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Extreme Ping-Pong Putting a new spin on a basement classic
Have something to say about about Rick Reilly's musings? Click here to submit a comment. At any Olympics, there is only one place to go -- Ping-Pong. Ping-Pong -- OK, OK, table tennis, Juan Antonio -- is always the best venue at the Olympics. Bill Gates was there Tuesday, so he knows. You go, of course, to laugh at the players. I mean, these people think they're playing real Ping-Pong? Please. For one thing, the way they hold the paddle. Wrong, wrong, wrong. You shake hands with the grip, none of this damn Communist style, holding the thing like it's some kind of Bulgarian cigarette.
Plus, they rip the rubber off the faces after every practice and match and glue new rubber on. Gimme a break. The ones we play with in the basement have to be 15 years old if they're a day. No wonder they can hit shots up to 100 miles an hour and get spin up to 7,500 rpm. Let's see them do it when the last bits of rubber peeled off during the Ford administration. And look at all the room they get! There has to be 20 feet of perfectly unimpeded room at both ends of the table, and 15 on each side, not to mention nothing for 75 feet above. I'd like to see these hot shots play in our basement, where you have to run around the snowboards and the exercise rower nobody ever used to get to smashes and then leap the dollhouse I never quite finished to get back. And I'd like to see them throw those 20-foot high serve tosses at our venue. Those balls would end up in the ventilator shaft. Speaking of tables, no wonder they can stage these incredible rallies in the Olympics. These tables are perfect. Where's the warp? Where are the buckling legs? Where are the beer rings? For that matter, where do they set their beer when they play beer-pong? If they played my wife, she'd cut a little backhand into their mug from behind the unsold Amway boxes and they'd have be chugging in no time flat. And I'll guarantee you they suffer fewer injuries than we do. The four sides under Olympic tables are closed in, so they never have to bang their heads crawling under there after the ball. And, yeah, maybe it's hard to concentrate with four wild games going on right next to each other like here in Sydney, but have they ever tried to play while their sister is vacuuming under their feet? I'll tell you something else -- it's probably true what German table tennis star Csilla Batorfi told me the other night, that I'd be lucky to return five out of 100 of her serves. But then again, I don't have cool Ping-Pong shoes like her, and little Ping-Pong shirts, either, or Ping-Pong warmups. Whoever heard of Ping-Pong warmups, anyway? You want to warm up, we'll play p-i-n-g to start the first point. Come to think of it, they should spin off a sport called Ping-Pong in the Olympics. The venue will be my basement. Can't wait to see them play in and out of the neighborhood dart game. Have something to say about about Rick Reilly's musings? Click here to submit a comment.
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