Couple of times a year for the past couple of decades enough people will find themselves desperate enough for something to do other than stay at their home where they belong and  will descent on the place whereever I'm trying to live and stay at home and not bother their live's and it will be enough people  that kids take over the TV's,  In laws and Outlaws and people claiming to be related to someone else present show up in numbers too large to simply ignore and the old ping pong table makes an appearance out of the garage.

Why they've bothered I have no idea. I haven't lost a championship on my home court in 20 years. Maybe thirty. Some claim it's because this is the only place I ever played in the past 20-30 years. True enough. Others claim it's because this is they only place THEY have played in the past however many years they've  been alive. Lies. All lies. Guys and women alike don't come to my house every couple of years and come to the table slamming at 200 mph and serving with more English on the ball than you can can get out of 2,000 consecutive fast food drive up windows.

 Still, they lose. Over and over again. Years ago I wouldn't have cared if I had lost.  Last few times it's become a hatefest on me. "The old man is over 50 now. He ain't got nothin'"  "Gonna kick your butt old dude". And that's just the good stuff. On the rare occasion that I have falled behind 0-1 the word goes out "Dusty is losing" and people flood the area like they were watching Buster Douglas take out Mike Tyson.  I'm boo'd for winning. My backhanded flip returns of of slams from 15 feet behind the table are laughed at as "lucky". The sweat running in streams and the 22 lbs I've lost during a close game is not cause for concern, it's cause for hope. "He's gonna have a heat attack and die any minute Gunther (Gunther? Who is this guy anyhow?) hang in there!!!! And it's usually my wife or one of my kids giving Gunther encouragement. It's personal now.

They claimed because the table was old and warped and chipped I won because I knew where to hit the ball so it would fall off the table without a normal bounce. Went out and bought a new table.

They claimed it was because someone had left a professionally handle wrapped and padded paddle. Nonsense. Nobody else wanted it. You thought it was a handicap and demanded I play with it, remember that? FIne, went out and bought 4 professionally handle wrapped and padded paddles. Bought white balls, yellow balls and orange balls. Take your pick. Choose your end.

Still they lost. Last time though was close. They came up with a 10 person format, draw two names, play till you lose, double elimination tournament. Heh. I didn't get drawn until the 8th person so 6 already had a loss my first game. Nice try. Came down to me and one guy. Gunther. He's about 25 or so, blonde, agile, but as I pointed out, few guys balding by 25 are in the hall of fame for any sport much less ping pong. Beat him the first game, he came back to the finals and beat me like 24-22 or something. My legs were gone, I was puking gatorade in the bushes, been playing for several hours straight and he got me.

I wanted to get the rubber match over with then and now but the food was ready and the light was fading and it was decided (not by me) that the last game would take place the next day when both of us had been up and about for two hours. Right. Took me two hours to get out of bed I was so sore. I immediately grabbed some bottles of water and one of the girls bikes and disappeared for an hour which is how long it took me to get unwrapped to the point I could raise an arm above my shoulder. Beat him. Some ridiclous score like 39-37 but beat him. He was a sport about it. Nobody else was. I'm the Barry Bonds/Roger Clemens of this ping pong set. They hate me.

Now here they come again. Got the table out the other day and played the wife against her objections. No problem. Played the granddaughter and she beat me three in a row. What? well I did tweak my back true enough but still? She's my only fan and God bless her little heart, she informed everyone that I was hurt and let her win which works for me. I'm gonna run with it and not heal till after this tournament. I'm retiring. Undefeated. (Outside of preseason games of course which don't count as I informed Keke. She nodded wisely and said but I still beat you Grandpa.)

Which brings us to that building for lease.  I may not have upheld the integrity of the ping pong game as well as some would like but I'm suprised that the building in Cooperstown wasn't up for lease long before now. Really.

Ty Cobb? Intentionally tried to hurt people. Was never about anything but Ty Cobb. First, foremost and last. Integrity of the game?

Babe Ruth? So immature he made fun of Lou Gehrig while sucumbing to disease. Broke every training rule his managers ever instituted, drank, caroused, was vulgar beyond belief, ate the point of such obesity that his accomplishments may well be considered in spite of himself rather than an application of his talent and potential. Integrity?

Roger Maris was harassed and hounded by his Yankee teammates led by Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle himself during his 61 homerun case to the point Maris's hair fell out after turning white and he suffered a nervous breakdown and an asterick was put by his record and not removed until after he died. Ford  and Mantle both later admitted to being alcoholics and playing drunk. Integrity no doubt.

Both Casey Stengal and Leo Durocher were so willing to hold a grudge against a player making the most trivial of mistakes that both were reported to have physically attacked players and held grudges against players they didn't like for decades.

Billy Martin doesn't even require me going there does it?

Despite New York City fawning over the Yankees leaving the Dodgers and Giants in dilapadated structures and declining revenues, not only the city but the fans league wide denounced Walter O'Malley and Horace Stoneham when they pulled up stakes and moved to Los Angeles and San Francisco.  There was considerable talk about no integrity on this one and threats of throwing them out of the league. Serious talk.

I knew there were such a thing as "Jews". Knew Jesus was supposed to have been a Jew and Knew someone named Hitler had killed a bunch of them but that's about the extent of what I knew back when Sandy Koufax declined to pitch his scheduled start in the World Series on the Jewish Holiday of fasting Yom Kipur I think it was and all hell broke lose. I myself didn't know until then he was Jewish and didn't know that so many people really disliked Jews destroying the integrity of the game by refusing to honor their obligations to the game. Of course him sitting out meant he couldn't pitch 3 games of the series if necessary and would only pitch 2 if it went to 7 and it didn't, the Dodgers losing 4-1 or 4-2, memory fails me but that hostility about Koufax being a traitor Jew never faded. I never heard such an outcry up till then.

Lots of people including national sportswriters took shots at Pitchers Don Drysdale, Bob Gibson and Juan Marichal among others for violating the integrity of the game by throwing at batters heads was the claim. Being a rather large village's idiot I wondered outloud if nobody else had ever throw at someone's head? But it didn't really need an answer since if you were of a fan of a team one pitcher was on you ignored the accusations and howled right along with everyone else about the rest.

Over in Baltimore they had a manager named Earl Weaver who spit on an umpire or something similar, did a lot of things as I remember. Might have hit one or hit some players or tried to fight someone, who knows? I just remember he was considered a baseball genuis so the writers said and they cut him some slack quite a few times. They had some mamma's pretty boy named Jim Palmer that the writers were on his case about not playing hurt and dogging it and being reason enough for Weaver to act like he did.  Writers understood how bad it was for the integrity of the game for a team to invest the kind of money they were paying these new era primadonna players who wouldn't play hurt like real players did.

Then it really hit the fan. They made a black guy an umpire and that was just about as low as one person could get most the white boys in my school said. Black umpire will let a black player get away with murder. Not even right. Not being white I sorta staggered around the issue saying something to the effect that if black umpires would favor black players and there was only one black umpire so far wouldn't all them white umpires favor white players? That was typical stupid thinking on my part according to Smokey Mckinney and since he'd already proven he could and would beat me up twice before I conceded that it probably was not the real problem after all.

But even I could see their point when Baltimore had enough of Weaver because the genuis finished last in the American league or something and he punched out someone or took a leak on home plate, who could keep it all straight back then what with it all happening in Baltimore but if that wasn't something, they hauled off and hired Frank Robinson as the first black manger. Holy Cow was that stupid or what? I wasn't really sure if it was or not but Smokey and his friends were seriously sure so I just stayed away from them that whole year. Pretended I didn't like baseball anymore since the integrity of the game was totally shot anyhow.

Imagine my suprise when Margie Shott up and proved not just men could ruin the integrity of the game. She did something like saying something racist I guess but my dad said it wasn't a big deal really, that she was just a drunk and what people were most upset about was a woman being in charge and that damn dog of her's taking a dump everywhere he wanted and stinking up the expensive seats of the people around her. He was probably right. I don't think there has been a woman owner or a Saint Bernard taking dumps anywhere he wants in a big league park and ruining the integrity of the game since has there?

To tell the truth, I did see "reefer madness" in the 7th grade but they didn't show what it looked like and when the Dodger's best relief pitcher Steve Howe got suspended for illegal drug use I didn't even know what illegal drugs were except for reefer madness. Had to be it I told my little brother. Then he got suspended and reinstated something like 7 times? Tim and I figured it out. He probably had stashed all the reefer madness in some abandoned miners cave in the Rocky Mountains and kept getting caught everytime he went back to get some. They kept letting him back in because they figured he had run out and would be good but he must have had a whole wagon load stuffed in that mine shaft. As we all now know our village had two idiots and they were closely related.  

If you step back and look at the big picture today it's amazing isn't it that Cooperstown didn't just throw in the towel on that one after 7 misses and admitted all integrity of the game was blown. And I'm too embarassed to talk about Doc Gooden, Denny McClain, Daryl Strawberry, so many others. Must be something in that picture that faded before most of us got to see it.

I could go on but I'm sitting here staring out the glass doors at the ping pong table that I forgot to roll back in the garage before it started to mist last night and it was cold so I guess it's probably got a couple of little warps and what have you now. I wonder? If Keke was to be willing to spend a couple of hours and a person was to figure out any little special bounces that table might have now......hmmmmm.......wonder if they're going to test for steroids?