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A little about me: As many New Yorkers, I started out with handball way back
when (I won't even say how way back! ;-)
Then the Recreation Center in Brooklyn I worked for, McKibb's Stars, purchased six
wooden paddles- and it was on! What? No more sore, swollen or bleeding hands?
That was
for me!
Our first
few months using the paddles, we played with "Spaldines," (For those
of you non-New Yorkers, that's a Spalding brand pink rubber ball about the size
of a racquet-ball used to play handball throughout the city). Follow the
link to see the "Spaldine." By the way, those are available locally at the
Sports Authority in Aventura.
Using hand-ball rules (remember "hindu's?"), removing the
wrist-thongs and switching hands, we then graduated to the official size black
"Seamless" brand hand-ball which sped up the game. Back in the day,
wooden paddles were the
norm. Manufacturers like Marcraft, Wilson and SportCraft (and more) made the
wooden paddles that
many of us used. With their metal edges, some of these must have weighed close to a pound but that's
what we had and we played our butts off with them! My personal favorite which I
got for a song was a Marcraft "Black Beauty Light" . That one's still
around buried in a box in storage somewhere but one of these days I'll break it
out and play a few games with it just to relive old times.
After joining the service and finding no place to play one wall
paddleball as we
used to, I tried the base's racquetball courts. Since being a paddleball player one
already has the basic strokes, picking up racquetball is fairly quick for us.
Being used to those heavy wooden paddles was an advantage- swinging a 160 gram racquet
was gravy! Yes, it's a great sport- many of us who currently play paddleball have
played indoor racquetball at one time or another and many of us still play. I remember many a
weekend's good workout playing round robin in leagues.
After getting out of the
service, I continued with racquetball but it was no longer free- One either needed to
be a member of a health or racquet club or a guest of a member- at least in the
South Eastern Connecticut, where I lived. Outdoor courts were few and poorly maintained- and
that's saying a lot coming from New York, where at times we had to sweep the
broken bottles and other unnamable debris from the court just to play. So eventually I
gave up playing racquetball on a consistent basis- just the occasional practice at
the tennis half-height practice walls to
get a sweat up.
Fast forward to the year 2000- A career change, a move from New England to
Florida and a trip alone down from West Central to South Eastern Florida for me
to look for work and a place to live for my family. It was a stressful and
lonely time- weekends and days I hadn't arranged for job interviews or was searching the 'Net
and newspapers for work, I'd stew around in a little studio apartment 2 blocks off
Hollywood Blvd with not much to do. So one Saturday, I jumped in my car and went
out "exploring." I'd never gone east on Hollywood Boulevard to A1-A and
this day I decided to do so. I went further east to the back road that runs
parallel to A1-A and came up behind Angelo's Pizza and that was my first sight
of the Historic Garfield Street Paddleball Courts.
As I remember, it was the perfect day: warm, low humidity- perfect for what I
was seeing happening on those courts- SOME kind of ball games going on. But with
tennis balls? "What," I thought to myself, "are these people
playing? That's nerdy!!" And a "Pro" shop? OUR courts in New York didn't have that! We'd
have to go to the local bodegas to get our "Spaldines" or to Modell's
or Herman's to get our paddles and black-balls- there was never anything on-site like here!
I found a spot to park, walked over and checked it out. The "A"
Court guys were smoking the ball and all the other courts were being played on,
every one playing with those damn tennis balls but seeming to be having a blast.
I stayed there for hours watching the games and finally when someone vacated a
court, I borrowed a wooden paddle and tennis ball and tried it. It was definitely
different from the "black-ball" paddleball we used to play in
Brooklyn. It was slower than that black-ball but I could impart all kinds of spin on the
ball and the bounce was way different- lots of skip and at times, depending on how I hit
it, just the opposite...
and right off I was hooked.
I came back during the week, stopped at Wally's
Pro Shop and bought a wooden paddle and started playing. Once
I got my family down to Hollywood, I got them paddles, showed them the local
rules,
showed them the game and they were hooked too!
Yeah, I'm a "B" player but like all of us who frequent the
Historic Garfield Street Paddleball Courts
at Hollywood Beach, we love the game! We're the die-hards out there waiting out
the rain, playing "wet-ball" right afterwards. Some even have
squeegees in their trunks just to do the courts after the rains- you know who
you are. We're the ones
that on many chilly evenings are out there on the courts either playing or practicing.
We're the ones out there in the hot summer sun, sweating it out but having a
blast! And other than playing, there may be nothing better that we like than
watching a good paddle-ball match!
Ok, so I've rambled a little but I wanted you, the visitor to this
page, to
understand my passion for the game: What all of us "die-hards" feel.
YOU who are reading this may even be one- why visit a Web-Site dedicated to
paddleball?
So browse on- this site was created for us who love the
game, no matter its form. Please feel
free to submit ideas, suggestions, pictures, stories either uploaded via Email
or even in person on floppy, CD-ROM or even <gasp> handwritten sheets.
Submissions are appreciated but these are subject to our editorial
discretion. Submission of any material implies acceptance for publishing on this site.
Now as Johnny D would say "Talk to you later- I got a
next!"
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