A Connecticut baker named William Russel Frisbee came up with a clever marketing idea back in the 1870s. He put his name in relief on the bottom of the light tin pans in which his company’s homemade pies were sold. Eventually Mr. Frisbee’s pies were sold throughout much of the state, including New Haven.

There, sometime in the 1940s, Yale students began sailing the pie tins through the air and catching them. A decade or so later, out in California, a flying-saucer enthusiast named Walter Frederick Morrison designed a saucer-like disk for playing catch. It was produced by a company named Wham-O. On a promotional tour of college campuses, the president of Wham-O (who presumably also used all three of his names) encountered the pie-plate-tossing craze at Yale. And so the flying saucer from California was renamed after a pie plate from Connecticut. All this so we could enjoy the sport in Central Park.

Favorite spots in the park for tossing a Frisbee about include The Great Hill, The Great Lawn and the Sheep Meadow.
Field Day Kits can be borrowed at the North Meadow Recreation Center which include, among a variety of sports equipment, a Frisbee. Kits may be checked out with valid photo ID.

FYI – On the Great Lawn and Sheep Meadow it is suggested that Frisbee tosses be limited to two participants