January 27, 2026 • 50 mins
Whether you call it table tennis, whiff-whaff or ping pong, there's no denying this fun sport of "tennis for the home" has become a global phenomenon. But where did it come from? In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max find out.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear a pong and a
ping for our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Max the Ping of Pong, the King of Kong Williams Max.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
If you are a pizza, you would be a supreme pizza.
And I mean that, oh my God, with my heart.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yes, thank you guys. What constitutes a supreme pizza? Is
it just all the toppings or is there an agreed
upon you know, because not all pizza places have the
same topping options, So a supreme it kind of seems
like a little bit of an innocuous category.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah, it's kind of in the eye of the beholder,
because it's sometimes it's the entirety of the restaurants pantheon
of toppings, and then other times it's you know, the olive,
the onion, the pepper. But they'll they'll save the specialty
meats I find mm hmmm, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Little note here, I have not read this yet, but
according to pizzaplanet dot com, which is under their news section,
they have a fascinating history of Supreme Pizza, So that.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Just episode Well, wasn't Pizza Planet the pizza place in
the toy Story cinematic universe? That right?
Speaker 1 (01:38):
You might be right, it was totally Oh, we've got
to introduce ourselves. Also, I'm big bullet. This is what
are is the one and only Noel Brown, who's also
our research associate for this episode, which has little to
nothing to do with pizza, but maybe we'll get there.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Tangentially, you did drop a bit of hands with your
categorization of Max's pizza type being supreme. Is that a
there should be like a test for what is your
pizza type? Like a Myers Briggs situation, And I agree
with you, Max would be supreme. We are talking about
ping pong today, the history of ping pong, and with
(02:18):
the release of the Timo te Chalamet film Marty Supreme
and all that media hoopla surrounding you. Did you see
all this, guys? It's pretty amazing. I was kind of
blown away by the on the ground, the sort of
bootstrap marketing that old Timmy was doing in the style
of Supreme, the brand like Marty Supreme jackets and I
think hoodies and custom little ping Pong balls, and dude
(02:42):
actually stood on top of the Vegas Sphere, which is
already in the perfect shape for this. They made it
look like a Marty Supreme ping pong ball, and there
was a blimp. I know you love a blimp, then
I love a blimp mill. So this is probably more
so than in recent memory least, making the sport of
table tennis a little bit more in the zeitgeist. And
(03:05):
I haven't seen it yet full disclosure. I actually had
tickets to go see it and then something came up.
But I'm very much looking forward to and people seem
to be enjoying it. It tells the story of Marty Mauser,
an ambitious young shoe salesman in New York of the
nineteen fifties with dreams of becoming an international star in
the rising world of table tennis. And we'll get to
(03:27):
a little bit later a bit about who Marty Mauser
is based on in real life. But the inspiration for
a particularly famous vintage video game that we talked about
recently would also have come from today's topic table tennis.
Of course, talking about pong.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Ah Yes, yeah, one of the first legendary video games
in all of history, and one of the initial questions
I had when we first started talking about this is
the the difference between nomenclature and names. So table tennis
(04:04):
correct me if I'm out of school here. Table tennis
is the official name for this recreation, but ping pong
is the same thing, just a different, less official name.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
I guess it could be considered like a colloquialism. You know,
it's fun to say. Obviously it is, of course automati paic, yes,
would be the word for it, describing with words the
sound that the ball makes as it pings and pongs
across the table. These are automatipaic terms, if I'm not mistaken,
(04:39):
ben that date back to the Far East in the
late eighteen hundreds, imitative of the sound of the paddle
or bat striking, the ball being the ping, and then
the pong being the sound of the ball bouncing off
the table.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Oh right on, Okay, yeah, that makes sense in my
head here. And also I think we're all on the
same page that Sure table tennis will say it if
we're in an official meeting, but if it's just us
hanging out together, ping pong is clearly the more fun,
cooler name, right.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, I would seem that some of the official governing
bodies of the sports you may be in an effort
to be taken seriously. Maybe there's a history or a
little feeling of maybe being looked down the nose from,
you know, by the sports community. Ping pong might be
considered a little diminutive, But when are you going to
pass up a chance to say fun words like ping
(05:34):
and pong. So we're gonna say that a bunch, I
think any chance we get today. So why don't you
all at home, grab your commemorative Marty Supreme paddles or
bats if you got them, and let's serve up the
fascinating and ridiculous history of the sport of table tennis.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah, and it is fascinating. That's the perfect word for it,
as you found. The origins of what we call modern
ping pong or tablets can be traced back right to
England in the eighteen hundreds, and like a lot of
things in that time, this started out as a leisure
(06:17):
activity for the upper crust.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
I repeat, they had their own automoutopaic name for it.
I don't know if they quite nailed the sound though, No, No,
we all probably will enjoy saying this one a little bit,
as we have a fondness for overemphasizing our h's in
British parlance with whaff if you will or if you
will yes with waff perhaps waft maybe would be a
(06:40):
little more brit That was what they do it as
and it was played using super rudimentary equipment, initially things
like these lightweight well they would initially be quarks, champagne
corks or wine corks, but then they evolved eventually into
these little celluloid balls. They had these crude paddles or
bats that are often themselves made out of cork and parchment,
(07:01):
sort of fashion together from stuff that was hanging around,
and this was taken the influence for this very diy sport,
indoor sport was taken from the outdoor sport of lawn tennis.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Okay, yeah, so it's a natural evolution and now we
can play it inside and we're not held hostage by
the weather, right, So that all makes sense. We also
know that if we fast forward to eighteen ninety, there's
an Englishman named David Foster who comes up with this
(07:39):
with this concept and he says, you've got tennis, you've
got a table. Why don't we combine the two.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
It's true, Ben, and it just shows how they were
really just thinking about this as an extension of lawn tennis,
because lawn tennis is really just kind of tennis, if
I'm not mistaken right, like it was using a nicely
manicured lawn, which also would have required some upper crustness
to even have access to such a thing and be
able to, you know, maintain it in that kind of way.
(08:08):
But David Foster puts out this book that kind of
collected a bunch of different sort of fun indoor kind
of family games, and we found an image from the
company corn Corny Cornerlio I think is what they're called.
They are a legacy table tennis company with skin in
the game literally, and there's a lot of good historical
(08:29):
info on their site. They have this vintage advert Ford
Foster's patented parlor table games this book and a page
showing to very hoity toity British noble types pinging and
pong and a ball on this kind of what looks
like just a dressed up dinner table. You see there's
(08:49):
like wooden legs peering out from underneath. It seems to
just be covered up in a green cloth with the
sides batting on the side exactly around the edges to
keep it, you know, sort of from popping off. Of course,
we know that modern table tennis doesn't have any such thing,
but then it has a little net going across the
side and some of the same lines of demarcation that
(09:10):
separate the left on the right side of your part
of the court. But they are just referring to it
here as law tennis, which is a little confusing. So
the earliest surviving action game of tennis on a table,
as ITTF refers to it as on their website. They
are the official governing body the International Table Tennis Federation.
We love a Federation is made by David Foster, patented
(09:33):
in England in eighteen ninety number one to one zero
three seven Parlor Table Games. Is this book I mentioned
that includes table versions of lawn tennis. That's exactly what
it is. They're doing spins on popular court type games
like cricket and football, and they're making it or he's
making it, condensing it into a game you can play
indoors with less space. So the lawn tennis game featured
(09:56):
strung rackets more like a badminton racket, a thirty millimeter
cloth covered rubber ball, a wooden fence set up around
the perimeter of the table, and some side nets even
in addition to of course these the nets down the middle.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
And you know what, I just realized, and everybody tuning in,
I just realized why the name David Foster was sticking
in my head. It's because I used to be a
huge squirrel nut Zippers fan. You remember they have that song.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
Met the ghost of Stephen Foster at the Hotel Paradise.
This is what I told him as I gazed into
his eyes. Dude, I have been down a scroll Nut
Zippers nostalgia rabbit hole. Recently, there's a count I follow
on Instagram that just like posts old like one hundred
and twenty minute videos from the very important MTV show
that showed lots of weird like indie videos of the
(10:48):
moment and their song, The scrore nuts Zippers, who are
from I believe Asheville, North Carolina, near not too too
far from us.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Hell, was a huge hit at the time. I was
like in the afterloa mm hmm, great band, really fun.
They were one of the more interesting and tolerable of
that era of like swing dance revival type, not.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
The cherry popping daddies or whatever.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
You got your suit riders, you got your big bad
voodoo skull I like them big bad food. I'm sorry,
it's big bad voodoo daddy Addy. Then there were also
the Voodoo glows Skulls, and then of course the Mighty
Mighty Bostones, but they were more they weren't really swing.
We're talking about the stray Cats, the Seltzer Orchestra, Brian
Setzer or extracts. Yeah. Yeah, it was a golden top
(11:33):
for that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
So so we will, we will figure out.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Uh, it's the same David Fosters.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Wouldn't that be amazing?
Speaker 4 (11:42):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Why is the Why is the ghost of the guy
that had been like made the parlor table games haunting
the singer of the scroll Zippers, who obviously is playing
a vintage character, sort of in the style of the Decembris.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Oh yeah, exactly, you have to. I hear that they're
a good hang but maybe oh you know what, never mind,
cut everything, We'll keep this in, but cut everything. We said, folks,
it's the ghost of Stephen Foster.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Stephen Foster being a music the composer, right, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Stephen Foster. And then of course you've got You've got
David Foster Wallace. Yes, it's like the most pretentious writers
ever walked the face of the earth.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
If I'm not mistaken, I love his work. I have
to regretfully say, don't love his fans.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
But isn't he like he's the guy with the he
did sadly pass away? But Infinite Jest is often lampooned
as being holy cow. David Foster Wallace has a book
about tennis called String Theory, which is a very clever
name for a book about tennis.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
And tennis is a huge deal in Infinite Jest as well.
It's it's like.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
I think there's a connection that can't it can't be os.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
The world is so weird, but so shout out to
all the Fosters we just mentioned. Another thing you've found
here is that Foster's Foster didn't just say here's the
setup for tennis on a table. He said, here are
the rules for the game as well. And one thing
(13:16):
I liked is that the rules are pretty straightforward and
they're not super duper complicated like some of those really
difficult board games we've tried to play in the past.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
So yeah, there's a couple that I still haven't even
summoned the will to try again. That I do love
Munchkin Pandemic and what's the one I really like?
Speaker 1 (13:36):
The one I love hers?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Oh, wingspan, wingspan. Thank you once you get the hang
of it. Those are a good hang and a joy
to play. But you're right, Ben. The rules of table
ten is very similar to the rules of tennis. Tennis,
it's played to eleven points. You have to win by
two serves, alternate every two points, except in the event
of a tie ten to ten tie, because that would
(13:59):
be match points. If I'm not mistaken, then you alternate
per point at that point. So a legal serve involves
tossing the ball at least six inches straight up from
an open palm and hitting it behind the table so
it bounces on your side once, then on the opponents side,
and players then have to return the ball after one bounce.
Can't touch the net or the table with their free hand,
(14:20):
and volleying hitting the ball before it bounces is strictly verboten.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Yeah, and I whatever I see rule lists like this,
especially given the cultural period we're talking about. I keep
imagining them figuring out the rules because of one bad
actor who keeps cheating, Like there's one gal who keeps
grabbing the net, yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah, or like doing the old Spiker Rooney. You can't
spike it right now.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
You spike it, well, it has to bounce once. It
has to bounce once, and then you can absolutely. I'm
just picture I'm just picturing somebody at a gentleman's club
going to say something.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Like, Nigel, you irascible Cad Again, bothol.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Of you keeps exactly so. In eighteen ninety seven you
see the first national championships that are organized in Hungary.
Actually following a trip to the US in nineteen oh one,
we got a guy named James Gibb who brings back
with him the very first example of that celluloid ball
that I mentioned earlier, that you can picture as being
(15:28):
the you know, still to this day most popular type
of table tennis ball, very much lighter than the rubber
balls that we talked about. Therefore, uh huh, much more zippy,
you know, and bouncy. Yeah, you could do.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
More cool tricks. And then we know that this this
caught on it's convenient, right, if you have the space
and you have the means. It's easy to learn because
a lot of people already know tennis and it also,
i'll say it, it doesn't demand as much physical fitness
as some other forms of recreation.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
You know, it's funny been thinking about this Parlor Games book.
I'd love to see what some other like miniaturized games
look like, because I can't really think of any other
examples of ones that really stuck around, Like Who's ball
is not anything like actual soccer. It's its own thing.
But can you think of another game that would uh,
that would what's the word translate? In the same way?
(16:27):
What a mini version of cricket look like? I don't
think it works.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
I'm in love with the idea of tiny croquet just
because it's an inefficient it's.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
The same as regular croquet. Everything is miniature. Yeah, you
have you look ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
You have to have your thumb and forefinger holding holding
the club. Yeah, yeah, durable. That's a great question. We
should get a hold of the Parlor Games book because
I would be cool to see. I bet you like
twenty bend bucks. There is there. We're going to see
a lot of things that were uh not near a
popular and they were probably just super weird.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
But some things lost to history, like yeah, like lawn darts,
you know, lost the history for good reason. I believe
they skewered a child or two in their day.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Oh yeah, man, just like you and I and Max
lived through the uh slipping slide era when people started
breaking their backs on that thing.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, or like slicing themselves open on like I particularly
pointy rock that somebody missed that was underneath the damn thing.
We have talked. You know, it's funny. I think I
maybe mentioned this in previous discussions we've had around these
like games. Uh, there was a class like it was
like a pe substitute class I took in college called
backyard games. What that's cool? They know, backyard games?
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Yeah, what was your favorite?
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Fact? It was largely badminton. I just remember playing a
lot and I enjoyed it. That was a fun game.
But then there were some other real goofy ones that
we had to do as well that I'm kind of
spacing on what they were, but definitely didn't have any
table tennis setups there. We start to see, you know,
(18:04):
after this introduction of the Celluloid Ball by James Gibb.
Interest starting to kind of rise in the game, and
there's enough that we see an association being created in
England called the Ping Pong Association. They're still using the
colloquialism at the time, but not for long. That was
in nineteen oh one, five hundred players and enthusiasts were
(18:26):
registered to the organization, and just a year later, in
nineteen oh two, you see a British fellow enthusiast fan
of the game E. C. Gould introducing the first bats
or paddles that were very similar to what we see today,
rubber rubberized material glued to wooden circular little mini paddles
(18:46):
with little they called they're calling them pimples here on
Cornelieu dot com, which a little buss me out. This
is what it is. It's a grippy it's that grippy
material and it makes sense that it would be it
would help with traction, you know, on the ball.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Yeah on you ec for saying, okay, lads, the the
rubber balls didn't work out, But let's not get rid
of rubber entirely because it's a it's a great surface,
right because now you get a little more.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Grip wonder material time too. Still, we're probably loving, you know,
any any use of rubber, and we're going to get
into some issues that come as a result of this
rubber and changing it out or you know, having little
lacks that could maybe make your paddle a little more
bouncy than the other guys.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Yeah, because of course, even if it's a non professional sport,
there are going to be people who try to sneak
in some edgy moves.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Like Nigel and Bartholomew like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
So, uh so, okay, we we were going back to
our question ping pong versus table tennis? What's in a name?
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (19:54):
We know, as you found that the Ping Pong Association
of eventually had its day in the sun and then
kind of fell a little bit in popularity.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Pretty much brief, brief candle, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
It was, but then it became a popular again in
the nineteen twenties and that's where they started adopting the
name table tennis. So maybe in addition to wanting to
be taken a bit more seriously, which I can see,
maybe they were also going for a little bit of
a rebrand, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
I think that's right. They wanted to. I thought ping
pong sounded a little too like childish or something, or like,
you know, it sounded like a kid's game, and they wanted,
you know, they wanted it to be taken seriously. So
the original association in the ping pong one had broken
up in nineteen oh five. The game did continue, but
that just wasn't you know, a governing body, so to speak,
(20:49):
mainly outside of London. And then in the twenties you
started to see it enter other countries, you know, outside
of England, so you started to see the public exhibition
type tournaments. Some of the most popular ones took place
at Queen's Hall in London. And then in nineteen oh
two you started to see the formation of a world
(21:11):
championship type event. There we're gonna see a that happened
kind of again as a larger governing body sort of
swoops in and becomes the sort of you know, taste maker,
gatekeeper of the sport. But you are starting to see
formations of smaller, more regional and you know, country wide
federations or governing organizations, one of which was the British
(21:35):
Table Tennis Federation. So of course England in London, and
then in some of the suburbs and outside of England,
and then you know outside in other parts of Europe.
It's definitely the hub of the sport originally, so in
nineteen oh seven you start to see the first European Championships,
and then in the twenties is when things really get gone.
That's when you see the Table Tennis Association, the ITF's
(22:00):
who I've mentioned early on in the episode.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
The Table Tennis Association, not to be confused with the
International Table Tennis Federation, which comes about in nineteen twenty six.
And this leads us to of course the World Championship
picture Eurovision, but a century ago with table tennis instead
of pop socks.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
So these folks are coming because they love the Eurovisions.
I really want to man, I don't know much about it.
I have some really dear friends in Berlin and they
said it's basically like the way we watch like the
Super Bowl over absolutely massive to do. I watched it
during COVID and uh, yeah, I get it. It's awesome.
They have parties over there. It's a spectacle. It's it's
(22:46):
something we should do an episode on. So we've got
supreme pizza as an episode, and we've got Eurovision. Oh gosh, man,
I definitely have to do a Eurovision. That's a great idea, Ben,
We've got to do it.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
So we know that these we know that these championships,
the World Championships were a big deal, and other countries
started to despite the fact that there was already an
International Table Tennis Federation, other countries started their own similar
nation specific organizations, like, of course the French. Kidding, French,
(23:23):
we love you, but they you started your own table
Tennis Federation where there already was one Internet.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Which makes sense, I guess, because it would be an
organization that could maybe help organize regional competitions things that, yeah,
and helping, you know, just raise the profile within that
particular country. Though I'm sure the ITTF, especially nowadays, kind
of has a lot of that on luck. I'd be
curious to see what some of the other more country
(23:51):
specific federations are remaining to this day. The French get
in on it eventually in a tournament that takes place
in Budapest, Budapest in eighteen twenty nine, and then you
start to see rising stars like Marty Supreme or like
the dude that he's based on a guy by the
name of Richard Bergmann, who is an Austro Briton and
(24:11):
Franco Polish player a la Soi Alasi Erlik. And then
we've got a Romanian fellow by the name of Anglica Rosano.
And these were some of the rising stars of the
sport at the time. And this is in the era
that is depicted in the movie Marty Supreme when we're
starting to see this real table tennis fever kind of
(24:32):
sweeping the nation.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Nice. Yeah, we also know that there were technological advances
and setbacks, so not everything was a perfect score for
ping pong. As you pointed out earlier, Noel, in the
beginning days, when this was a very ad hoc kind
of recreation activity for the upper crust, they were using
(24:56):
found items for paddles, like cigar boxes, and when they
got pong, actual fat paddles, shout out to Low and
vocal bomb those paddles. Yeah, those paddles didn't have the
materials you're going to see today, No fancy sponges, no rubber. Instead,
they had this grit kind of fine sandpaper and it
(25:19):
gave you a very small amount of friction with the ball,
so you couldn't put any spin on it. You can
put the English on it. That meant that the ping
pong players of the time weren't as reliant on speed
and power. They were more strategic with their moves, and
the ball was moving slower, and the games took longer.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
They took longer, it was not nearly as exciting to watch.
You're not seeing as many of this those aces and
spikes as you might see in modern versions of the game.
So a lot of technical innovations came along, changes and
regulations allowing some of the innovations that had a major
impact on the speed and excitement of the sport. You know,
(26:07):
a lot of high profile tournaments had their outcomes affected
by some of this new stuff and it wasn't considered
cheating or anything because there was that was allowed. You know,
in particular, you'd have specific changes to the rubber and
the blade that were recognized by formerly by the governing body,
the International Table Tennis Federation in nineteen twenty six, which
(26:29):
is of course still the governing body to this day.
Modern table tennis rackets have what's called and this is
coming from a really cool blog, Tom vatch dot com,
talking about the history of table tennis technology and different
types of glue we're going to get to in just
a second. So the blade is the wooden part. The
(26:51):
rubber is the you know, bouncy material that is attached
to it. Volcanized rubber bonded to an inner layer of
banded sponge or foam, so it has less dense exactly
less dense, and it has to be of course attached
to the blade, and doing that required certain types of glue.
(27:16):
And it was in the nineteen seventies that some European
table tennis players realized that they could kind of try
different types of adhesives that would change the playing characteristics
of the rubber layer. Unfortunately, the ones that were the
most effective were real fume. Oh right, Okay, this is
(27:41):
you know, like sniff and glue. You know, yeah, it's
not good for you.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
This is where we're talking about stuff like trichloroethylene and
one one trichloro ethane.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Right. I think that's right, Ben, those are the ones
in question. You were actually allowed to you know, re
it here your rubber surface, though typically prior to this
situation we're describing here, it would really only be done
when the old surface had worn out, but there wasn't
any rule against doing it, you know, more frequently. And
(28:15):
at this point, the type of glues that people were
using were the kind you might see to repair a
bicycle tire or like you know, plug a leak automotive tire.
They were one part vulcanizing fluids is what they're referred
to as. And players were finding that what was then
referred to as speed glue could produce shots with increased
(28:40):
speed and spin that english you were talking about, ben
compared to just putting the rubber on with some of
the traditional rubber cements that were used.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Okay, yeah, and this is interesting. And I like the
reference to tires for cars because it reminds me of
the way changing tires works in some professional racing, you know,
like F one or NASCAR. The idea is that you
can pit crew. Yeah, you can pick crew stuff essentially,
(29:11):
and you can change out these tires that will affect
your performance, just like changing out the glue can affect
the performance of your paddle, but you're sacrificing longevity. So
speed glue. Speed glue has a big disadvantage, which is
this high performance gift or this edge that it gives
(29:34):
you only lasts for a few hours instead of three
to six months, and the rubber has a shorter playing lifetime,
so you could do this. And as you said, no,
it's perfectly legal to reglue the rubber onto your paddle
between matches.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
However many times you want. At this point, there are
no rules against that. But you've got to have your
kit with you. You've got to be able to maguiver stuff.
This is fun.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Yeah, with your glue bottle, your brushes, your scissors, your
rolling pins so you can flatten the rubber evenly, and
then hair dryers even yeah, later hair dryers, which is
cool because I don't know about a lot of other
sports that require you to bring hair dryers.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Well, these are all very It's interesting and it almost
goes back to the diy roots of the sport because
a lot of this field very do it yourself kind
of craft project, you know. But as we mentioned, while
this glue might yield some short term increases in speed
and bounce, it also contains some pretty gnarly toxic fumes
that if you surround yourself with it for too long,
(30:39):
it can cause some real problems. There's an evidence of
a Japanese player, and this is all pretty recent, by
the way, collapsing while gluing his paddle during a tournament
in two thousand and seven, And as of September one
of two thousand and eight, the ITTF has banned glues
containing quote unquote volatile compounds and now allows only water glues.
(31:01):
And there's like glue sniffing contraption that like test for
the wrong kind of illegal glues before matches, almost the
way that you know athletes in the Olympics and other
high profile competitions are tested for things like blood doping
and use of steroids. However, I believe that this was
(31:21):
so controversial and there was concern that it would slow
down the speed of play that the ITTF kind of
held back on this decision for a little while. And
I think now it is in place, But there was
a while where it was an outcry and I think
they sort of held back on implementing this. But now
I think, you know, this is back in two thousand
and eight, I do believe that it is now illegal
(31:41):
to use these speed glues.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Yeah, and at that point it's it's a health concern,
you know what I mean. This is however, this is
a great time to mention our earlier idea that we
pitched to Dan Harmon and anything goes Olympics. We don't
know how the paper work would uh pay.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
It out, but you know, didn't we There was a thing.
Remember there was a story about some.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Tech Olympic guy.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Yeah, that was it. It was about like steroids allowed
all all kinds of but we had the growth hormone
blood doping out. We definitely did, no.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Question, but that's where that's where this would go. And
everybody can agree. You know that the health of the athletes,
the help of the health of the support staff is crucial.
You know, so play the game to the best of
your ability, but part of that is also playing the
game with your health in mind for sure.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
And just to double back again, like none of this
was like corking your bat in baseball, which is illegal.
You know, that is like considered cheating or deflate gate.
Remember deflate Gate in American football. It was this idea
of choosing slightly slightly deflated footballs. This was all above
board and it wasn't like anybody was doing it in
(32:57):
secretor in the dark of night. You know, like everyone
knew that this was being done, and it was allowed
until it wasn't. Another reason that I think it wasn't
allowed despite the toxic fumes thing. The ITTF seemed very
concerned about making the game easier to follow for spectators,
and apparently those balls were pinging and ponging so fast,
so that's speed glue that it was hard for the
(33:18):
eyeball to follow that tiny little thing.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Right, Yeah, we're talking.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
What are they doing? Some guys wa with it and
waffing their arms around. I can't even see them all.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Yeah, this is crazy. Okay, So a world class ping
pong players, as you mentioned in Tom Vish's website, a
world class ping pong player can make shots with speeds
of up to one hundred miles per hour with a
ball spinning nine thousand revolutions per minute. So, like like
(33:50):
Nola was saving folks, you can easily imagine how it's
tough to keep track of everything because these are pretty
small balls.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
And one concern of a body like the ITTF is
making the game as accessible and as popular as possible,
So they are thinking about the big picture of like
what makes this the most engaging too, you know, viewers.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
And it turns out that they were onto something because
as we see I think we'll mention Forrest Gump a
little bit later too. As we see in the nineteen fifties,
table tennis really takes off in the Asiatic sphere, just
(34:36):
like Hungary in days of yore. Japanese teams were a
huge deal at the World Championships between what nineteen fifty
four to nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
For sure, and then you start to see the Chinese
teams or it's not really a team sport, is it's
an individual sport. You know, the Chinese entries into the
chat starting to really dominate, that is around nineteen sixty one,
and then in ninety sixty three and nineteen sixty five
we see triple world champion titles won by Juan Zeidong.
(35:12):
And then during this period you start to see ping
pong almost as a method of soft diplomacy, which I
know is your wheelhouse.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Ben. Oh yeah, I man. We're excited about this because
it'll play into the idea of soft diplomacy, plays into
another episode we're going to have coming up about Thailand.
But you nailed it. That's exactly what I was thinking
about that sequence in the film Forrest Gump. Wherefore absolutely
gets really at the ping pong and then ends up
(35:44):
playing the Chinese delegation. This is this is fascinating because
we also see an evolution of strategy. It's nineteen seventy
seven and the World Championships are in Birmingham, and this
is where we see the first official use of something
called the Chinese service, which is a particular type of serve.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Yep and Asia then, of course, really becomes cemented, rubber
cemented or spell mood into the annals of a ping
pong slash table tennis history, and I think even to
this day they are quite good.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Oh yeah, yeah, I have not played ping pong over
in an Asian country, but I know it's still a
huge deal and the people who are good at it
are very very good at it. I don't know how
are you at table tennis.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
I haven't played in a very long time. Dear pal
and friend of the show, Frank just got one a
table tennis set up and has invited me over to play,
and I'm sure it would love to have you as well,
and so maybe we should do a little ping pong
adventure sometime.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
That would be so much fun. I always, I always
mess up in the first few minutes, because I keep
forgetting you have to have a light touch.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
I know our buddy Chandlers, who we work with on
podcasts and have known for many, many years. I've seen
on his Instagram stories lately that he's been pinging a
lot of pongs.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
Also, do not try to play putt putt against Chandler.
That guy is insane. He's so good at pussy.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
He's great, plays regular tennis. He's a serious he's a
serious athlete.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
We've had a company outing where we played putt putt
not that long ago, and man, he smoked everybody. I
was playing with the guy who was really good, and
then look to this scorn. It was nothing competed to Chandler's.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Well, the thing is in Chad, I love you, man,
I say this with great affection. You are always going
to be also way more competitive than I am.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Just he's got fire in the blood.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
That's why I love playing games with Chandler, because we're
so different in that regard, and he's usually going to
be better at the game that I'm endlessly congratulated because
I think it's cool.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
It's good to be good at stuff, no question about it.
Speaking of being good at stuff. We've already really seen
the transition of table tennis from like a you know,
a quaint little parlor game to a serious competitive sport.
This is no question about this, But we have not
yet entered the world of the Olympics. It doesn't happened
(38:26):
until almost the nineties.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Isn't that crazy? It's lately crazy to eighties. So this
has ping pong has become such a global phenomenon that
it's actually a form of diplomacy right for decades at
this point, and in nineteen eighty eight, like with player
exchanges and normalizing relations between hostile countries, so that thank you, Ben.
(38:51):
It's weird, right, So South Korea, Soul, they have the
Olympics nineteen eighty eight and table tennis officially become an
Olympic sport, and you know, no surprise to a lot
of the people following ping pong, the winners are both
(39:11):
from Asia. The female Chinese player Chen Jing takes the
gold medal in her category and the male Korean national
Yu nam q takes gold medal in his category.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
And it's interesting that we don't really even see like
pro tours, we've got the sport in the Olympics. But
there's nothing resembling like the PGA. You know that we
have surrounding you know, golf of course, but we have
that happening in nineteen ninety six, so well, almost a
decade after that first Olympic inclusion. And yeah, to what
(39:47):
we were saying earlier, it has largely remained dominated by
Asian players since the beginning of the professional world of
ping pong, and that includes the triple world champion and
world number one player for many years, Wang Liquin. Oh
and to answer my own question that I posed earlier,
I believe Ben you could probably confirm this tennis. Table
(40:10):
tennis is the most practiced sport in all of Asia.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's still a huge, huge deal.
You know, I put it up there with football or
excuse me, soccer in Latin America. You know, people love
it and we know that now the International Table Tennis
Federation includes more than two hundred nations. It's the size
(40:37):
of a nation itself in terms of membership and population.
Thirty three million people are part of the itt F.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Remember the earliest ones we mentioned, I think it was
something like fifty or five hundred sorry players. Yeah, that
we're involved and even then at the time that seemed
like a lot because it was much more niche. But
it is. It's huge, bigger than bigger than Rock and roll.
Maybe not, it'll give rock and Roll a run for
its money. But ben you teased Forrest Gump. I think
a lot of our first you know, views into ping
(41:07):
pong as a serious sport and as a method of
soft diplomacy was from the nineteen ninety four film Forrest Gump,
where the title character played by Tom Hanks, after being
discharged from the military because I believe the bullet flew
up and bit him in the butt.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Yeah, you get a billion dollars wound a ticket home,
that's right. So a bullet that takes about a service
and puts him in the hospital for a little bit.
But does it ruin his life?
Speaker 2 (41:36):
No, And I think it's in the hospital that he
just gradually starts to enjoy playing table tennis, because that's,
you know, again, while it is a serious sport at
this time, or it's beginning to be, it's also still
a fun parlor game, you know. And he, of course
is also an elite American football player, a shrimp boat captain,
and a professional table tennis player. And one thing I'll
(41:59):
always remember about that scene where they're recreating footage of
him playing table tennis is that the balls were moving
so fast that they were animated in the ball. And
that was like, at the time, a really big deal
in you know, special effects.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
Right, Yeah, especially because it was so subtle. You know,
it looked believable. It was quite impressive, you know. And
we also, okay, we also see a wonderful easter egg
that I wasn't aware of. I actually had to go
back and watch this sequence after you pointed this out
in your research. The director, Robert Zemeckis does something really clever,
(42:39):
and it's a special gift for actual ping pong fans.
It's all about the grip. Remember we mentioned the Chinese
service when Forrest is picking up the ping pong paddle.
Originally he uses the traditional grip what we call the
shake hand grip, kind of like how you would hold
a hand mirror.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Right, Can I just say, why do they call it
the shake hand grip and not the handshake grip? That
just makes that boils my blood? Yeah, that shaa, it
really does, man, that's cool. Yeah, it is. It is
the grip that would be typically used by players today.
He continues to use this grip until he travels to China,
(43:21):
where he sees players using a grip that was much
more popular over there, called the penholed grip, which is
an alternate style of holding the paddle that had been
popularized over there and was you know, favored by Chinese players,
especially in the heights of its rise there in the
mid twentieth century. He uses this grip later in the film.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
Yeah, yeah, and this he's using this gript specifically towards
the end of the film when he plays the game
with spoiler his son Forrest. She sees dead people, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's the spoiler for sixth sense. The whole time, that's
Bruce Willis. He's just playing a different character.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
It's true. No, we're talking about a little baby. Haley
Joel Osmon big big winner and cleaned up at the
Oscars Best Picture, Best Director for Zamecha's Best Adapted Screenplay,
Best Editing, Best Visual Effects. There were a couple other
really good, low key, brilliant effects where it's like showing
(44:25):
gump in you know, imposed into historical events really really
thoughtfully and creatively and convincingly. Rather yeah, and with.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
Some alarming historical accuracy, because Lyndon Johnson was known to
be fascinated by scars. That's why that's why when he's
talking to Forrest Gump in that scene.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
I'd like to say that something yeah, and he moons him.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
We also would be remiss if we didn't mention that
there was a Forrest Gump is based on a novel,
and there was supposed to be a sequel because of
the man success of the film adaptation.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
There was a sequel to the novel, but they didn't
make it into a movie.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Because the guy who actually wrote the story, unfortunately he
got hollywooded out of his share of the profits, so
he didn't really make a dime out of it. That's
why there's not a Forrest Gump sequel. It's a tangent,
but it's important for us to mention it.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
I did also read something interesting too about how like
they ran out of money on production of Forrest Gump,
and there were some sequences that they weren't going to
be able to shoot. But Tom Hanks, like I think
he exchanged a big part of his salary for like
points on the back end, which obviously ended up working
on in his favor, but he like donated his salary
to help pay for some of these sequences that they
(45:41):
like didn't have the money to do.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Tom Hanks seems like a stand up guy man, and
true she.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
Just canceled out as don't know why, I don't know
what to do. It's not gonna happen.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
We'll have good life to pause the show for like
a week to mourn. But what one cool Tom Hanks
fact is he is We mentioned this on another show somewhere,
but he is super duper into old school typewriters, so
much so the word on the street is if you
write him a letter on your typewriter, he will take
(46:12):
out one of his typewriters and type a letter back
to you. So ti him up.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Yeah, on another one of our discussions recently, it must
have been on stuff they don't want you to know.
Check us out on Netflix, by the.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Way, Oh nice segue. Yeah, we are as of this week,
live and direct with two new episodes per week on Netflix.
So if you're thinking, ah, I'd love to give the
guys a rating or a review, or oh I'd love
to hear more strange things from these Jibroni's, then Hi,
(46:44):
the to Netflix and click the remind me button and
then click the little thumbs up button. That'll be a
massive help to us. And we couldn't thank you more, folks.
And no, I can't thank you more for this awesome
research which really makes you want to want to play
Ping pong. Not at the Chandler's level, but.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Just no, I'm sure that guy's brutal at a restaurant somewhere.
We're gonna wrap it up to just dovetail back to
how we started the episodes talking about Marty Supreme. So
I'm very much excited to see You know, it's still
in cinemas. Do check it out if you want to
get out to the movies. I am going to try
to catch it before it leaves, but I also think
it'd probably be cool to watch at home. There is
(47:28):
a dude that The Marty Supreme character portrayed by Timmy
Challamey is based on a guy named Marty Resman, who
is an award winning table tennis player. Born in New
York City in the Lower East Side to Russian Jewish
immigrant parents in nineteen thirty. He got really into table
tennis as a kid, and in an interview with Forbes
(47:48):
magazine in two thousand and five, said that he learned
how to play at a local community center after having
some significance nervous issues. Let's just say I mean term
nervous breakdown. I find to be a little bit hyperbolic,
but it does seem that as a young man or
young like a nine year old, he was dealing with
some anxiety and some difficulties there and this helped him
(48:11):
kind of focus a bit. Yeah, And he used it
initially as an escape for quickly.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
In recovery just so wound, Yeah, just.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
So, and then used it as a as a means
to a career and became real competitive at thirteen.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
And he was known for an aggressive, flashy playing style.
He had his own signature super moved the atomic blast,
which was.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
Going to be a massive spike right right.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
One hundred and fifteen miles per hour. This guy, and
he was also similar to Michael Jordan. He was no
stranger to the world of gambling and the whims of fate.
He would place bets on himself.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
Hey, you know what they say, bet on yourself, you know, right.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
Right, And we know that when he was fifteen years old,
still a very very young person, a child, his reputation
for a hustling people as a ping pong shark came
back to haunt him. He bet five hundred bucks on
himself at a national tournament in Detroit, but he accidentally
(49:21):
handed the money not to a bookie but to the
head of the United States Table Tennis Association.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
And I say we leave it there as not to
spoil any events of the movie Marty Supreme, But yeah,
do check it out. It sounds like a romp that's
gonna have involved table tennis Tyler the creators in it.
Oh cool. I just I'm very excited to see it.
But this has been a super fun episode, a lot
more involved than I would have expected, almost two partner material,
(49:50):
but not quiet wouldn't have been a good place to
break it. So we give you. We gift you with
this beefy episode of ridiculous history.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
And thanks as always to our super producer mister Max Williams.
Thanks to aj Bahamas Jacobs and you know what I'm
going to say it I don't always do it, but
an actual thank you to Jonathan Strickland aka the quister
who wrote the Human Ping Pong Ball Human ping Pong Ball,
who wrote us a very nice message about getting on Netflix.
(50:19):
So thank you, Jy.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
I'm Joey. I love the guy.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
He's all right, three out of five.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
He's a good dude. Yeah, and thanks to you, Ben,
this is a lot of fun. Thanks super producer Max
of course, Alex Williams who composed this theme, Chris Frasciotis
and Eaves, Jeff Coates, Aaron Spirit.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
Thanks for the awesome research here, Noel, and thanks to
the rude dudes of Ridiculous Crime. If you dig us,
you'll love them.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
We'll see you next time.
Speaker 4 (50:41):
Books.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear a pong and a
ping for our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Max the Ping of Pong, the King of Kong Williams Max.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
If you are a pizza, you would be a supreme pizza.
And I mean that, oh my God, with my heart.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yes, thank you guys. What constitutes a supreme pizza? Is
it just all the toppings or is there an agreed
upon you know, because not all pizza places have the
same topping options, So a supreme it kind of seems
like a little bit of an innocuous category.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah, it's kind of in the eye of the beholder,
because it's sometimes it's the entirety of the restaurants pantheon
of toppings, and then other times it's you know, the olive,
the onion, the pepper. But they'll they'll save the specialty
meats I find mm hmmm, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Little note here, I have not read this yet, but
according to pizzaplanet dot com, which is under their news section,
they have a fascinating history of Supreme Pizza, So that.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Just episode Well, wasn't Pizza Planet the pizza place in
the toy Story cinematic universe? That right?
Speaker 1 (01:38):
You might be right, it was totally Oh, we've got
to introduce ourselves. Also, I'm big bullet. This is what
are is the one and only Noel Brown, who's also
our research associate for this episode, which has little to
nothing to do with pizza, but maybe we'll get there.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Tangentially, you did drop a bit of hands with your
categorization of Max's pizza type being supreme. Is that a
there should be like a test for what is your
pizza type? Like a Myers Briggs situation, And I agree
with you, Max would be supreme. We are talking about
ping pong today, the history of ping pong, and with
(02:18):
the release of the Timo te Chalamet film Marty Supreme
and all that media hoopla surrounding you. Did you see
all this, guys? It's pretty amazing. I was kind of
blown away by the on the ground, the sort of
bootstrap marketing that old Timmy was doing in the style
of Supreme, the brand like Marty Supreme jackets and I
think hoodies and custom little ping Pong balls, and dude
(02:42):
actually stood on top of the Vegas Sphere, which is
already in the perfect shape for this. They made it
look like a Marty Supreme ping pong ball, and there
was a blimp. I know you love a blimp, then
I love a blimp mill. So this is probably more
so than in recent memory least, making the sport of
table tennis a little bit more in the zeitgeist. And
(03:05):
I haven't seen it yet full disclosure. I actually had
tickets to go see it and then something came up.
But I'm very much looking forward to and people seem
to be enjoying it. It tells the story of Marty Mauser,
an ambitious young shoe salesman in New York of the
nineteen fifties with dreams of becoming an international star in
the rising world of table tennis. And we'll get to
(03:27):
a little bit later a bit about who Marty Mauser
is based on in real life. But the inspiration for
a particularly famous vintage video game that we talked about
recently would also have come from today's topic table tennis.
Of course, talking about pong.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Ah Yes, yeah, one of the first legendary video games
in all of history, and one of the initial questions
I had when we first started talking about this is
the the difference between nomenclature and names. So table tennis
(04:04):
correct me if I'm out of school here. Table tennis
is the official name for this recreation, but ping pong
is the same thing, just a different, less official name.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
I guess it could be considered like a colloquialism. You know,
it's fun to say. Obviously it is, of course automati paic, yes,
would be the word for it, describing with words the
sound that the ball makes as it pings and pongs
across the table. These are automatipaic terms, if I'm not mistaken,
(04:39):
ben that date back to the Far East in the
late eighteen hundreds, imitative of the sound of the paddle
or bat striking, the ball being the ping, and then
the pong being the sound of the ball bouncing off
the table.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Oh right on, Okay, yeah, that makes sense in my
head here. And also I think we're all on the
same page that Sure table tennis will say it if
we're in an official meeting, but if it's just us
hanging out together, ping pong is clearly the more fun,
cooler name, right.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, I would seem that some of the official governing
bodies of the sports you may be in an effort
to be taken seriously. Maybe there's a history or a
little feeling of maybe being looked down the nose from,
you know, by the sports community. Ping pong might be
considered a little diminutive, But when are you going to
pass up a chance to say fun words like ping
(05:34):
and pong. So we're gonna say that a bunch, I
think any chance we get today. So why don't you
all at home, grab your commemorative Marty Supreme paddles or
bats if you got them, and let's serve up the
fascinating and ridiculous history of the sport of table tennis.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah, and it is fascinating. That's the perfect word for it,
as you found. The origins of what we call modern
ping pong or tablets can be traced back right to
England in the eighteen hundreds, and like a lot of
things in that time, this started out as a leisure
(06:17):
activity for the upper crust.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
I repeat, they had their own automoutopaic name for it.
I don't know if they quite nailed the sound though, No, No,
we all probably will enjoy saying this one a little bit,
as we have a fondness for overemphasizing our h's in
British parlance with whaff if you will or if you
will yes with waff perhaps waft maybe would be a
(06:40):
little more brit That was what they do it as
and it was played using super rudimentary equipment, initially things
like these lightweight well they would initially be quarks, champagne
corks or wine corks, but then they evolved eventually into
these little celluloid balls. They had these crude paddles or
bats that are often themselves made out of cork and parchment,
(07:01):
sort of fashion together from stuff that was hanging around,
and this was taken the influence for this very diy sport,
indoor sport was taken from the outdoor sport of lawn tennis.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Okay, yeah, so it's a natural evolution and now we
can play it inside and we're not held hostage by
the weather, right, So that all makes sense. We also
know that if we fast forward to eighteen ninety, there's
an Englishman named David Foster who comes up with this
(07:39):
with this concept and he says, you've got tennis, you've
got a table. Why don't we combine the two.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
It's true, Ben, and it just shows how they were
really just thinking about this as an extension of lawn tennis,
because lawn tennis is really just kind of tennis, if
I'm not mistaken right, like it was using a nicely
manicured lawn, which also would have required some upper crustness
to even have access to such a thing and be
able to, you know, maintain it in that kind of way.
(08:08):
But David Foster puts out this book that kind of
collected a bunch of different sort of fun indoor kind
of family games, and we found an image from the
company corn Corny Cornerlio I think is what they're called.
They are a legacy table tennis company with skin in
the game literally, and there's a lot of good historical
(08:29):
info on their site. They have this vintage advert Ford
Foster's patented parlor table games this book and a page
showing to very hoity toity British noble types pinging and
pong and a ball on this kind of what looks
like just a dressed up dinner table. You see there's
(08:49):
like wooden legs peering out from underneath. It seems to
just be covered up in a green cloth with the
sides batting on the side exactly around the edges to
keep it, you know, sort of from popping off. Of course,
we know that modern table tennis doesn't have any such thing,
but then it has a little net going across the
side and some of the same lines of demarcation that
(09:10):
separate the left on the right side of your part
of the court. But they are just referring to it
here as law tennis, which is a little confusing. So
the earliest surviving action game of tennis on a table,
as ITTF refers to it as on their website. They
are the official governing body the International Table Tennis Federation.
We love a Federation is made by David Foster, patented
(09:33):
in England in eighteen ninety number one to one zero
three seven Parlor Table Games. Is this book I mentioned
that includes table versions of lawn tennis. That's exactly what
it is. They're doing spins on popular court type games
like cricket and football, and they're making it or he's
making it, condensing it into a game you can play
indoors with less space. So the lawn tennis game featured
(09:56):
strung rackets more like a badminton racket, a thirty millimeter
cloth covered rubber ball, a wooden fence set up around
the perimeter of the table, and some side nets even
in addition to of course these the nets down the middle.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
And you know what, I just realized, and everybody tuning in,
I just realized why the name David Foster was sticking
in my head. It's because I used to be a
huge squirrel nut Zippers fan. You remember they have that song.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
Met the ghost of Stephen Foster at the Hotel Paradise.
This is what I told him as I gazed into
his eyes. Dude, I have been down a scroll Nut
Zippers nostalgia rabbit hole. Recently, there's a count I follow
on Instagram that just like posts old like one hundred
and twenty minute videos from the very important MTV show
that showed lots of weird like indie videos of the
(10:48):
moment and their song, The scrore nuts Zippers, who are
from I believe Asheville, North Carolina, near not too too
far from us.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Hell, was a huge hit at the time. I was
like in the afterloa mm hmm, great band, really fun.
They were one of the more interesting and tolerable of
that era of like swing dance revival type, not.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
The cherry popping daddies or whatever.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
You got your suit riders, you got your big bad
voodoo skull I like them big bad food. I'm sorry,
it's big bad voodoo daddy Addy. Then there were also
the Voodoo glows Skulls, and then of course the Mighty
Mighty Bostones, but they were more they weren't really swing.
We're talking about the stray Cats, the Seltzer Orchestra, Brian
Setzer or extracts. Yeah. Yeah, it was a golden top
(11:33):
for that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
So so we will, we will figure out.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Uh, it's the same David Fosters.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Wouldn't that be amazing?
Speaker 4 (11:42):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Why is the Why is the ghost of the guy
that had been like made the parlor table games haunting
the singer of the scroll Zippers, who obviously is playing
a vintage character, sort of in the style of the Decembris.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Oh yeah, exactly, you have to. I hear that they're
a good hang but maybe oh you know what, never mind,
cut everything, We'll keep this in, but cut everything. We said, folks,
it's the ghost of Stephen Foster.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Stephen Foster being a music the composer, right, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Stephen Foster. And then of course you've got You've got
David Foster Wallace. Yes, it's like the most pretentious writers
ever walked the face of the earth.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
If I'm not mistaken, I love his work. I have
to regretfully say, don't love his fans.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
But isn't he like he's the guy with the he
did sadly pass away? But Infinite Jest is often lampooned
as being holy cow. David Foster Wallace has a book
about tennis called String Theory, which is a very clever
name for a book about tennis.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
And tennis is a huge deal in Infinite Jest as well.
It's it's like.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
I think there's a connection that can't it can't be os.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
The world is so weird, but so shout out to
all the Fosters we just mentioned. Another thing you've found
here is that Foster's Foster didn't just say here's the
setup for tennis on a table. He said, here are
the rules for the game as well. And one thing
(13:16):
I liked is that the rules are pretty straightforward and
they're not super duper complicated like some of those really
difficult board games we've tried to play in the past.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
So yeah, there's a couple that I still haven't even
summoned the will to try again. That I do love
Munchkin Pandemic and what's the one I really like?
Speaker 1 (13:36):
The one I love hers?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Oh, wingspan, wingspan. Thank you once you get the hang
of it. Those are a good hang and a joy
to play. But you're right, Ben. The rules of table
ten is very similar to the rules of tennis. Tennis,
it's played to eleven points. You have to win by
two serves, alternate every two points, except in the event
of a tie ten to ten tie, because that would
(13:59):
be match points. If I'm not mistaken, then you alternate
per point at that point. So a legal serve involves
tossing the ball at least six inches straight up from
an open palm and hitting it behind the table so
it bounces on your side once, then on the opponents side,
and players then have to return the ball after one bounce.
Can't touch the net or the table with their free hand,
(14:20):
and volleying hitting the ball before it bounces is strictly verboten.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Yeah, and I whatever I see rule lists like this,
especially given the cultural period we're talking about. I keep
imagining them figuring out the rules because of one bad
actor who keeps cheating, Like there's one gal who keeps
grabbing the net, yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah, or like doing the old Spiker Rooney. You can't
spike it right now.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
You spike it, well, it has to bounce once. It
has to bounce once, and then you can absolutely. I'm
just picture I'm just picturing somebody at a gentleman's club
going to say something.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Like, Nigel, you irascible Cad Again, bothol.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Of you keeps exactly so. In eighteen ninety seven you
see the first national championships that are organized in Hungary.
Actually following a trip to the US in nineteen oh one,
we got a guy named James Gibb who brings back
with him the very first example of that celluloid ball
that I mentioned earlier, that you can picture as being
(15:28):
the you know, still to this day most popular type
of table tennis ball, very much lighter than the rubber
balls that we talked about. Therefore, uh huh, much more zippy,
you know, and bouncy. Yeah, you could do.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
More cool tricks. And then we know that this this
caught on it's convenient, right, if you have the space
and you have the means. It's easy to learn because
a lot of people already know tennis and it also,
i'll say it, it doesn't demand as much physical fitness
as some other forms of recreation.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
You know, it's funny been thinking about this Parlor Games book.
I'd love to see what some other like miniaturized games
look like, because I can't really think of any other
examples of ones that really stuck around, Like Who's ball
is not anything like actual soccer. It's its own thing.
But can you think of another game that would uh,
that would what's the word translate? In the same way?
(16:27):
What a mini version of cricket look like? I don't
think it works.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
I'm in love with the idea of tiny croquet just
because it's an inefficient it's.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
The same as regular croquet. Everything is miniature. Yeah, you
have you look ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
You have to have your thumb and forefinger holding holding
the club. Yeah, yeah, durable. That's a great question. We
should get a hold of the Parlor Games book because
I would be cool to see. I bet you like
twenty bend bucks. There is there. We're going to see
a lot of things that were uh not near a
popular and they were probably just super weird.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
But some things lost to history, like yeah, like lawn darts,
you know, lost the history for good reason. I believe
they skewered a child or two in their day.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Oh yeah, man, just like you and I and Max
lived through the uh slipping slide era when people started
breaking their backs on that thing.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, or like slicing themselves open on like I particularly
pointy rock that somebody missed that was underneath the damn thing.
We have talked. You know, it's funny. I think I
maybe mentioned this in previous discussions we've had around these
like games. Uh, there was a class like it was
like a pe substitute class I took in college called
backyard games. What that's cool? They know, backyard games?
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Yeah, what was your favorite?
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Fact? It was largely badminton. I just remember playing a
lot and I enjoyed it. That was a fun game.
But then there were some other real goofy ones that
we had to do as well that I'm kind of
spacing on what they were, but definitely didn't have any
table tennis setups there. We start to see, you know,
(18:04):
after this introduction of the Celluloid Ball by James Gibb.
Interest starting to kind of rise in the game, and
there's enough that we see an association being created in
England called the Ping Pong Association. They're still using the
colloquialism at the time, but not for long. That was
in nineteen oh one, five hundred players and enthusiasts were
(18:26):
registered to the organization, and just a year later, in
nineteen oh two, you see a British fellow enthusiast fan
of the game E. C. Gould introducing the first bats
or paddles that were very similar to what we see today,
rubber rubberized material glued to wooden circular little mini paddles
(18:46):
with little they called they're calling them pimples here on
Cornelieu dot com, which a little buss me out. This
is what it is. It's a grippy it's that grippy
material and it makes sense that it would be it
would help with traction, you know, on the ball.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Yeah on you ec for saying, okay, lads, the the
rubber balls didn't work out, But let's not get rid
of rubber entirely because it's a it's a great surface,
right because now you get a little more.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Grip wonder material time too. Still, we're probably loving, you know,
any any use of rubber, and we're going to get
into some issues that come as a result of this
rubber and changing it out or you know, having little
lacks that could maybe make your paddle a little more
bouncy than the other guys.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Yeah, because of course, even if it's a non professional sport,
there are going to be people who try to sneak
in some edgy moves.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Like Nigel and Bartholomew like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
So, uh so, okay, we we were going back to
our question ping pong versus table tennis? What's in a name?
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (19:54):
We know, as you found that the Ping Pong Association
of eventually had its day in the sun and then
kind of fell a little bit in popularity.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Pretty much brief, brief candle, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
It was, but then it became a popular again in
the nineteen twenties and that's where they started adopting the
name table tennis. So maybe in addition to wanting to
be taken a bit more seriously, which I can see,
maybe they were also going for a little bit of
a rebrand, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
I think that's right. They wanted to. I thought ping
pong sounded a little too like childish or something, or like,
you know, it sounded like a kid's game, and they wanted,
you know, they wanted it to be taken seriously. So
the original association in the ping pong one had broken
up in nineteen oh five. The game did continue, but
that just wasn't you know, a governing body, so to speak,
(20:49):
mainly outside of London. And then in the twenties you
started to see it enter other countries, you know, outside
of England, so you started to see the public exhibition
type tournaments. Some of the most popular ones took place
at Queen's Hall in London. And then in nineteen oh
two you started to see the formation of a world
(21:11):
championship type event. There we're gonna see a that happened
kind of again as a larger governing body sort of
swoops in and becomes the sort of you know, taste maker,
gatekeeper of the sport. But you are starting to see
formations of smaller, more regional and you know, country wide
federations or governing organizations, one of which was the British
(21:35):
Table Tennis Federation. So of course England in London, and
then in some of the suburbs and outside of England,
and then you know outside in other parts of Europe.
It's definitely the hub of the sport originally, so in
nineteen oh seven you start to see the first European Championships,
and then in the twenties is when things really get gone.
That's when you see the Table Tennis Association, the ITF's
(22:00):
who I've mentioned early on in the episode.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
The Table Tennis Association, not to be confused with the
International Table Tennis Federation, which comes about in nineteen twenty six.
And this leads us to of course the World Championship
picture Eurovision, but a century ago with table tennis instead
of pop socks.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
So these folks are coming because they love the Eurovisions.
I really want to man, I don't know much about it.
I have some really dear friends in Berlin and they
said it's basically like the way we watch like the
Super Bowl over absolutely massive to do. I watched it
during COVID and uh, yeah, I get it. It's awesome.
They have parties over there. It's a spectacle. It's it's
(22:46):
something we should do an episode on. So we've got
supreme pizza as an episode, and we've got Eurovision. Oh gosh, man,
I definitely have to do a Eurovision. That's a great idea, Ben,
We've got to do it.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
So we know that these we know that these championships,
the World Championships were a big deal, and other countries
started to despite the fact that there was already an
International Table Tennis Federation, other countries started their own similar
nation specific organizations, like, of course the French. Kidding, French,
(23:23):
we love you, but they you started your own table
Tennis Federation where there already was one Internet.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Which makes sense, I guess, because it would be an
organization that could maybe help organize regional competitions things that, yeah,
and helping, you know, just raise the profile within that
particular country. Though I'm sure the ITTF, especially nowadays, kind
of has a lot of that on luck. I'd be
curious to see what some of the other more country
(23:51):
specific federations are remaining to this day. The French get
in on it eventually in a tournament that takes place
in Budapest, Budapest in eighteen twenty nine, and then you
start to see rising stars like Marty Supreme or like
the dude that he's based on a guy by the
name of Richard Bergmann, who is an Austro Briton and
(24:11):
Franco Polish player a la Soi Alasi Erlik. And then
we've got a Romanian fellow by the name of Anglica Rosano.
And these were some of the rising stars of the
sport at the time. And this is in the era
that is depicted in the movie Marty Supreme when we're
starting to see this real table tennis fever kind of
(24:32):
sweeping the nation.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Nice. Yeah, we also know that there were technological advances
and setbacks, so not everything was a perfect score for
ping pong. As you pointed out earlier, Noel, in the
beginning days, when this was a very ad hoc kind
of recreation activity for the upper crust, they were using
(24:56):
found items for paddles, like cigar boxes, and when they
got pong, actual fat paddles, shout out to Low and
vocal bomb those paddles. Yeah, those paddles didn't have the
materials you're going to see today, No fancy sponges, no rubber. Instead,
they had this grit kind of fine sandpaper and it
(25:19):
gave you a very small amount of friction with the ball,
so you couldn't put any spin on it. You can
put the English on it. That meant that the ping
pong players of the time weren't as reliant on speed
and power. They were more strategic with their moves, and
the ball was moving slower, and the games took longer.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
They took longer, it was not nearly as exciting to watch.
You're not seeing as many of this those aces and
spikes as you might see in modern versions of the game.
So a lot of technical innovations came along, changes and
regulations allowing some of the innovations that had a major
impact on the speed and excitement of the sport. You know,
(26:07):
a lot of high profile tournaments had their outcomes affected
by some of this new stuff and it wasn't considered
cheating or anything because there was that was allowed. You know,
in particular, you'd have specific changes to the rubber and
the blade that were recognized by formerly by the governing body,
the International Table Tennis Federation in nineteen twenty six, which
(26:29):
is of course still the governing body to this day.
Modern table tennis rackets have what's called and this is
coming from a really cool blog, Tom vatch dot com,
talking about the history of table tennis technology and different
types of glue we're going to get to in just
a second. So the blade is the wooden part. The
(26:51):
rubber is the you know, bouncy material that is attached
to it. Volcanized rubber bonded to an inner layer of
banded sponge or foam, so it has less dense exactly
less dense, and it has to be of course attached
to the blade, and doing that required certain types of glue.
(27:16):
And it was in the nineteen seventies that some European
table tennis players realized that they could kind of try
different types of adhesives that would change the playing characteristics
of the rubber layer. Unfortunately, the ones that were the
most effective were real fume. Oh right, Okay, this is
(27:41):
you know, like sniff and glue. You know, yeah, it's
not good for you.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
This is where we're talking about stuff like trichloroethylene and
one one trichloro ethane.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Right. I think that's right, Ben, those are the ones
in question. You were actually allowed to you know, re
it here your rubber surface, though typically prior to this
situation we're describing here, it would really only be done
when the old surface had worn out, but there wasn't
any rule against doing it, you know, more frequently. And
(28:15):
at this point, the type of glues that people were
using were the kind you might see to repair a
bicycle tire or like you know, plug a leak automotive tire.
They were one part vulcanizing fluids is what they're referred
to as. And players were finding that what was then
referred to as speed glue could produce shots with increased
(28:40):
speed and spin that english you were talking about, ben
compared to just putting the rubber on with some of
the traditional rubber cements that were used.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Okay, yeah, and this is interesting. And I like the
reference to tires for cars because it reminds me of
the way changing tires works in some professional racing, you know,
like F one or NASCAR. The idea is that you
can pit crew. Yeah, you can pick crew stuff essentially,
(29:11):
and you can change out these tires that will affect
your performance, just like changing out the glue can affect
the performance of your paddle, but you're sacrificing longevity. So
speed glue. Speed glue has a big disadvantage, which is
this high performance gift or this edge that it gives
(29:34):
you only lasts for a few hours instead of three
to six months, and the rubber has a shorter playing lifetime,
so you could do this. And as you said, no,
it's perfectly legal to reglue the rubber onto your paddle
between matches.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
However many times you want. At this point, there are
no rules against that. But you've got to have your
kit with you. You've got to be able to maguiver stuff.
This is fun.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Yeah, with your glue bottle, your brushes, your scissors, your
rolling pins so you can flatten the rubber evenly, and
then hair dryers even yeah, later hair dryers, which is
cool because I don't know about a lot of other
sports that require you to bring hair dryers.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Well, these are all very It's interesting and it almost
goes back to the diy roots of the sport because
a lot of this field very do it yourself kind
of craft project, you know. But as we mentioned, while
this glue might yield some short term increases in speed
and bounce, it also contains some pretty gnarly toxic fumes
that if you surround yourself with it for too long,
(30:39):
it can cause some real problems. There's an evidence of
a Japanese player, and this is all pretty recent, by
the way, collapsing while gluing his paddle during a tournament
in two thousand and seven, And as of September one
of two thousand and eight, the ITTF has banned glues
containing quote unquote volatile compounds and now allows only water glues.
(31:01):
And there's like glue sniffing contraption that like test for
the wrong kind of illegal glues before matches, almost the
way that you know athletes in the Olympics and other
high profile competitions are tested for things like blood doping
and use of steroids. However, I believe that this was
(31:21):
so controversial and there was concern that it would slow
down the speed of play that the ITTF kind of
held back on this decision for a little while. And
I think now it is in place, But there was
a while where it was an outcry and I think
they sort of held back on implementing this. But now
I think, you know, this is back in two thousand
and eight, I do believe that it is now illegal
(31:41):
to use these speed glues.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Yeah, and at that point it's it's a health concern,
you know what I mean. This is however, this is
a great time to mention our earlier idea that we
pitched to Dan Harmon and anything goes Olympics. We don't
know how the paper work would uh pay.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
It out, but you know, didn't we There was a thing.
Remember there was a story about some.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Tech Olympic guy.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Yeah, that was it. It was about like steroids allowed
all all kinds of but we had the growth hormone
blood doping out. We definitely did, no.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Question, but that's where that's where this would go. And
everybody can agree. You know that the health of the athletes,
the help of the health of the support staff is crucial.
You know, so play the game to the best of
your ability, but part of that is also playing the
game with your health in mind for sure.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
And just to double back again, like none of this
was like corking your bat in baseball, which is illegal.
You know, that is like considered cheating or deflate gate.
Remember deflate Gate in American football. It was this idea
of choosing slightly slightly deflated footballs. This was all above
board and it wasn't like anybody was doing it in
(32:57):
secretor in the dark of night. You know, like everyone
knew that this was being done, and it was allowed
until it wasn't. Another reason that I think it wasn't
allowed despite the toxic fumes thing. The ITTF seemed very
concerned about making the game easier to follow for spectators,
and apparently those balls were pinging and ponging so fast,
so that's speed glue that it was hard for the
(33:18):
eyeball to follow that tiny little thing.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Right, Yeah, we're talking.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
What are they doing? Some guys wa with it and
waffing their arms around. I can't even see them all.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Yeah, this is crazy. Okay, So a world class ping
pong players, as you mentioned in Tom Vish's website, a
world class ping pong player can make shots with speeds
of up to one hundred miles per hour with a
ball spinning nine thousand revolutions per minute. So, like like
(33:50):
Nola was saving folks, you can easily imagine how it's
tough to keep track of everything because these are pretty
small balls.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
And one concern of a body like the ITTF is
making the game as accessible and as popular as possible,
So they are thinking about the big picture of like
what makes this the most engaging too, you know, viewers.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
And it turns out that they were onto something because
as we see I think we'll mention Forrest Gump a
little bit later too. As we see in the nineteen fifties,
table tennis really takes off in the Asiatic sphere, just
(34:36):
like Hungary in days of yore. Japanese teams were a
huge deal at the World Championships between what nineteen fifty
four to nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
For sure, and then you start to see the Chinese
teams or it's not really a team sport, is it's
an individual sport. You know, the Chinese entries into the
chat starting to really dominate, that is around nineteen sixty one,
and then in ninety sixty three and nineteen sixty five
we see triple world champion titles won by Juan Zeidong.
(35:12):
And then during this period you start to see ping
pong almost as a method of soft diplomacy, which I
know is your wheelhouse.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Ben. Oh yeah, I man. We're excited about this because
it'll play into the idea of soft diplomacy, plays into
another episode we're going to have coming up about Thailand.
But you nailed it. That's exactly what I was thinking
about that sequence in the film Forrest Gump. Wherefore absolutely
gets really at the ping pong and then ends up
(35:44):
playing the Chinese delegation. This is this is fascinating because
we also see an evolution of strategy. It's nineteen seventy
seven and the World Championships are in Birmingham, and this
is where we see the first official use of something
called the Chinese service, which is a particular type of serve.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Yep and Asia then, of course, really becomes cemented, rubber
cemented or spell mood into the annals of a ping
pong slash table tennis history, and I think even to
this day they are quite good.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Oh yeah, yeah, I have not played ping pong over
in an Asian country, but I know it's still a
huge deal and the people who are good at it
are very very good at it. I don't know how
are you at table tennis.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
I haven't played in a very long time. Dear pal
and friend of the show, Frank just got one a
table tennis set up and has invited me over to play,
and I'm sure it would love to have you as well,
and so maybe we should do a little ping pong
adventure sometime.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
That would be so much fun. I always, I always
mess up in the first few minutes, because I keep
forgetting you have to have a light touch.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
I know our buddy Chandlers, who we work with on
podcasts and have known for many, many years. I've seen
on his Instagram stories lately that he's been pinging a
lot of pongs.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
Also, do not try to play putt putt against Chandler.
That guy is insane. He's so good at pussy.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
He's great, plays regular tennis. He's a serious he's a
serious athlete.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
We've had a company outing where we played putt putt
not that long ago, and man, he smoked everybody. I
was playing with the guy who was really good, and
then look to this scorn. It was nothing competed to Chandler's.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Well, the thing is in Chad, I love you, man,
I say this with great affection. You are always going
to be also way more competitive than I am.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Just he's got fire in the blood.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
That's why I love playing games with Chandler, because we're
so different in that regard, and he's usually going to
be better at the game that I'm endlessly congratulated because
I think it's cool.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
It's good to be good at stuff, no question about it.
Speaking of being good at stuff. We've already really seen
the transition of table tennis from like a you know,
a quaint little parlor game to a serious competitive sport.
This is no question about this, But we have not
yet entered the world of the Olympics. It doesn't happened
(38:26):
until almost the nineties.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Isn't that crazy? It's lately crazy to eighties. So this
has ping pong has become such a global phenomenon that
it's actually a form of diplomacy right for decades at
this point, and in nineteen eighty eight, like with player
exchanges and normalizing relations between hostile countries, so that thank you, Ben.
(38:51):
It's weird, right, So South Korea, Soul, they have the
Olympics nineteen eighty eight and table tennis officially become an
Olympic sport, and you know, no surprise to a lot
of the people following ping pong, the winners are both
(39:11):
from Asia. The female Chinese player Chen Jing takes the
gold medal in her category and the male Korean national
Yu nam q takes gold medal in his category.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
And it's interesting that we don't really even see like
pro tours, we've got the sport in the Olympics. But
there's nothing resembling like the PGA. You know that we
have surrounding you know, golf of course, but we have
that happening in nineteen ninety six, so well, almost a
decade after that first Olympic inclusion. And yeah, to what
(39:47):
we were saying earlier, it has largely remained dominated by
Asian players since the beginning of the professional world of
ping pong, and that includes the triple world champion and
world number one player for many years, Wang Liquin. Oh
and to answer my own question that I posed earlier,
I believe Ben you could probably confirm this tennis. Table
(40:10):
tennis is the most practiced sport in all of Asia.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's still a huge, huge deal.
You know, I put it up there with football or
excuse me, soccer in Latin America. You know, people love
it and we know that now the International Table Tennis
Federation includes more than two hundred nations. It's the size
(40:37):
of a nation itself in terms of membership and population.
Thirty three million people are part of the itt F.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Remember the earliest ones we mentioned, I think it was
something like fifty or five hundred sorry players. Yeah, that
we're involved and even then at the time that seemed
like a lot because it was much more niche. But
it is. It's huge, bigger than bigger than Rock and roll.
Maybe not, it'll give rock and Roll a run for
its money. But ben you teased Forrest Gump. I think
a lot of our first you know, views into ping
(41:07):
pong as a serious sport and as a method of
soft diplomacy was from the nineteen ninety four film Forrest Gump,
where the title character played by Tom Hanks, after being
discharged from the military because I believe the bullet flew
up and bit him in the butt.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Yeah, you get a billion dollars wound a ticket home,
that's right. So a bullet that takes about a service
and puts him in the hospital for a little bit.
But does it ruin his life?
Speaker 2 (41:36):
No, And I think it's in the hospital that he
just gradually starts to enjoy playing table tennis, because that's,
you know, again, while it is a serious sport at
this time, or it's beginning to be, it's also still
a fun parlor game, you know. And he, of course
is also an elite American football player, a shrimp boat captain,
and a professional table tennis player. And one thing I'll
(41:59):
always remember about that scene where they're recreating footage of
him playing table tennis is that the balls were moving
so fast that they were animated in the ball. And
that was like, at the time, a really big deal
in you know, special effects.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
Right, Yeah, especially because it was so subtle. You know,
it looked believable. It was quite impressive, you know. And
we also, okay, we also see a wonderful easter egg
that I wasn't aware of. I actually had to go
back and watch this sequence after you pointed this out
in your research. The director, Robert Zemeckis does something really clever,
(42:39):
and it's a special gift for actual ping pong fans.
It's all about the grip. Remember we mentioned the Chinese
service when Forrest is picking up the ping pong paddle.
Originally he uses the traditional grip what we call the
shake hand grip, kind of like how you would hold
a hand mirror.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Right, Can I just say, why do they call it
the shake hand grip and not the handshake grip? That
just makes that boils my blood? Yeah, that shaa, it
really does, man, that's cool. Yeah, it is. It is
the grip that would be typically used by players today.
He continues to use this grip until he travels to China,
(43:21):
where he sees players using a grip that was much
more popular over there, called the penholed grip, which is
an alternate style of holding the paddle that had been
popularized over there and was you know, favored by Chinese players,
especially in the heights of its rise there in the
mid twentieth century. He uses this grip later in the film.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
Yeah, yeah, and this he's using this gript specifically towards
the end of the film when he plays the game
with spoiler his son Forrest. She sees dead people, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's the spoiler for sixth sense. The whole time, that's
Bruce Willis. He's just playing a different character.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
It's true. No, we're talking about a little baby. Haley
Joel Osmon big big winner and cleaned up at the
Oscars Best Picture, Best Director for Zamecha's Best Adapted Screenplay,
Best Editing, Best Visual Effects. There were a couple other
really good, low key, brilliant effects where it's like showing
(44:25):
gump in you know, imposed into historical events really really
thoughtfully and creatively and convincingly. Rather yeah, and with.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
Some alarming historical accuracy, because Lyndon Johnson was known to
be fascinated by scars. That's why that's why when he's
talking to Forrest Gump in that scene.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
I'd like to say that something yeah, and he moons him.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
We also would be remiss if we didn't mention that
there was a Forrest Gump is based on a novel,
and there was supposed to be a sequel because of
the man success of the film adaptation.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
There was a sequel to the novel, but they didn't
make it into a movie.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Because the guy who actually wrote the story, unfortunately he
got hollywooded out of his share of the profits, so
he didn't really make a dime out of it. That's
why there's not a Forrest Gump sequel. It's a tangent,
but it's important for us to mention it.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
I did also read something interesting too about how like
they ran out of money on production of Forrest Gump,
and there were some sequences that they weren't going to
be able to shoot. But Tom Hanks, like I think
he exchanged a big part of his salary for like
points on the back end, which obviously ended up working
on in his favor, but he like donated his salary
to help pay for some of these sequences that they
(45:41):
like didn't have the money to do.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Tom Hanks seems like a stand up guy man, and
true she.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
Just canceled out as don't know why, I don't know
what to do. It's not gonna happen.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
We'll have good life to pause the show for like
a week to mourn. But what one cool Tom Hanks
fact is he is We mentioned this on another show somewhere,
but he is super duper into old school typewriters, so
much so the word on the street is if you
write him a letter on your typewriter, he will take
(46:12):
out one of his typewriters and type a letter back
to you. So ti him up.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Yeah, on another one of our discussions recently, it must
have been on stuff they don't want you to know.
Check us out on Netflix, by the.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Way, Oh nice segue. Yeah, we are as of this week,
live and direct with two new episodes per week on Netflix.
So if you're thinking, ah, I'd love to give the
guys a rating or a review, or oh I'd love
to hear more strange things from these Jibroni's, then Hi,
(46:44):
the to Netflix and click the remind me button and
then click the little thumbs up button. That'll be a
massive help to us. And we couldn't thank you more, folks.
And no, I can't thank you more for this awesome
research which really makes you want to want to play
Ping pong. Not at the Chandler's level, but.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Just no, I'm sure that guy's brutal at a restaurant somewhere.
We're gonna wrap it up to just dovetail back to
how we started the episodes talking about Marty Supreme. So
I'm very much excited to see You know, it's still
in cinemas. Do check it out if you want to
get out to the movies. I am going to try
to catch it before it leaves, but I also think
it'd probably be cool to watch at home. There is
(47:28):
a dude that The Marty Supreme character portrayed by Timmy
Challamey is based on a guy named Marty Resman, who
is an award winning table tennis player. Born in New
York City in the Lower East Side to Russian Jewish
immigrant parents in nineteen thirty. He got really into table
tennis as a kid, and in an interview with Forbes
(47:48):
magazine in two thousand and five, said that he learned
how to play at a local community center after having
some significance nervous issues. Let's just say I mean term
nervous breakdown. I find to be a little bit hyperbolic,
but it does seem that as a young man or
young like a nine year old, he was dealing with
some anxiety and some difficulties there and this helped him
(48:11):
kind of focus a bit. Yeah, And he used it
initially as an escape for quickly.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
In recovery just so wound, Yeah, just.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
So, and then used it as a as a means
to a career and became real competitive at thirteen.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
And he was known for an aggressive, flashy playing style.
He had his own signature super moved the atomic blast,
which was.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
Going to be a massive spike right right.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
One hundred and fifteen miles per hour. This guy, and
he was also similar to Michael Jordan. He was no
stranger to the world of gambling and the whims of fate.
He would place bets on himself.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
Hey, you know what they say, bet on yourself, you know, right.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
Right, And we know that when he was fifteen years old,
still a very very young person, a child, his reputation
for a hustling people as a ping pong shark came
back to haunt him. He bet five hundred bucks on
himself at a national tournament in Detroit, but he accidentally
(49:21):
handed the money not to a bookie but to the
head of the United States Table Tennis Association.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
And I say we leave it there as not to
spoil any events of the movie Marty Supreme, But yeah,
do check it out. It sounds like a romp that's
gonna have involved table tennis Tyler the creators in it.
Oh cool. I just I'm very excited to see it.
But this has been a super fun episode, a lot
more involved than I would have expected, almost two partner material,
(49:50):
but not quiet wouldn't have been a good place to
break it. So we give you. We gift you with
this beefy episode of ridiculous history.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
And thanks as always to our super producer mister Max Williams.
Thanks to aj Bahamas Jacobs and you know what I'm
going to say it I don't always do it, but
an actual thank you to Jonathan Strickland aka the quister
who wrote the Human Ping Pong Ball Human ping Pong Ball,
who wrote us a very nice message about getting on Netflix.
(50:19):
So thank you, Jy.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
I'm Joey. I love the guy.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
He's all right, three out of five.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
He's a good dude. Yeah, and thanks to you, Ben,
this is a lot of fun. Thanks super producer Max
of course, Alex Williams who composed this theme, Chris Frasciotis
and Eaves, Jeff Coates, Aaron Spirit.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
Thanks for the awesome research here, Noel, and thanks to
the rude dudes of Ridiculous Crime. If you dig us,
you'll love them.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
We'll see you next time.
Speaker 4 (50:41):
Books.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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