man and woman — we didn’t meet any kids — who extolled the virtues of the game, and we believe them. One, asked if he ever threw a Frisbee just for fun, said, “What would be the point?”
Summers for us are a lazy time, made for such activities as walking (recently around the beautifully refashioned Lincoln Park lagoon, just south of the zoo), reading a book under a tree’s shade (recently Kevin Guilfoile’s soon-to-be-released “The Thousand”) or teaching a little girl to climb a tree.
But wait! What’s this flying across my desk? News of “The 34
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annual International Tree Climbing Championship,” taking place this weekend in a “stand of majestic trees” at the Morton Arboretum. Some 50 men and women from 14 countries are climbing, competing in various climbing skills, one of which entails getting and bringing back to earth a 110-pound dummy. Brian Malatia, the arborist at this west suburban oasis, says, “These competitions take your breath away.”
We don’t doubt that. But maybe it’s time for me to take that little girl to the beach and just wiggle our toes in the sand. There’s no contest for that yet, is there … is there?
rkogan@tribune.com
