Judge — February 6, 1932 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

JUDGE JUDGING [ Ttess someone in authority intro- duces a law, calls out the jani- similar measure of restraint, this best possible of all worlds (boo!) will soon be zaries, or devises possible overrun with ping-pong players. which has bumper crops of crooners, female im personators, and toasted-peanut sand wiches, it should net be surprising to In an era produced learn that there is a recorded sales-list of one million ping-pong tables in this country. I am not very smart at figures. but inasmuch as it takes at least two peo- ple to play a seems reas there must t ers cluttering easies and hotel ballrc ane of ping-pong, it bly safe to assume that ill of two million pls up living rooms, speak- ns. of the fact, but ping-pong in recent months has been pla comparat ou may not be awa sd upon an organized basis to Mr. Ford’s whimsical theories on production. There is a central governing body. a set of offi- cial rules and standardized ments of play. In most of the ¢ es the game is played with great earnestness, and at Harvard, where the no! footballers down large scuttles of tea between the halves, there is talk of elevating ping- pong to the status of a major sport imple- He g By Joe Williams and all that goes with it, including a training table, coaching staff and cheer leaders. A few weeks : the pick of New York's finest went West to battle the pick of Chicago's finest in’ the first inter-city match on record, and while business in the Loop district did not exactly come to a standstill, nor did the newspapers issue extras on the result, it nevertheless: w not to say red-letter, You see, they have tak s an epochal, in sports. 1 ping-pong out of the sororities and made it over into a he-man's sport, teeming with Virility, robustness and. primitive ap- peal. Of course there may be some who will argue that masculinity is not what it used to be back in the rugged pioneer times, and that many strange trivialitics pass for he-men’s sport in this day and « As to that I wouldn't know, not n authority on what is ingly called the human race. The an- nual national championship (it at- tracted 369 competitors from fourteen different cities a year ago) is quite a show. The young men bat the little white celluloid) balls around with much enterprise and intensi nd at frequent intervals th boils over with car-picrcing shouts and booming salutes. T° a number of people who may be heathens or scoffers or both, I real- ize that whooping things up at a ping pong tournament is something like tendering a thunderous ovation to lady tight-rope walker in the flea cir- cus, but such blasphemy is sternly i d by the trac believe the dyed-in-the-wool, the blown-in- the-bottle ping-pongist. Hasn't it) been t way down through the ages? Didn't they laugh at Fulton, sneer at Mar- coni, ridicule the Wright broth- ers, and “yoo-hoo” at the first intrepid that walked down Main Street with a golf bag tossed over his shoulder? The tournament has all the trappings and settings of an authentic championship, in- cluding high ch which glum-faced referces sit and re- cord the scores, and a_ press box where bright young men smoke vile cigarets and ham- mer away at clattery type- writers. Most of the gallant gladi- ators wear rubber-sole shoes, some of them appear in flan- nels or knickers, a few of the more fastidious carry three or four bats into the arena, and all of them are extremely cour- teous and (Page 27, please) irs comicbooks.com