Ping-Pong and the YMCA

Marty Reisman

You might be forgiven if at this point you haven't fully heard about a new movie that's out starring Timothée Chalamet in "Marty Supreme" about a New York City, 1950s, Jewish ping-pong player who won several championships at the time and was considered the world's best.

The movie is based on what was the life of a larger than life player/hustler named Marty Reisman. The buzz is building and will soon sound like a short-circuiting power plant. 

Since the movie is based on a deceased Marty Reisman, I had to see what I was assuming would be a NYT obituary I was right. Marty passed away on December 7, 2012, and as soon as I read the obituary I remembered reading it. 

Marty was what would now be described as an old-fashioned player with a handshake grip and a hard paddle, not sponge rubber dimpled like what became in vogue in the 60s. The sponge, dimpled paddle allowed the player to exert spin on the ball that made it dance away from the table after landing in the opponent's end. If it was a pitched baseball, it would be a knuckleball.

Handshake grip and hard paddle is what I played with at the Flushing YMCA, playing the winner of the game in session at the only table there was, and holding onto playing at the table until someone came along and beat me. It happened.

I loved playing ping-pong. Eventually I bought a table and placed it in our basement in Flushing. There was just enough room, hard by the oil storage tank, washing machine, clothes dryer and slop sink that gave at least one player—not playing up against the oil tank—enough room to stand back from the table in order to return volleys. My uncle Vernon and I played nearly every night after dinner for months when he stayed with us. He was good. So was I.

I can still see the table I played on at the YMCA. The net was not of green mesh, but rather was medium gauge string—almost thin rope— strung through the metal side supports, creating a horizontal 5-string net. Think of a miniature clothes line, and you've got it.

Unfortunately, on moving to Nassau County and buying what is a Leavitt home (but not in Levittown proper), I have no basement. William Leavitt built 17,000 homes in Hempstead County after WW II with no cellars, but rather a concrete slab for the foundations.

He wanted all homes to have a 50'x100' plot, but the Town of Hempstead insisted that since it was giving him approval for slab foundations, and therefore saving construction costs, he needed to put homes on a somewhat larger 60'x100' plot. He agreed. And that my children is why no one ever made any money trying to sell ping-pong tables in Levittown. 

Timothée Chalamet is now perhaps the hottest male actor out there. He gained widespread exposure for playing Bob Dylan in an Oscar-nominated performance in "A Complete Unknown." When I started to watch early episodes of "Homeland" recently re-released on NetFlix, (I refuse to say "dropped.") I saw in the credits that Timothée Chalamet was playing the part of the Vice President's teenage son, and a boyfriend of Dana, Sergeant Nicholas Brady's teenage daughter. 

A alert reader pointed out to me, what I was already becoming aware of, that Timothée was going to star in what was expected to be an upcoming blockbuster about someone playing ping-pong! Well, the movie has been released, and it finished a strong second in this weekend's box office receipts, those loved to talk about, but basically meaningless numbers the entertainment reporters love to fill you with on a Monday,

As the buzz has been humming, the same alert reader linked me to a piece written by David Hirshey in March 1981 in The New York Daily News Sunday Magazine section on Marty Reisman, on whom the character Marty Mauser is based. It is beyond an entertaining piece. It is poetic. 

Mr. Hirshey relives his life encounters with Reisman from when he was the Fat Kid getting off the sleep-away camp bus to being an editor at the Daily News, but still with a racket in his hand. The alert reader informs me that David Hirshey was once their editor.

But the point of this posting is not going to end with the discussion of the movie, Timothée Chalamet, or Marty Reisman, but rather on how the New York Yankees hired a private eye to follow players around to see what they were up to in their lives off the ball field.

It might have been after the famous melee with Yankee players at the Copacabana nightclub and a heckler saying crude things about Sammy Davis Jr., but owners Dan Topping and Del Webb were interested in keeping a clean player image for the fans.

As such, one P.I. set out to follow Bobby Richardson and Tony Kubek after a game. Now this P.I. obviously didn't know anything about the personalities of Kubek and Richardson. It was like following two Pat Boones. How much trouble did the gumshoe think the pair were going to get into?

Surveillance put the pair of ballplayers playing ping-pong. At a YMCA. 

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com