By George Kalogerakis The New Yorker, June 4 , 1990P. 34 Talk story about the national championships for one-wall handball, held on courts behind the New York Aquarium and between Surf Ave. and Coney Island beach.
Sports-wise, they are great at everything these days – football, tennis, formula one, handball, cycling.
While many Serbian children begin playing water polo by age 7, he started at 12, after focusing on handball.
He talks of waking up on a handball court one bright morning covered in vomit, lost, confused, at rock bottom.
James Tomkins collects one for a handball that stops Dusan Tadic in his tracks.
"I played handball mostly, one-wall handball.
But the eyes of the handball world - or at least those of the sport's one-wall partisans - have been focused on the outdoor courts wedged against the boardwalk at West Fifth Street, where the national one-wall handball championships, sponsored by the United States Handball Association, are being held.
One-wall handball, as opposed to four-wall, is peculiar to Brooklyn and the Bronx.
Talk story about weekend one-wall handball games in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn at Fourth Street and Avenue P. The game is played by a group of regulars, some of whom are middle-aged men, and men from the neighborhood bet on the games.
For generations, one-wall handball has been the exclusive province of New Yorkers, because most of the rest of the country plays four-wall handball, the indoor variety.
