Ping Pong: Meet the Players at DeWitt Community Center
Earn your ping pong nickname and paddle yourself on the back
By Tom Maguire
If Tom the Talker can mix it up with the table tennis seniors then so can a less bombastic player like you.
I earned that nickname at Monday ping pong at the DeWitt Community Center (see sidebar). Big-word-loving legend Howard Cosell co-wrote a book called “I Never Played the Game” but I do, so I’m entitled to blab while I’m playing.
You’ve got to join us and experience the intensity of, for example, the player I call Die Fledermaus, Averell. She loves bats, hence the nickname based on the operetta. She hits a slappy kill shot and she’ll try to sneak a fast serve down the middle too. And now she even has a trophy, which we’ll get to later.
We often forget the score and who serves to whom, resulting in scenes like, OK, wait, Die Fledermaus just served to “The Hammer,” so now it must be Guam Dave serving to Pete the Heat.
And if The Hammer, Susan, is your doubles teammate (we change teams; we play singles too) or your opponent, you will marvel at her all-around game. She has won her age category perhaps four times at the NYS Senior Games, never less than a silver and she is aiming for the nationals! I asked some of the players about their favorite shot and why they play table tennis. The Hammer said, “My favorite shot would be my forehand shot, ’cause I can nail it and I love table tennis because it makes me laugh and I grew up playing.”
Here are some other splendid ping pong personalities who compete; we agreed to use only first names or nicknames:
• The Big O: Otis is sort of fake-vociferous. He disputed a serve one time; later, a friendly fist-bump with the opponent in question. And against a novice-level player The Big O will magnanimously powder-puff his serves. Of course, against a good player he’ll throw in every rotten side-twister that he can. Oh, and The Big O gave The Hammer her nickname when she was killing me in singles one time at the Syracuse Table Tennis Club (sidebar).
• Phil the Thrill: Our host, the beaming, soft-spoken impresario who transforms the DeWitt Community Room into our ping pong room and serves not only as our poet laureate (see below) but also our poet scor-eate. Games are to 11 and as the score changes he’ll say things like “10-4, good buddy; “9 to 5, gotta make a livin’”; “7-up, the un-cola”; and “9-9, Herman Cain” (remember Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan?).” I like Phil’s game because he knows that many points in doubles are won through steadiness, not a Beijing slam and he can read backspin and return it in kind. This un-cola guy knows his fizz. “My favorite shot, it has to be my forehand offensive stroke,” he said, “and the reason I play is that, first of all I’ve played all my life, my entire life and it’s a game where you can play all your life and I get good exercise from it.” Oh, and he even spoke on the phone with hardbat ping pong legend Marty Reisman.
• Amer the Kidder: Powerful guy and playful. One time I hit a topspin backhand that clipped the net and went over to win a doubles match. Amer said to me, “You had to use the net. Shame on you.” His torso, if not the whole room itself, shudders with the power of his risky flick shot: If it’s on, it’s probably going to win the point. The forehand topspin is his favorite stroke. “I play ping pong,” he said, “because it keeps me going” and it’s a sport that you can play for life.
• Guam Dave: Like Phil the Thrill, he’s a retired electrical engineer. The big key for Dave is his risky flick-WHAM backhand. A good idea is not to hit anything to his backhand. Compensating for Dave’s all-or-nothing attack is a terrific poker face; you never know what he’s thinking, but it could be something flicky.
• Pete the Heat: Like Phil the Thrill, Pete remembers speaking on the phone with hardbat master and entertainer Marty Reisman. Pete even has an autographed copy of Marty’s book! Pete paces and he also grins and why not: He’s got a flick-backhand that he finishes with a high paddle like “Olé on you, sucker!”
• Mirth-master Randy: Rivals Pete the Heat for best grin. A two-time winner of the Most Improved Player award, powerful Randy goes for vicious shots off both wings. You can’t match his power or his comical expression.
• Roni the Robot: Very polite, very ready to kill. Like The Hammer, Roni has won multiple titles at the NYS Senior Games. She has these nasty slap shots that suggest some kind of oil inside her wrist. And she loves to throw in oblique dink-serves that make you go diving. Roni shows her steadiness Sundays at the Syracuse Table Tennis Club where you can witness some good pong from various players.
• Tom the Talker: I am honored they have given me TWO nicknames. My other one is Tom Cat because of my incredibly fast feet. I can out-backspin some people but if you tempt me I’ll unload a topspin forehand on you.
In the DeWitt Community Room, if someone is worthy in a particular year, the Most Improved Player award is presented by Phil the Thrill. At the January 2025 ceremony honoring 2024 winner Die Fledermaus, Phil recited his poem:
The person who won this award
Has a name that one must be careful to spell.
She has been taking table tennis lessons,
That is obvious from our Monday sessions,
So the choice is as clear as a bell,
That the Most Improved Player award goes to Averell!
Phil said that the winner’s little trophy adorned with names and photos is, after the Lombardi trophy, the “most coveted trophy in all the world.”
Die Fledermaus noted that her table tennis coach at The Rock Center (sidebar) has taught her to get low in her stance “at the cost of my knees.” She said the trophy “will go in a place of pride in my home.” She added later, “I am deeply honored and proud and this Monday table tennis has been the highlight of my life in Syracuse.”
The award committee consisted of Phil the Thrill and Pete the Heat, who blew a horn to honor Die Fledermaus. And right there Pete added me to the award committee. So now I’m also The Committeeman!
I just had to demand “balance” from Phil, so I asked who wins the Least Improved Player award. He laughed and said, “The least improved player would probably be the best player.”
And the best player has to be Agreeable Robert, who also plays at the Syracuse Table Tennis Club. His favorite shot is the backhand loop, even though he claims he’s not great at it. He can say that but he’s beautiful to watch. He’s a NYS Senior Games veteran who figures he may have won doubles gold there. I guess it’s hard to remember everything when you’re that good. Robert said he plays “to maintain my health. And it’s good from a mental standpoint too. It keeps you sharp, ’cause you have to think fast on your feet.”
His ping pong tips: “You just have to stick with it. You have to be passionate about it and you’re gonna lose and you’re gonna lose and you’re gonna lose and eventually you’ll win one and you just keep going from there.”
Tom Maguire once attended the U.S. Closed table tennis championships at his alma mater, Hofstra University. A competitor got mad and broke his paddle and Tom seems to recall he picked up that paddle or part of it, as a souvenir. Contact Tom with ping pong-group questions at tpmaguire1@gmail.com
Engineers Built Foundation for Local Ping Pong
Ping pong players who can’t move get splattered, but unlike with statues, the ball leaves no mark. Like a good mobile player, then, the game of ping pong has bounced around the Syracuse area, orchestrated initially by some nimble engineers.
Organized pong started locally in the early 1970s, said retired General Electric electrical engineer Phil the Thrill, leader of the senior ping pong group that meets Mondays at the DeWitt Community Room in East Syracuse. Another engineer put an ad in GE’s in-house newspaper, and after that Phil and one other GE engineer played in private homes. Also, an O’Brien & Gere engineer from Ireland “was a tremendous player” who came in very early and “was definitely a driving force in moving the club forward,” Phil said.
They started to form an association that played at the downtown YMCA in Syracuse. Teams from about eight companies played there in an industrial league and after that the Syracuse Table Tennis Association moved to many different places, Phil said, “to find a good home for the club.”
Sites included the downtown YMCA, the Clubhouse in DeWitt, the Camillus Town Hall, the Armond Magnarelli Community Center in Syracuse, the Polish American Citizens Club in Syracuse and Shoppingtown Mall in DeWitt.
At one point the association had probably 30 members and held two major table tennis tournaments that each had more than 100 players from around the United States.
Today, age-50-plus pongsters play on Mondays at the DeWitt Community Room and Syracuse Table Tennis Club participants play Sundays at the Pastime Athletic Club in Syracuse and Thursdays at Elevate Fitness in Liverpool. And if you want to be astonished, watch the amazing players Mondays and Wednesdays at The Rock Center in Syracuse.
When pongsters played at the Town Hall in Camillus, a boy named Matt Simon came to play. Phil never met him but he said Simon became one of the best players in the United States. Simon went on to become a doctor and online information says that at the 19th annual Maccabiah Games in Israel in 2013, he was on bronze-medal-winning Team USA. “He would be better than anybody I mentioned,” Phil said.