Roger Daltry Visits The Seventh Regiment Armory, 1980 by Guy Cipriano I began to play in the NY leagues in
October of 1978. By 1981 I was playing on the Princeton
Club B team. All the league players had to join the association,
then called the Metropolitan Squash Racquets Association , aka The Met
or the MSRA, pay some small dues and fill out a form listing the
club(s) to which each player was attributed. In mid-
October 1980 a letter from the Met arrived at my house containing
a sign- up sheet for the annual Met tournaments . There were
singles flights from Open and amateur A down to D for men,
amateur A, B and C for women, plus Open , Amateur A and B
for doubles players. There were also age group tournaments for
players over 40,50 . These were “ Arrange Your Own
Match “ tournaments, with specific dates set by which each
round had to be completed. I signed up for the B singles
and the A doubles with my partner Jim Dawson even though I’d only
played doubles a dozen times. I wrote a check and mailed
the form off to the Association. About a month later I got a
letter from the Met containing the draw sheets for the two
events I’d. The winner of each match was responsible for reporting the
score by post card ( Yes, Virginia, via post card) and then
finding out who he or she would play in the next round. In my first
round in the B singles I was drawn against a guy who was attributed to
the Seventh Regiment SC whose name I’d never heard.
I’d taken a course in architectural history as an elective for my civil
engineering curriculum and I knew that the Seventh Regiment
building was a historical big deal . It had been designed
by a famous firm called Clinton and Russell, long defunct,
sometime after the Civil War. So I called up my opponent and
eagerly agreed to play at his club so that I could get a look
around the building . The next week sometime in early
December I left work early to drive into the city from NJ. I
arrived around an hour early . There weren’t many people
present so I just walked around and nobody stopped me. It was
everything I expected and more. Magnificent portraits of famous Civil
War generals. A grand staircase. Luxurious meeting rooms
with oak paneling, massive chairs and huge ash trays for the
cigar smokers . That was a time before Michael Bloomberg turned
Manhattan into a cigar- free kindergarten. I was shocked that
in one big hall there were about fifty boys who
looked to be ages 10-12 dressed up in grey uniforms
marching around to orders barked by some grown man in an ill-
fitting Army uniform. I assume that was some sort of Jr. ROTC program
but I never asked.
After I was done wandering around I took the elevator up to the top
floor on which the squash courts were located. I walked into the old-
school dressing room and was greeted by my opponent “ Ed”
who got me situated. He seemed like a nice guy who didn’t have much to
say. We then walked into the court , and immediately I knew I was
in big trouble. The court was probably 18 inches too narrow and
about a foot longer than a regulation court. It was dimly lit and a
little bit dusty . The lines on the side walls didn’t step down like
all the other courts one which I’d played. And there was a line going
from the T straight forward to the tin, dividing the front of the court
into two halves.
We started to warm up and I could see I was fitter, faster and hit
harder than Ed. But he knew the angles of this weird off- spec court.
He had a tricky high lob serve and a pretty good three-wall. He was
giving me fits.
After we’d been playing about five minutes a few men appeared in the
gallery, followed by more men continuously. By the time the first game
ended, which I lost, the gallery was packed which never happened
on a Tuesday at 6 pm . I realized that the spectators were
all homeless men who had been taken off the streets by the City
and housed in a makeshift temporary homeless shelter that
had been set up on the main armory floor. We started game two and
the homeless dudes started cheering , yelling, and stamping
their feet on the wood floor which reverberated. It was DEAFENING. I
was wearing a cheap tee shirt I’d bought at a Who concert. It had
a British Flag on the back and the logo of “The Kids Are Alright”
album on the front. All of a sudden the homeless dudes
watching began calling me Roger Daltry and then
they’re yelling” COME ON ROGER!!!” I managed to win the
second game closely. Half a dozen homeless dudes leaned over the
railing , looking into the court and they decide they’re going to
coach me . “ ROGER YOU NEED TO KEEP HIM BEHIND YOU” and “ ROGER: STOP
HITTING THE TIN PLATE ON THE FRONT WALL -YOU”RE A F**KING
IDIOT” My opponent , a skinny ,somewhat WASPY guy with horn
rimmed glasses, was completely flummoxed by my newfound best
friends . I came out playing extra hard to make
my homeless cheering section proud of me. Before long Ed
cratered and I won the last two games going away to thunderous
applause and shouting. Ed and I shook hands, and I
made a bee-line for the showers, out the door and through the
tunnel back to Jersey. The homeless guys disappeared.
I found out later that the off spec courts at the Seventh
Regiment Armory were built sometime before WWI . They were for the
dimensions of a different game called Squash Tennis. It was
played with junior tennis racquets and a punctured tennis ball. Squash
tennis was almost dead by 1978 but there were a few old timers at
the Yale and Harvard Clubs who still played with their pros
Jim Leddy and Milt Russ. The rules of that game were that the
serve had to bounce in front of the T which explained why there was a
line going forward to the tin. There were a few die-hards who held a “
National Championship” at the Yale Club. The one time I attended out of
curiosity a Cuban man named Pedro Baccallao beat a young guy from
CT named Squires in the final . Squash tennis disappeared a few years
later .
There were a lot of quirky clubs, quirky players, quirky organizers
back then. It made NY hardball squash a hell of a lot of fun.
