News Columnists nypost.com  Email Newsletters
 Make NYPOST.COM
Your Homepage
HOME |  NEWS |  COLUMNISTS |  SPORTS |  GOSSIP |  POST OPINION |  BUSINESS |  ENTERTAINMENT
 Home
 Archives
 Last 7 Days
 Breaking News
 Business
 Career Center
 Cartoons
 Classified
 Columnists
 Coupons
 Entertainment
 Gossip
 Horoscope
 Learning Center
 Lifestyle
 Lottery
 News
 NYC Rental Listings
 PageSix.com
 Parenting
 Post Opinion
 Post Store
 Puzzles
 Real Estate
 Reviews
 Shopping
 Sports
 Story Index
 Traffic
 Travel
 TV Listings
 Weather
 SEARCH
 Contact Us
 Home Delivery
 Job Openings
 News Corp Sites
 Online Media Kit
 Print Media Kit
 Privacy Policy
 Terms of Use
 
GOOD OLD HANDBALL IS BOUNCING BACK
By GERSH KUNTZMAN
PHOTO RUBBER MATCH:
Dave Rojas returns a volley at the handball Tournament of Champions on West Fourth Street yesterday.
- Helayne Seidman

August 19, 2002 -- IT WAS another Sunday afternoon and another culture clash at the famed West Fourth Street Playground.

On one side of a standard-issue chain-link fence, 10 uniformed basketball players went at it before a crowd of hundreds and wall-sized tributes to the corporate god Nike, the league's big-money sponsor.

But from the other side of the fence, all you can see are the back sides of those signs. The handball players who gathered there for the weekend's "Tournament of Champions" were left to feel like a ne'er-do-well younger brother with his hand out.

That fence at West Fourth Street might as well be the Berlin Wall, which separated gleaming West Germany from the polluted, backward East. On the basketball side, limousines pull up bearing Kobe Bryant and rapper Jay-Z, who make the scene to film commercials or just make the scene.

The handball side has the feel of an impromptu block party.

"This is the real city game," said Justin Sullivan, who made the award-winning documentary "Big Blue" last year and still follows the action. "But for some reason, basketball has cornered the market on what the media believes is ‘inner-city' sports."

Or, as longtime player - and longtime City Hall insider - Arnie Segarra described it, "Handball is a cult film and basketball is the summer blockbuster at the multiplex." (No wonder Fernando Ferrer's campaign turned down Segarra's idea of featuring handball players in an ad. These guys aren't basketball players, after all.)

"Rookie" - who, it turns out, is many, many years past the summer when he burst onto the handball scene and earned his nickname - is trying to level that uneven playing field.

The best handball player in the city, Rookie (a k a John Wright), put out the word, and all the greats showed up: Yuber "Pee Wee" Castro, Robert "Iceman" Sostre, Eric "Little Eddie" Santiago, Billy the Kid (once the best player in the city, but now a bloated shadow of his former self), Ray Lopez, Emmit Fitzpatrick and Dave Rojas.

Competition was fierce, of course, and the best action came when Fitzpatrick and Rojas came back from a 10-point deficit in their semifinal match to make the finals against Castro and Lopez- and ended up beating them when Pee Wee fell apart in the finals.

By the end, even some of the basketball fans were craning their necks to see the action.


printer Print this story document Previous articles on this topic
copyright Click for permission to reprint


Back to News Columnists Index | Home

NEW YORK POST is a registered trademark of NYP Holdings, Inc. NYPOST.COM, NYPOSTONLINE.COM, and NEWYORKPOST.COM are trademarks of NYP Holdings, Inc. Copyright 2002 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
line


PageSix