Handball in Sunnyside; Addicted to Adrenaline

Posted on 27. Sep, 2009 by Margaret Teich in Arts and Culture, Beats, Thomas Lin

Handball from Margaret Teich on Vimeo.

Each afternoon, in any given park in New York City, you will find a diverse group of players of all ages slapping, swatting and smashing a little blue rubber ball against a wall.  With more than 2,000 handball courts dotting the NYC Park landscape it is far and away one of the most prevalent street games in the city. Why? It’s free, it’s communal and it requires very little equipment (though some players wrap duct tape around their hands to prevent palm splittage.)

Torsney Park in Sunnyside, Queens Park has four handball courts. The locals who play there say that they feel something akin to addiction for the game. Some frequent the park two or three times a day, just to check on the action and see if they can squeeze in a match or two.

Handball came to NYC with Irish immigrants in the early 20th century. They played a rudimentary version of the game against the jetties in Brighton Beach. With handball’s growing popularity, courts were erected by the city government and the rules were codified.

Players use a hollow, rubber or synthetic-rubber ball. The standard ball weighs 2.3 ounces and is 1.88 inches in diameter. The server puts the ball in play from the service zone by letting it bounce and then striking it into play. The purpose of the game is to hit the ball against the wall without letting the receiving player return the ball; when serving the ball must bounce past the short line.

Since then, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers have played street handball through the generations, though very little of the play has been documented.  In 2001, a handballer and journalist, Justin Sullivan, made Big Blue: The New York City Handball Documentary. Nonetheless, the Torsney Park handballers had never been filmed playing handball and were pretty excited to see the play-back footage of themselves on the flip camera I used.

The fellas also thought Queens is the best handball borough. Are they right?