Unlucky Joe

Not every guy named Joe was born under a lucky star. True, Joe DiMaggio, lackadaisical son of an immigrant Italian fisherman, gets close to $7,000 a month for playing baseball. True, Joe Louis, lackadaisical son of a Negro sharecropper, sometimes gets $150,000 a minute for punching palookas around a prize ring. But Joe Platak, husky son of an immigrant Lithuanian laborer from Chicago, is neither lackadaisical nor lucky.

Like DiMaggio and Louis, Joe Platak is the best athlete in his line. But his line is handball, the forgotten ancestor of all court games. Played in Ireland 1,000 years ago, handball took root in the U.S. during the late '80s when an Irishman named Casey built a four-wall court in Brooklyn. Casey, who had enough English to make a ball do crazy tricks, won the world championship in 1887, successfully defended his title for three years--sometimes for side bets of $1,000.

When Casey retired, there was no handballer in the U.S. who could draw a crowd. So handball faded into an amateur sport; was played in firehouse and police-station yards, Y.M.C.A.s and monasteries, finally sneaked into swank city clubs as a keep-fit routine for businessmen. It is still the poor relation of the squash and tennis family. On U.S. sport pages it is classed with curling, hurling and birling; its champions are forgotten by the time the next day's editions are out.

Joe Platak is considered the greatest handball player since the redoubtable Casey. He has won the national four-wall championship for seven successive years. But outside of a handful of addicts who attend the annual championship matches, Platak is just another guy named Joe. At 33, he is as poor and obscure as he was the day he left Loyola University after his freshman year to help support his aging parents.

Last month, deciding to join the Navy, Platak entered the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, the nearest thing to an athlete's paradise in either service. Instead of asking for a petty officer's rating (and a "physical-hardening" job), the Willie Hoppe of handball signed up as a second-class cook. Last week Platak realized that he had not only chosen the wrong sport but also the wrong spot in the Navy.

If he had been even a run-of-the-mill baseball player, he might have been invited --along with Don Padgett, Benny McCoy, Frank Pytlak and others--to join the Great Lakes good-will baseball team that will play several major-league clubs this summer. If he had been a track star, he might have worn the Great Lakes colors--as Quarter-miler Roy Cochran did last fortnight --in a big-time track meet. But when Platak asked for permission to go to San Francisco to defend his title at the National A.A.U. handball tournament this week, Great Lakes authorities flatly refused --even if his expenses were paid by his home club, Chicago's Lake Shore Athletic Club.

"After all," explained the Station's public-relations office, "he's just a handball player."

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