USA's Best: Past, Present, and Future
Here's a quick look at our best in the past, present and future. Here goes - and if you aren't interested in our history, skip ahead to the Present and Future!

PAST

USA's best heyday was 1936-1938. USA had stars like Ruth Aarons, Jimmy McClure, Robert Blattner, and Sol Schiff. During that period they won the following titles at the World Championships:

• Men's Teams: 1937
• Women's Teams: 1937, finalist in 1936
• Women's Singles: 1936, 1937 (Ruth Aarons both times)
• Men's Doubles: 1936, 1937, 1938 (McClure/Blattner 1936-37, McClure/Schiff 1938)

Not a bad record!

There were no World Championships from 1940-1946 due to World War 2. And then Team USA returned almost as strong as before, with a whole new set of stars - Dick Miles, Marty Reisman, Lou Pagliaro, Mae Clouther, Reba Monness, and the sisters, Leah Thall Neuberger and Thelma "Tybie" Thall Sommer. Here are their results at the Worlds right after World War 2:

• 1947: Finalist in Men's Teams, Finalist in Women's Doubles (Mae Clouther/Reba Monness), Semifinals in Men's Singles (Lou Pagliaro)
• 1948: Mixed Doubles (Dick Miles/Thelma "Tybie" Thall Sommer)
• 1949: Women's Teams, Semifinals in Men's Singles (Marty Reisman), Semifinals in Women's Singles (Thelma "Tybie" Thall Sommer)

Not a bad record!

So the "Golden Age" of USA Table Tennis was from 1936-1949, with that 1940-46 World War 2 gap. (Or call it two short "Golden Ages," 1936-1938 and 1947-1949.) But USA wasn't done - in the 1950s USA had a few last gasps:  

Alas, between the long hours working with Tim Boggan on his latest History of U.S. Table Tennis volume, and catching up on things last night, I wasn't able to put together a blog for this morning - and now I'm due to go back to work with Tim. So no blog this morning. Back tomorrow with a nice feature blog, tentatively about the past, present, and future of our national level players. I'll leave you with this quote, which I said to Tim after finally finishing a page after spending an hour on it fixing up problems and making numerous changes to it: "Our short national nightmare is over. Let's start the next one." And here's two minutes and nineteen seconds of cats playing table tennis.

Update on History of U.S. Table Tennis and My Shoulder
Yesterday Tim Boggan and I spent most of the day going back and putting in captions and photo credits for the 116 pages we'd done on Sunday and Monday. Between that and the many changes Tim had, we only got one additional chapter done. (This time we did the captions and credits as we did the pages.) So we've now done nine chapters and 132 pages. I haven't kept track of the graphics, but I'll get a count later on.

Volume 21 covers 1994-1995. Since this was during my first tenure as editor of USA Table Tennis Magazine, probably half of the material is direct from things I wrote. So I'm having some nostalgic times seeing my past words. (Yeah, I have a lot of articles - 1791 to exact, plus 13 books. As to USA Table Tennis Magazine, I did 91 issues, 1991-1995, 1999-2007.)

It looks like it's going to take a little over eleven working days to finish, so if all goes well, we'll finish next Wednesday or Thursday. We'll see. It's a big project, put together by three USATT Hall of Famers - Tim Boggan, Mal Anderson, and, um, me. (My profile is well out of date - I hadn't even started this blog yet - it started in January, 2011, along with the weekly Tips of the Week - and I'd only written two of my eight books on table tennis, plus I've done about 14,000 hours of coaching since that time.)  

ITTF Proposal that Boosting No Longer Be Illegal
Here are new rules proposals that the ITTF will be considering at meetings during the upcoming World Championships. See #3, where they are considering adding the bolded parted part:

2.4.7 The racket covering shall be used without any physical, chemical or other treatment that may be considered harmful or unhealthy for the persons.

Rationale: 1. It is impossible to control boosters with the current equipment/procedures, so the actual rule cannot be enforced. 2. The main problem of the harmful substances in the way rubbers were collated to blades was mitigated with the introduction of the VOC controls.

I think this is a good idea, since (as I've blogged before), most top players are already boosting. (See more on this in my proposal below.) Making a rule that can't be enforced is silly as it simply penalizes those who refuse to join others in cheating, while forcing all players to face the reality that if they don't also cheat, they can't compete equally. (The same argument goes for hidden serves.) I've made my own proposal on this, the Racket Testing Rule Proposal.

History of U.S. Table Tennis - Update
Tim Boggan and I have done eight chapters and 116 pages, plus the covers, of the planned 30 chapters and 460 pages. However, there's a catch - we haven't been putting in all the captions and photo credits as we zipped along, saving those for later. We're planning to go back and put them this morning, which will probably take at least a couple of hours.

Tip of the Week
What You Should Be Watching.

Busy Weekend!
Even though I'm taking time off from private coaching for my shoulder to heal, it was still a way-too-busy weekend. On Saturday, where I'd normally have five hours of private coaching, instead I spent much of the morning and afternoon at the Maryland Table Tennis Center booth at the annual Lake Forest Mall Summer Camps and Activities Expo. Wen Hsu was there the entire time, with Todd Klinger (just turned 13) helping out all afternoon. For insurance reasons, the mall wouldn't let us bring a full-sized table, so we brought a mini-table instead. (We used to do annual exhibitions there, where I'd bring a bunch of our top juniors and give exhibitions all afternoon, but apparently those days are past. The cover of my book Table Tennis Tales and Techniques is from a Lake Forest exhibition where I'm using an over-sized racket.) Despite my shoulder injury I was able to talk to and hit back and forth with those passing by, playing backhand only. When Todd arrived he took over the hitting duties. 

Here are three pictures from the Lake Forest, by Carolyn Klinger.

Table Tennis Inventions Needed
Today I'm going to turn some of you into rich inventors, and someday I'm going to regret all the hordes of money I gave away by not patenting all these inventions. But it's all for the greater good of table tennis, right? When you (or the big table tennis companies and distributors reading this) create these devices and are rolling in money, make sure to credit me with the idea! Here are some table tennis inventions we need you to create.

Who Has the Best Table Tennis Name?
Upon realizing that nobody has ever investigated this extremely important question, I took it upon myself to resolve this issue. Mostly using the USATT's database (which only goes back to 1994), here are some of the more interesting table tennis names.

The Pings

• There are 44 Pings in the database, though I think some are duplicates. One of them is 2004 USA Olympian Whitney Ping.

The Pongs

• Beth Pong Green Berggren of Monument, CO
• Johnny Pong of Lake Forest, CA
• Vivien Pong of Eugene, OR
• Chin Pong Tsui of New York, NY

Those Who Love Table Tennis - the Lovett's

• Cullen Lovett of Sebring, FL
• David Lovett of Fayetteville, NC
• Reuben Lovett of Searcy, AR

The Balls

• Ian Ball of Nashville, TN
• David Ball of AZ
• Ed Ball of Santa Monica, CA
• Kevin Ball of Loveland, CO
• Russell Ball of Swanzey, NH

The Loops

• Craig Loop of Los Angeles, CA
• Tom Loop of Scotch Plains, NJ

The Blocks

• Adam Block of Tucson, AZ
• Eli Block of Philadelphia, PA
• Gary Block of Coventry, RI
• Jonathan Block of PA
• Miwa Block of Tucson, AZ
• Robert Block of Bethesda, OH

The Fishers - alas, no lobbers in our database

• David Fish of Oak Park, IL
• Aaron Fish of UT
• Albert and Anne Fish of Columbus, OH
• David Fish of Benbrook, TX

The Best(s)

• Aubrey Best of Orlando, FL
• Bryan Best of State College, PA
• Gabe Best of Santa Cruz, CA
• Mia Best of BRB

The Smart Tacticians

• Jeff, Yvonne, David, and Eric Smart of Columbia, MD
• Jeff Smart of Indianapolis, IN
• Phil Smart of Hutchinson, KS

We Got the Goods

MRI Results
The results are in on the MRI on my shoulder on Friday. In layman's terms, the rotator cuff has a slight tear, but it's small enough that they call it "frayed." It's also badly inflamed, with some tendinitis and bursitis. The doctor showed me the pictures on a screen, and while I can't tell the difference between inflamed and normal, the small tear or fraying was obvious.

Now for the technical terms. Here are excerpts from the medical report - read these out loud. I'm not making fun of the doctor's terms, I'm in awe of them! And I thought "heavy no-spin" and "banana flip" were cool terms.

58 and Jörg
That sounds like an address doesn't it? "Taxi, take me to the table tennis club at 58 and Jörg." Actually, it's two things.

First, today I'm turning 58. How did that happen??? To mourn celebrate I was going to take the day off from blogging, but I decided the last thing I wanted on my birthday was for legions of USATT members storming my house with pitchforks and torches. So instead I'll celebrate by going to the doctor at 1PM today to go over the results of the MRI on my shoulder on Friday, find out if I have a rotator cuff tear, and whether I'll be out for weeks or months. (I'll put in a small "Breaking News" item here when I get back.)

Second, USATT High Performance Director Jörg Bitzigeio was at MDTTC yesterday afternoon where he watched some of our top kids in training, and even worked with a couple. (One had a tendency to play backhands with his right foot in front, so Jörg put a wire cord on the floor in front of him and had him play backhands while keeping the foot behind the cord.) Afterwards we went out to dinner, along with Wen Hsu (one of the MDTTC directors and a member of the USATT High Performance Committee) and MDTTC Coach Wang Qing Liang, one of the National Team Coaches. We solved all of USATT's problems, and were well into denuclearizing North Korea and installing a truth detector in the White House when we ran out of Chinese food.

As to the shoulder, I'm meeting with a physical therapist three times a week for an hour, plus I'm supposed to do about 15 minutes of shoulder stretches three times a day.

Tip of the Week
Sound and Feet.

Friday Twos
Friday was a red-letter day for me for multiple reasons, and they all came in twos.

I had to do two "bad" things - I had my shoulder MRI, and I did my taxes. I meet with my doctor Twosday (smirk) at 1PM to go over the MRI results and find out if I have a torn rotator cuff - i.e. will I be out for weeks or months. (I'm already scheduled for physical therapy three times per week, one hour each time. I have session #2 today at 11AM.) Here's what an MRI machine looks like - I was in it for 30 minutes with my shoulder strapped down to immobilize it. As to taxes, someone's got to pay for Trump's golf outings. These two bad things happened on Friday the 23rd, where of course the two is all that keeps it from being Friday the 13th.

I finalized the entry form for the Maryland State Championships (June 2-3) and ordered 32 (two to the fifth) plaques - the latter is time consuming as you have to type in the text for each one, and each plaque has two lines. And then, after some emails, I had to start over with changes in events and time scheduling, and had to cancel the plaque order. Later today I will for the second time finalize the entry form (including events and scheduling), and for the second time order the plaques.

After hitting an even 200 pounds on Christmas, on Friday I hit 182 pounds. I've held steady since then, but expect to hit 180 within a week.