INTRODUCTION | DEDICATION | Chapter I

 

            In Volumes VI and VII I’d indicated how in the first half of the 1970’s the USTTA was characterized by controversy. This, I said, showed a vitality that bespoke movement in the Sport. In noting a mid-‘70’s continuation of this trend, I immediately point to the Association’s 1975 Election of Officials in which 14 people ran for the three Vice-President positions, and three other candidates for the one position of Treasurer.

            Movement there was, but it was divisive. On the one hand, there was a push for prize money tournaments that encouraged the appearance of top U.S. and visiting world-class competitors, coupled with an opportunity for our country’s players to compete abroad. On the other, a desire to devote what limited funds the Association had to membership growth and the formation of leagues, clubs, and school programs for the average player. The highly controversial newly-formed Players Association headed by Fuarnado Roberts, along with Topics Editor Tim Boggan, and Television Chair Dick Miles supported the former point of view; Public Relations man Fred Herbst, Jack-of-all-trades Jack Carr, and Fred Danner the latter (though only the focused USTTA Junior Development Chair Danner, an amateur-minded, driven doer, could be said to have accomplished much).

            Throughout the country more small-tourney organizers began giving cash prizes, and from Aug. through Nov., 1975 there was a succession of larger prize-money tournaments that had been unthinkable only a few years back:  $3,000 at Phoenix, $3,000 at Cedar Rapids, $1,400 at Atlanta, $3,000 at Oklahoma City, $2,175 at Detroit, and $1,750 at Long Island’s Adelphi University, the venue for Mort Zakarin’s Pro Tour #1. Another 1975-76 advance was not merely the entry of U.S. players in tournaments abroad, but, significantly, the Seemiller brothers’ encouraging performance at them…a preparation for the semi-professional/professional players the U.S. Team would meet at the 1977/79 World Championships. Our advance in Sarajevo and Calcutta came to a climax  there in Birmingham, England when, down 4-2 in the deciding tie against Italy, we rallied to regain something of our country’s lost glory and qualified to take our place in Championship Division play with the world’s best.               

            Herbst, in his article, “USTTA—For The Amateur Or Professional?” (TTT, May-June, 1976, 13-14) presents a point of view favoring the amateur that made sense to many—but no one, because of the difficulty involved, was willing or able to make much progress implementing it. Fred says, “That to imagine table tennis will become a major sport in this country through the device of big money tournaments or the development of a few superstars is surely a hallucination and a delusion….You can’t build anything from the top down, you must build from the bottom up.” [It would seem, as, 30 years later, we were about to celebrate the 75^th anniversary of our Association, that the thought of table tennis becoming a major sport in the U.S. is itself hallucinatory.]

            Fred cites soccer as an example: “They had television exposure, world-famous players, media exposure, and a blank check. Within a year it was all drown the drain. Why? Because there was no mass base to support it…..Presently, wiser heads are reviving soccer.” Now the money’s going into “youth leagues” and “professional competitions held in college stadia instead of the big ball fields.” [Truth there may be to this—but concurrently the May 2^nd, 1976 New York Daily News said that 25,000 spectators attended the Cosmos-Sting game at Yankee Stadium and that the Cosmos just paid at least $500,000 for Girgio Chinaglia about to be released from the Italian Soccer Federation. So professional soccer wasn’t down the drain just yet.]

            What the USTTA needs to do, Herbst says, is follow the example of the United States Tennis Association—emphasize grass roots development of an organization that’s “devoted to the development of tennis as a means of healthful recreation and physical fitness and to the maintenance of high standards of amateurism, fair play, and sportsmanship.” Of course, as in soccer, there’s successful pro play too [how’d that come about?], but the main thrust in tennis is toward amateur play. Thus the professional-minded wing of the USTTA “should form their own organization and get their own sponsors,” while the amateur base “will guarantee the eventual success of professional table tennis. [Maybe—but where was even what base we had when the pros played in the Houston U.S. Open? Is Table Tennis a spectator sport for the masses of amateurs?]”

            Both Fuarnado Roberts and George Brathwaite , who I believe are right-minded but who don’t always get their facts straight, have Players Association articles in the Jan.-Feb., 1976 issue of Topics. Robbie objects (as does Herbst) to Mort Zakarin’s proposal for an “exclusive 15-year contract” to run a series of Pro Tour tournaments—though he might have gone along with it if Mort and the USTTA E.C. had agreed to give the Players Association “at least 5% of the profit,” which they declined to do. Robbie argues abrasively that the top players are being abused, taken advantage of, and must get some compensation. For example: all expenses must be paid for U.S. Men and Women’s Team members (the women particularly have been neglected) at the upcoming June, 1976 Philadelphia U.S. Open.

            Fred Danner, extremely capable regarding what he wants to accomplish, and so ambitiously amateur-minded as to already be envisioning our Sport in the Olympic Games, takes a hard line toward the professional-minded Players Association. In his Work-in-Progress Memoirs he says none of them were at his Huntington Tournament [because of course, though Fred drew 380 entries (75% of whom were first timers!) there was no prize money]; instead, they were “busy trying to blackmail USTTA tournament sponsors & Mort Zakarin’s World Table Tennis Tour. The fact that Mort’s Tour might take several losing money years to become profitable didn’t seem to concern Fuarnado.”

            Fred doesn’t like the Players,’ their pushiness. “Undaunted by their failure to get USTTA Executive Committee backing to extort money from World Table Tennis, the Players Association decided to “hold-up” USTTA-run tournaments for more prize money. At the 1976 Easter Regional Tournament in Maryland,” Fred says, “the Players forced a stopping of play until Tournament Director Bob Kaminsky acceded to some of their demands. The other ‘average’ players in the held-up events were most unhappy with what was going on. Several simply defaulted and went home rather than put up with this crap! This left a bitter taste in my mouth and I felt particularly bad seeing a young Danny Seemiller being led around by Fuarnado Roberts like a puppy on a string. Why should I work so hard to get Dan Seemiller on TV so he can destroy the game I love? It made no sense....” Not to Fred. But prize-money tournaments won’t destroy the game, quite the contrary, and eventually Play-for-Pay professionals will become far more watched and appreciated the world over than It’s-only-a-game-minded amateurs.*  

            The Association’s Executive V-P, Rufford Harrison, on hearing the Players’ demands for this and that, questions, Where do “you people” think the money is to come from? The invariably cash-strapped USTTA? The U.S. Open sponsors? Like Zakarin, promoters Dick Miles/Herb Vichnin want an extended contract—in their case to run a series of consecutive U.S. Opens. Of course when the prize money offered for the first of these Opens was a mere $1,500, the Players’ players acted unprecedentedly. As you’ll see, in a highly criticized move, they boycotted and picketed the tournament.            Roberts says President Disney had wanted the USTTA to match his, Charlie’s, $5,000 offer to run a U. S. Closed (actually Charlie proposed, unsuccessfully, that the E. C. match funds “up to $500”), and to allow those with just six months residency to be able to play in it. This would include the recently arrived Thai players ensconced for the moment at Disney’s Minneapolis Club, led by 5-time Australian Champ Charlie Wuvanich, winner of almost $3,000 in the last six months of 1975 tournaments. Since the buck falls to the USTTA President, Disney is repeatedly Roberts’s target, and, though we can read clearly enough what Robbie says, we don’t always know whether it’s true or not. Certainly the Players Association wouldn’t want the strong, new Thai players coming in for a quick grab at the U.S. Closed title and the cash that goes with it.

            Roberts also says his Players Association is all prepared to run the ’76 Closed with a two-year residency requirement, ample prize money, excellent venue conditions (which many tournaments now do not have), and a boss party—but more than a few people might consider that proposed Closed far more dream than reality. As Joseph C.H. Lee said after running three tournaments with help from his Aberdeen, Maryland Club, “Unless a person actually takes on the responsibilities of conducting a tournament [and getting the required sponsors], he just cannot fully realize the difficulties in trying to raise the needed funds for prizes and other expenses.” However, you’ll be able to read in this volume, not about a Players Association Closed, but how Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, thanks largely to Neil Smyth and Bill Hodge, made USTTA History by hosting in Dec., 1976 the first full-event U.S. Closed with $12,500 in prize money.

            Brathwaite, echoing Roberts, eschews the lip service given to the “high standards of amateurism,” and urges the USTTA to get real, its membership to be aware that the top players were “being treated scantily and like second-class citizens.” Although USTTA money is found to partially fund E.C. members to their Meetings, and found, too, to bring world-class players to U.S. Opens, our Team members have to “pay their own way to play for their country.” Brathwaite thinks that at E.C. Meetings a “lot of deals, contracts, etc. are made that are not in the best interests of the players or the Association,” so he wants a “Players Association representative to be able to attend all E.C. meetings of the USTTA just so that we can listen and have our say.” Of course no one’s stopping such a representative from attending the Meetings now, and members, by reading not only what I believe are truthfully recorded Minutes, but all the free-wheeling articles regularly published in Topics, ought to be able to judge pretty accurately what’s true and what isn’t, and why their representatives act as they do.    

            I think by this mid-‘70’s time more progress has been made in pursuing the professional point of view than the amateur point of view, for I believe the new interest in intense world-class play forced a more passionate response, more movement, than the interest in socially competitive play. The USTTA is primarily for the serious tournament player—it always has been. It doesn’t grow, as enthusiasts want it to, because in a sense it’s exclusive. Playing even relatively well takes time, takes work. The turnover in Membership is constant; enthusiasts come…and go, don’t stay enthused.

Also constant, through the 1970’s and into the millennium beyond, and this despite USTTA members’ interest in tournament play and playing before an audience, is the criticism that “outside” spectators at tournaments seldom know what’s going on. Put it this way:

 

            Since some tables have an umpire and others don’t, am I, the uninitiate,             to assume that at some tables I’m watching serious practice matches? Or the real             thing? And even where there is an umpire, what event, and what round in it, am I             watching? And the match is between whom? I’m fortunate at a tournament to             have a program with player numbers, and even some photos, but I             can’t always identify all the players. That is, most wear numbers, but some don’t; and many             numbers curl up, fold over, are unreadable. Also, which ones are the best players,             the ones apt to be in contention, or to pull upsets? Draw sheets are             posted, but not kept up to date. Loudspeaker announcements can’t be heard. Umpires can’t be        heard. In short, there’s rarely ever enough attention given to the presentation of             matches to outsiders…perhaps on the theory that they won’t come anyway.

 

But though over the years we have very few people interested in getting outside spectators to our tournaments and willing to do the considerable work that entails, if we insiders here in the U.S. don’t get to watch and above all get to compete against the best in our Sport, then even those who are serious players will really be playing a form of ping-pong not table tennis as it’s played professionally. It took us a while to learn that good players coming here to live necessarily produced other good players—indeed, induced, through popular opinion and support, still stronger players to come from abroad. As a result, our standard of play improved. A player who in one decade would have been ranked in the Top 30 may not in the next, even were he to have kept up his game, make the Top 100.

            Despite Herbst’s comment that professional leagues in the mid-‘70’s are failing, it’s the professional player in any sport that interested spectators want to pay their money to see. Indeed, it’s a debatable question whether you can fool even the uninitiated with exhibition players of limited ability. Professionals, much more often than not, try as hard as they can—and it’s this show of tension that any real sports enthusiast wants to see and feel. For many, exhibitions may be fun to watch—but unless they are so superbly done as to create stress (even comedic stress—will the jokes work?), the more of an aficionado you are, the sooner they become boring.

Herbst, in a Jan. 13, 1975 letter to then President Boggan, told me, as he and how many others had told me before, and would tell me after (including future USTTA President Mel Eisner), that the only chance for USTTA growth lies in a “proliferation of clubs, leagues, interscholastic and community-based recreation competition.” So, o.k., though I had through the years, and still have, my own priorities—those things I feel with passion I can do—I’ve never been against growth. Who would be? Somebody go ahead, bring it about, a consortium of the interested do it, bring about this growth that hasn’t been done in the first 40 years of the Association’s History, or, as I know, won’t be done in the next 35.

            More than ever before there is a divide being talked about—whether the USTTA is for the Amateur or the Professional. Club owner Lou Bochenski asks (TTT, May-June, 1976, 18), as did Harrison, Where is the tournament prize money for the top players to come from? And answers, “Certainly not from the entry fees. The lower rated players will not stand for this. They will not willingly pay an additional two, three or more dollars to play in a tournament just to provide prize money for the top players.” Just to…? In effect, then, it’s not worth it for the lower rated players to pay more to see the better players compete at their tournament? So it’s unlikely top players will come to their tournament? Perhaps the divide is between the higher rated players and the lower rated players? Between those who are interested in Table Tennis as a spectator sport and those who aren’t?

Lou says the top players “owe a bit more to table tennis than just a lot of hard dedicated practice.” Just a…? But that’s their work that’s presumably made them ready for more work—top flight competition. Lou says the players “must help round up sponsors and promote table tennis in every imaginable way”—must do that work too. Lou says that “We would gladly help to provide the Paddle Palace at little or no cost if the top players can find a way to draw sponsors with cash, spectators with cash in their pockets, and the necessary TV.” Which would certainly call attention to and benefit the Paddle Palace, right?

Charlie Disney sees progress only if we can establish a great many class places to play through professionally-minded promoters who want to be in the business of table tennis. He says that promoters who give large money tournaments a first-time try find they don’t make enough money (did they really expect to?) to compensate them for the hassles they go through and so, after running one tournament, they aren’t willing to run another. However, George Nissen and others in the 1970’s and on into the ‘80’s, continue to run their money tournaments, though they have no financial motive.

Here’s Tom Baudry commenting on his Mar. 27-28, 1976 Bicentennial Professional Invitational Tournament in Baton Rouge:

 

            “…I would have enjoyed nothing better than to have had money in all         twelve events, if we had $10,000 or $20,000; however, we had only $2,000. My             concept of a professional athlete is one who earns or is able to earn a living at his             or her chosen sport. I am a ‘B’ player, not a pro. There is no way on earth that I    can ever expect to earn a living by playing table tennis. We can’t all be pros; the             pros are the best, the players at the top, only they can make it—if the money is             there. I wanted the winner to be able to put some money in the bank, not just       cover his traveling expenses, so, out of our meager $2,000 total, one-half went to             the winner. At least this is a start towards professionalism….”  

 

Herbst told me it was really “disturbing and debilitating” to see “the new prevalence of payment for what used to be volunteer work. Everybody is dipping into the pie and soon the pan will be licked clean. ‘Why should I work for nothing when so-and-so is getting paid (or making profitable deals on the side)?’” Answer to Fred: Because the worker has an obsessive love for his/her avocation—work which he thinks he does well and, in addition to vanity payments, gets great personal satisfaction from. Examples—past, present, and future—are easy to find (follow Bill Hornyak or Power Poon in the coming years).  

Fred says, All this money spent—“it’s very demoralizing. When there is no money left to pay, the part-timers will quit and the national operations [without an Executive Director and staff] will be a shambles. Crisis time. So, Tim, after your several years of dedicated leadership, your administration may be remembered not for some worthy accomplishments, but for financial irresponsibility.”

To which Boggan [with an historic and not very favorable overview of USTTA Executive Directors to come that Fred didn’t have] answers: That may be. Herbst quotes me correctly as saying woefully that “my dream is dying:—that is, as Fred says, “my dream of table tennis becoming a major sport with commensurate monetary rewards to the professional heroes.” (That’s because I wasn’t happy with a good many USTTA Executive Committee members who I felt hadn’t the “heart” to push the Sport outward and forward—a feeling later confirmed when too many of them seemed afraid to involve themselves in hosting a World Championships in the U.S.) But, o.k., controversy accepted and be damned, there already had been a great deal of 1970’s positive movement.

It’s true that USTTA officials and players took some risky shots—and that some missed the mark. Tournaments didn’t turn out as we hoped they would. We couldn’t close that bid to hold the World Championships. Conflicts arose between concerned players and concerned match officials—whose fault was that? But the Association kept scoring with an accumulation of points—a magazine, true, that we spent much money on, but that aroused great interest among the Membership; more and larger tournaments; much more prize money (and not just for the top players); a popular, if criticized rating system; outstanding junior development work (players now going to Japan, and soon to Sweden and China, for training—my own boys, still young, establishing the groundwork, the tournament experience, for professional play abroad); more emphasis on coaching (increasingly important in every country); an outward movement into world table tennis, and though that movement cost money, it in turn brought that world to us. These were accomplishments done—not Jack-in-the-beanstalk wished for.  

            Of course there were messes too, as we shall see—particularly with regard to the short-lived but troublesome Players Association. Herbst speaks of an “absolutely inconceivable spectacle”:

 

                        “…our own official publication helping to dig the grave of USTTA by             giving over the entire front page and more [actually the top half of the front page,             but, when folded for mailing, the cover] to a pitch for this splinter group,             complete with the address where to send the $2 [membership fee]! And who is             wielding the spade? Our own Tim Boggan, formerly president and now a well-            paid employee under contract to edit a publication which belongs not to him             personally as he seems to think, but to the membership. It is time that the             membership, through its elected Executive Committee, reasserted control over its             own property.”

 

            To many, the Players Association was more a rival to, than a part of, the USTTA, and Editor Boggan, who was not only a USTTA Vice President but also a Vice President in this Players Association, certainly, as Fred says, championed them, gave the group much attention in the official USTTA publication. This was seen by some as unacceptable, even a conflict of interest. The condemnation it drew no doubt encouraged Ron Shirley and his Table Tennis Club of America (TTCA) to issue its amateur-minded quarterly periodical, Table Tennis (“major emphasis will be to present instructional and informational material”). After a couple of years, though, Ron dropped it, wanting to concentrate on being primarily a Yasaka distributor. Boggan, however, saw these Players’ protests as an important historical happening in U.S. Table Tennis—a part of a whole. And he gave them what he considered an appropriate voice.

            Readers will judge for themselves whether this turbulent era, with its contrasting amateur/professional views, was good or bad for U.S. table tennis. I believe, though, that with its play-for-pay move toward professionalism, Table Tennis reflects not only the thought of those in other sports associations, but the far-off, upfront resolution of such thought, that not even the Olympic Games should be strictly for amateurs.   

             

SELECTED NOTES.

            *Topics, with its usual eye toward controversy, printed the following excerpts (Nov.-Dec., 1977, 5):