Just Like A Green Bay Tree

The stories out of Boston and St. Pete and Charlotte were wild—and, to some, encouraging. Paul Haber, handball's singles champion on exhibition tour, was drunk out of his mind. Paul hadn't been sober since he won the title last March, and he really wasn't sober then. He was drinking beer faster than Milwaukee could brew it, and sucking up cigarette smoke at the rate of four or five packs a day and not getting any sleep.

Aha, said the sport's devout leadership, there's this National Invitational Tournament in Birmingham, so let's gather all the top guns—Jimmy Jacobs and Stuffy Singer and Billy Yambrick—and let's go down there and bust this freewheeling, swinging cat who gives the game such a bad image. We need him like we need square handballs. He's been swinging, and he's ready to be taken. Let's get some more top guns, like Pat Kirby, who seems to get to Haber with his Scotch serve, and tough little Lou Russo, who'd rather whip Haber than eat, and....

So they all gathered in that smoky city in Alabama last week, hard-muscled, clear-eyed young men who can take that little black ball and shoot the eyes out of a Kentucky squirrel at 50 yards, and if Paul Haber came out alive, well, O.K.—just as long as he came out shot down in the eyes of the public. "Ho ho," said the dedicated, "have we got him now."

"Ho ho, like hell they have," snarled Haber, setting up permanent office in the dimly lit bar of the Cafe Italiano just across the street from the tournament headquarters. "Just let all them hypocrites try. Even when I'm drunk, I'm still 3-to-1 to beat any of them."

For the last four years Haber has been the bad noodle in handball's soup. For three of the four years he has been the singles champion, and that means he has been the sport's public image. "And it hurts when your public image is a guy who smokes and drinks and raises Cain," say the purists. "Why couldn't he have taken up bowling or Ping-Pong?"

On Thursday, the day before the tournament opened, Haber worked his way through, by his count, 28 cans of beer. "Man," he told delighted audiences, "this exhibition tour has been something, just one great party after another. In Boston I became the first guy ever thrown out of Bachelors III. A friend of mine poured me on a plane he thought was going to Chicago, and at 5 the next morning I wound up in St. Louis. I couldn't figure out what happened. Hey, where's the bartender? I'm out of beer. Who's got a match?"

A few of the handballers heard Haber was in the bar and they dropped in—not to drink, certainly, just to say hello. One was Stuffy Singer, the 1968 singles champion, and one of the big favorites to gun down Haber.

"Hey, Stuffy," yelled Haber, who was now behind the bar pouring drinks. "I can't wait until tomorrow because I get better all the time."

"That's not only a bad line," said Stuffy, grinning, "it's not even original."

Haber was undaunted. "You know, I was trying to figure out who is the greatest Jewish athlete of the last 50 years. You know what? It's got to be me. No one has ever done what I've done. Gimme another beer."