Ball of Fury
Inside Chicago’s cut throat world of ping pong
By Bradley Campbell
Danny Giamalis grips a paddle in his right hand aand fans himself with it.
He jogs in place and cracks his neck. Fifteen people watch as he moves closer to the small, portable green table and pulls the paddle down in front of his body. The 23-year-old amateur pong player is a 5-foot-8, 190-pound ball of athletic muscle. He’s a shorthaired, bulkier version of tennis star Rafael Nadal, complete with calves hewn from marble. He shoots warrior-like glances back and forth and exhorts to himself in the third-person: “C’mon, Danny.” Around him, the pong room at the Happy Village Tavern is quiet and windowless. A chandelier with plastic candles illuminates the space over the center of the table, while swoops of white Christmas lights hang on the walls. Six of the ten strands are burnt out. A few of the spectators light cigarettes as Giamalis nods to his opponent. He’s ready for the serve.
Pratim Sengupta, an Indian intimidator with a full-beard and partial potbelly, nods to Giamalis and opens his left palm to reveal a small white ball. He tosses it 6 inches straight up into the air. With his right hand he slices his paddle at the underside of the ball. It flicks off the rubber padding, bounces once on his side of the table and arcs toward Giamalis, who lets it bounce once before whipping a topspin forehand back.
Giamalis bounces on his toes as he awaits the response, a small chop from Sengupta. It’s exactly what he wants: something to smash. Giamalis rips his paddle at the ball. At the same time, he jumps forward and to the left side of the table. He wants his shot to move inside and out. A thin pop echoes in the room and the ball turns into a white smudge hurtling to the far corner of the table. But the power is too great. It flies past the edge of the table and snaps down toward the wood floor, bounces once and pops back up into the waiting hand of Sengupta, who smiles back at Giamalis.
“Fuck. C’mon Danny!” Giamalis shouts. This is the tenth or eleventh time his shot has traveled long. He’s playing tight. He wipes his forehead on the shoulders of his Happy Village t-shirt. Then he takes his paddle and fans himself again, faster this time. It looks more like a nervous twitch than a soothing breeze.
He jogs in place again, like a boxer in his corner waiting for the bell.
Everything had been going his way. Before this match, his teammates, house bartenders Louis Stockwell and Nicholas Flandro, had won their matches decisively. He feels warm and prepared. He’s 15-0, unblemished by defeat, the number one ranked player on the number one ranked team in the Chicago Amateur Table Tennis League (CATTL).
“Danny is such a natural talent,” says Chad Cumby, director of CATTL. “I think a lot of people who play Danny get freaked out about how he acts, but [when I play him] I'm mostly just trying to figure out how to keep up with him, because he's so good.”
People root for Giamalis and his team, the Happy Village People, to lose.
They’re considered the Yankees of the 16-team league. But now he’s down in the quarterfinals of the Spring/Summer team tournament, facing his second loss in a best-of-three-games match. And Sengupta, a Ph.D. student from Northwestern and veteran of state leagues in Calcutta, isn’t even using half his shots. Sengupta has a shoulder injury that limits him to a strictly defensive game of chops and off-speed spins. And it’s working. He hasn’t let Giamalis establish his game and sits back while Giamalis piles up unforced errors and curses to himself like a sailor who took a nail through the foot.
“Danny you fucking bitch, get your fucking-shit together!”
Giamalis wipes his forehead on his shoulders again and nods to Sengupta.
He’s ready for more. This time Sengupta aims his serve at Giamalis’ backhand. It bounces fast off the table and Giamalis taps it back over the net. This time Sengupta lobs it to the middle of the table. The ball bounces too high off its surface and Giamalis rips a winner past the outstretched arm of Sengupta. “Hell yeah! Keep on doing that shit, Danny! Keep on doing that shit!”
He bounces on his toes a little lighter and moves back to the table a little quicker. Sengupta, after retrieving the ball, looks the same. He is calm and waits for the nod. With the composure of an executioner he ends the brief moment of joy and wins six straight points, all of them on unforced errors, including the final point. Afterward, Giamalis jogs over in a daze to shake Sengupta’s hand.
“Good match, man. Good match. You played me off my game.” He laughs off the loss as Stockwell and Flandro glance at each other across the room and take long drags off their cigarettes. Giamalis exits the pong room to fetch a beer at the bar. His day isn’t finished yet. If Stockwell and Flandro can win the next doubles match, their team will move on to the semis, making up for his defeat. He knows that he should have more matches to play, as Stockwell and Flandro are, as he puts it, “good fucking players.” So now he has to collect himself. It’s hard to come back after a defeat. But it’s something champions do. And Danny Giamalis considers himself the champion of this league.
