This Match Just Kept Going Back and Forth

The death of badminton champion Dave Freeman last month in San Diego stirred memories of what may have been one of the most exciting sporting matches I have ever seen.

It was in the summer of 1938 on a ping-pong table at McKinley Junior High, the favorite place for Pasadena teenage jocks during the Great Depression.

Freeman had won the U.S. junior tennis title and was developing into this country’s greatest badminton player--winner of seven national titles and one world championship. He had been unbeatable on the McKinley tables.

In the northeast corner of the city, Jackie Robinson, developing into the world’s most versatile athlete, was just as invincible. One hot day, the word spread that “Jackie’s coming down tomorrow to play Dave” in table tennis. The next day a hundred or so youngsters, and a few adults, showed up.

The score has been lost in time. Freeman prevailed in the end, but not before every point--matching Robinson’s incredible reflexes against Freeman’s cunning--was played as if it were the fifth set at Wimbledon.

It wasn’t a tournament, it didn’t make the papers, but no one who was there will ever forget it.

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Trivia time: Who holds the NFL record for punting average in a season?

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Defensive driver: Observed in the Riviera Country Club parking lot: license plate MVPRB.

The car belongs to Bob Stiles, the most valuable player in UCLA’s upset of Michigan State in the 1966 Rose Bowl.

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Nothing like it: When the Tour de France ends today in Paris, the country can go back to normal living.

The late Red Smith put the cycling extravaganza in perspective when he wrote: “There is a saying here that an army from Mars could invade France, that the government could fall, and even the recipe for sauce Bernaise could be lost, but if it happened during the Tour de France, nobody would notice.”

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An earlier Tour: Cheating in the Tour de France these days often involves taking drugs. In 1906, it meant taking the train.

In 1906, Tour officials, after posting spies at railway stations, threw out three riders for boarding a train.

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Puckish Puck: Kirby Puckett was asked by USA Today Baseball Weekly how he would perform if he were playing today.

“Well, I’m blind in one eye and 20-15 in the other,” the new Hall of Famer said, “so I could probably hit .280-.285. That’s not good enough. If there’s not a 3 in front of it, Puck don’t want it.”

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MVP for sure: The Florida Marlins’ Cliff Floyd, on what it would take to create the ideal ballplayer:

“Barry Bonds’ wrists, Vladimir Guerrero’s arms, Ichiro’s speed, Cal Ripken’s health and Greg Maddux’s brain.”

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Trivia answer: Hall of Fame quarterback Sammy Baugh, who averaged 51.4 yards on 35 punts for the Washington Redskins in 1940.

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And finally: Twenty-eight horses were killed in a fire at The Meadows track near Pittsburgh, but the races went on later in the day.

“The horses would have wanted it that way,” reminded Jerry Greene in the Orlando Sentinel.