There is a well-known saying in the game that is the Ultimate: "When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a Frisbee."
Those are words that devotees of Ultimate Frisbee come to believe. For one player, the epiphany may strike when mastering the forehand throw, nurturing a wobbly disk into a clean, flat spin that perfectly glides into a teammate's hand. For an-other, the realization can arrive after hearing the thump of plastic as two palms clamp the disk in the end zone for a goal.
For Raphael Savir, the moment of clarity came 15 years ago with his first "layout," or dive, in which every muscle seemed to lunge horizontally, in order to save the disk, so cherished, from touching the ground.
"Anyone can do it," says Savir, 32, of Newton. "You can have a big hand, a little hand, be really athletic or not athletic, boy or girl." In Ultimate, "anyone can dive and make a one-handed catch. You can do all the cool stuff you can imagine."
Savir is the kind of average-but-devoted athlete who is fueling a boom in the sport. Once the province of students at Boston's many colleges, the game has expanded from pickup contests to local park and high school leagues to international championships. Now in its 30th year, Ultimate has a following of at least 60,000 people in the country, and nowhere more than in Boston. Savir, president of the Boston Ultimate Disc Alliance, which organizes casual leagues, estimates that 3,000 people now play here.
The city is also home to some powerhouse club teams, including women's Lady Godiva and men's Death or Glory - both of whom will represent the nation at the World Ultimate Championships next week in Blaine, Minn.
A stroll through local parks after work and on weekend afternoons bears witness to the rising appeal of grassroots Ultimate, fueled by the same love that propels club team all-stars. In fact, at these informal settings, both rookies and Ultimate icons often play together on the same fields.
"You get the chance to play the very best players in the entire world on a pickup field," said Dan Mazzucco, who was attracted to Boston's Ultimate scene after graduating from college. "It would be like if Michael Jordan showed up for a Y game."
Mazzucco, 21, started playing Ultimate at Dartmouth College as a sideline to baseball and soccer. "After a year, I fell in love with it, and I was going to tournaments. I started doing poorly in school, and I abandoned dating," he recalls with a grin.
And by Ultimate standards, that's nothing. Club players can spend nearly $3,000 a year traveling to tournaments. Many players have ruined their knees, shoulders, and ankles in their love for the sport.
Yet for those whose bodies and bank accounts are deteriorating over Frisbee, there's always the fellowship. Ultimate players, much like born-again converts, like to spread their faith.
In a match, Ultimate blends the field sense of football, the endurance of soccer, and the fast sprints and pivot-foot turns of basketball. The offensive team tries to advance the disk up the field and into the end zone for a score. No one is allowed to run while holding the disk, so there are no running backs. But everyone is a quarterback and a receiver. Teams consist of seven players, and they usually play games to 15 or 21.
Conversion to the game can start innocently enough: Maybe a little experimenting with the forehand throw. But forehands lead to hammers (overhead throws), hammers lead to scoobers (short, high-release, upside-down throws). Before you know it, they're shooting up thumbers (released with the thumb under the rim), while proselytizing their friends to join them.
Just listen to players reminisce fondly of playing in weather extremes: 100-degree heat, Hurricane Bob, and fields mattressed by 2 feet of snow. Who said Frisbee is just for the beach?
"You can dive with complete abandon," said Savir, referring affectionately to post-blizzard games, "like you're some high-diving swimmer. You can do this swan dive. Oh, it's really fun."
Teammates also urge each other to "value the disk," and think "chilly" offense (to make calm and calculated cuts and throws) and "hot" defense (which requires a tough mindset to force turnovers).
Chris Corcoran, co-captain of DoG - pronounced "dog" - even developed a four-page derivation of how to use the parallel axis theorem when catching the disk. Complete with proofs and diagrams, the paper instructs players how to let the disk roll into their hands, not out of them. Corcoran describes the scene of a fumble: "You hear a boink - and the guy looks at his hand and what just happened."
Here, and nationally, the sport tends to attract yuppies and techies. Death or Glory cocaptain Steve Moonee, 40, moved to Boston after college because of its hot Ultimate scene. "Some people choose a place to live for work, some choose it for a boyfriend or girlfriend," says the 19-year veteran. "And some people, not many, choose it for Ultimate. That's me."
An icon at the international Ultimate level, Moonee is less of a celebrity in Boston's mainstream culture. At the world championships, other teams know Death or Glory as the one to beat. Here, he must explain, "Yes, we're DoG; no, we're not the game with the dogs."
Moonee compares Boston's Ultimate Frisbee legacy to that of the Celtics in the early '80s. He notes that he wears the same jersey number, 00, that Robert Parish wore and "'The Chief' played until he was about 41." Moonee figured he would retire once his first child was born, but that was in May, and he's still going.
"There will be a point when my total selfishness will have to end," said Moonee, of Roslindale. "There's something about diving at 39 and 40, and it's not the same as when you're 19 and 20. You have to dive in this sport, and the ground isn't getting any softer."
In line with the quirky, upbeat spirit of the game, each team at the world championships - considered the Olympics of the sport - is asked to bring hundreds of cheap souvenirs for global gift exchanges.
"We're going to have a grab bag of Americana," said another Death or Glory cocaptain, Jim Parinella, 33, of Woburn. "It could be chewing gum, a refrigerator magnet, anything you can find for a buck apiece. Something that says, 'This is America. It ain't the greatest, but it's ours."'
But exuding on-field spirit, an official rule in Ultimate Frisbee and the way the game is played in most Boston-area parks, can sometimes be hard to sustain when the most intense teams focus on winning. Both of Boston's all-star teams have toiled through more than 20 hours a week of practice and conditioning. At the national and world levels, it's natural for opposing players to bump heads when making their own calls, players say.
"When there's more on the line and more at stake, certainly things get more heated," said Godiva's Elizabeth Walker, 27. "But everyone knows the rules: The premise has always been based on spirit of the game. You just want to take a step back and realize it's just a game."
See BUDA for more information on Boston area Ultimate. To learn more about Ultimate in North America, see the Ultimate Players Association Web site at www.upa.org.
This story ran on page C01 of the Boston Globe on 08/15/98.
© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.