It was in the spring of 1985 that I, decided that I would do what I could to stem the slide that one wall handball was going through. When I was in my late twenties (the late 1960's) I entered many USHA and AAU Blackball tournaments for the honor of losing to some top players. I was a very successful, losing to Howie Eisenberg, Ruby Obert, Bob Davidson, Danny Maroney, Al Torres, Marty "the farmer" and others. I think even here I overstated my accomplishments. I didn't just lose to these guys, I got crushed!

I remember that in one tournament I was the 116th entry in the open singles. By the mid 1980's the open division had less than 30 entries or about 1/4th the players it had 20 years earlier. Blackball handball was hurting bad. However, when compared to Pinkball, Blackball was in good shape, because Pinkball was all but dead. Spaulding had stopped making the Pinkball. The only park with a major presence in Pinkball was the village courts in Manhattan and they used a pumped-up ball. 

Die hard Pinkball players had to choose between giving up the sport, playing handball with the little Blackball or using the "dead" Racquetball. As the Racquetball was the easiest ball to convert to, it started to become the ball of choice for former Pinkball Handball players and for new handball players. By 1985 the racketball was used as much if not more than the blackball to play handball, but unlike blackball there was no organization behind it.

That's what this tournament was all about. My goal was to put racquetball handball on the map. It was my belief that the growth of Big Blue Handball would be good for all of handball and that once a new player became indoctrinated into handball he could choose whatever form of handball he or she preferred. In the long run blackball would also benefit, especially as younger players join their high school teams.  Although Pinkball and Big Blue handball are the forms of handball I strongly prefer, it is not as important as promoting the sport of handball in general. I would be just a pleased to see Blackball succeed as I would Big Blue Handball. I think my letter to the USHA committee members in 1984 demonstrates this. ( A copy of this letter appears on page 7)

I did all I could to round up players from Brooklyn and Long Island. (I lived in Long Island at the time.) I intended to run the tournament only once, hoping to start some sort of committee that would pick up the gauntlet and run with it. The crew who helped me run the tournament did a wonderful job but they also drove me nuts because they were constantly missing meetings and as a result I had to do 90% of the pre-tournament work myself. After the first full day of the tournament I had to temporally bow out as I was in a complete state of exhaustion and mentally wiped out.