The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-01-17

1 conducted myself like a true
warrior. a belted knight of the
celluloid ball.
I expect gnashing Of teeth in Chi
cago, Detroit, Cleveland and New
England. 7 anticipate the letters Of
outraged protest that will flood our
hsrrassed editor. am even prepared
for the bricks, vegetables and sundry
other missiles that will find their way
through the Daily Worker windows in
the general direction Of the Sports
Department. Yea, verify, We are for
titude Itself.
QUT there VIII be rejoicing over on
- Second Avenue, where the Red
Sparks hold sway and the ping Of
the serve and the pong Of the return
are sweet sonatas to tennis table ad-
diets, Ping pong players will scrry
out Of their holes, Sandpaper rackets
aloft, end fall in behind the banner
of the Daily Worker Sport Column in
serried ranks. Well. in ones and twos
anyway. Meyer Milquetoast, distant
relative of the famed Casper, will no
longer Sink up the dark side of the
street, but will stride confidently UP
Houston, new light shining in his
eyes, bound for table tennis tourna-
ment and glory. And this will be my
reward, even though the baseball
wolves tear me limb from limb.
WE, too, once sneered at the game.
w A sport? Competition? Exer-
else? FIe, fiel A man who would
play ping-pong would put on cheese
cloth and dance. And any guy that
would do thing like that simply
can't be discussed. He's beyond the
pale, beyond redemption. He'd be
thrown out of any respectable pool
room.
But the time came-ah, it always
comes when we learned to rue the
day that we had scorned ping-pong,
1t happened, like lot Of other things,
at a summer camp. Some Amazon
challenged your columnist to a game.
l accepted, contemptuously, of course,
I'd defeat the vixen 2l-0 and then
go down to the athletic field where
there aEn't no ten commandments and
a man can perspire freely.
We volleyed back and forth a
while, your correspondent missing
more than he hit. But. what the
hell, wait until the game started
I'd get serious then and beat that
dame so bad she'd never again look
at a ping-pong table.
First serve. Something white
whizzed over the net and past me,
Who was throwing things? "One-
love-" she lisped Sweetly. Hell, that
was an accident. She served again,
and again I felt cool breeze as the
celluloid winged past me.
I thought I detected smoker in
the ever growing gallery. A slight
flush, was later informed, began
to creep slowly upward from the
region Of my neck. 1 gripped the
racket more tightly.
The young con1rade, whose mater
nal ancestors undoubtedly were
witches in old Salem, served again,
q slow, twisting teaser. I swung with
reckless abandon at the place where
I fondly imagined the ball would be,
but, woe is me, my friends, the
spheroid had gently cured away from
my racket. Three-loveI
CAUTION was flung to the winds
v as the literary people have it. ]
forgot that I had ever read Marx
that I must be cool and self-pos-
sessed, that had a mother and
home.
:. But why should bore you, my
friends. The fourth, fifth and sixth
points were the same. The inaudible
smoker became lusty guffaw a;
the crafty jade Inundated me before
my comrades. The malicious, grin
ming face OF the she-devil opposite
me became hay to my sweat
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