The Ottawa Journal from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • Page 136

"Skate, skate," 1 shouted to my wife. Sorry, dear, I mean push, push." Efft ffll ffi State A report from the World Table Hockey Championships 5 (7 Sat Fischler and his wife, Shirley donned traditional Rangers jerseys as a psychological edge. WmIwkI Mogoii 10 1971 IT WAS four hours before the World Table Hockey Championships were kArtin anil mir norinAi tufts aI a cuiu 1117 poiiuvi niiu aiw happens to be my wife, Shirley turned fearfully to me and downed two Aspirins. "Are you sure we did the right thing?" she said, obviously doubting my game plan. "Just because Gordie Hnwe nnre did it drwcn'f rimii it'll work for table hockey." Instead of preparing a pre-game meal of steak and salad, I had insisted that we each have a chocolate, milk shake.

Howe once told me that he had done that before a game when he was a rookie up from Omaha and scored a couple of goals. "What's good enough for Gordie Howe, I told her, "is good enough for me!" Who could blame her for having butterflies? After years of playing in the minor league of table hockey, we aasaaa-a aAA ma a a.Aa nuuiu awn uc up ogaiuai iiic ucsl knob-turners and rod-pullers in parlors from Montreal to Manhattan. Msmuliitf nnli a mil. quqv in ww mf rmumj iiiiiv HTH7l IIS cavernous apartment on New York's West Side overlooking the Hudson River, the world champion "rinks' were being prepared. "Mister Hockey" (he even copyrighted the name), Pierre Delfausse, a handsome gray-haired man from Montreal, supervised workmen who were adjusting the springs on the two championship Wkot kdMar tvtnM Ass.

-0 I muiv ft iiui wiiu mail iuuu il 1 was Delfausse who introduced the sliding players to the sport and thus took the game out of the bush leagues. Although Delfausse helped design the modern game, tourney play itself developed under the stewardship of Ira Gitler, a New York jazz writer, iTuvnavi iivjj, a yuuiig industrialist and Joseph Breu, a publicist who has kept a bottle of champagne in his refrigerator for 30 years, stoically awaiting the day the Rangers would win the Stanley Cup. "While waiting for the Rangers to win the Cup," said Breu, "we thought we owed it to ourselves to enjoy the thrill of. a New York hockey championship." So Gitler and friends launched a table hockey tournament on an informal basis seven years ago and it immediately caught on. Each year -more and more players demanded invitations and two years ago a trophy was offered to the winning team.

The trophy happened to be my wife's pewter gravy bowl, rechristened The Harold Cup (named after Harold Bock, president of the New York Hockey Writers' Association) for the occasion. For two years the team of Gitler and Robert Blume, a page at the National Broadcasting Corporation, annexed the Cup. However, mounting Continued.