Play Meter

•
cOlnman of the month
Pinball lover
prepares book
on its history
A Plgy Meter interview with
Roger Sharpe,
author & pinball fan
"Pinball machin s al/o1/l 11011 to nol j ll ·t stand th T (!
sta tically, bnl 10 9 t i7lv olv ed in th e play of the thillY ."
Pinball destroyed Roger Sharpe's mind.
Why else would an otherwise normal magazine
journalist want to write a book about pinball's
history and th vital sense of Am ricana it conv y ?
Pinballfirst entered Sharpe's life when on vacation
in onoma, Ca., as a child of five or six, he stood on
orange crates to see over the top of the machines at
the health resorts there.
Back home in Chicago, though, he forgot about
pinball because it didn't exist there. Later, when he
visited his sister at college in downstate Illinois, he
would get another dose of pinball, then forget about
it a.qain when he went horne to Chicago.
His real addiction to the game started when he
w nt to college in Wisconsin--add-a-ball country. "I
probably pent more than my parents did putting
me through school, .. he laughingly remembers.
"I went from total uncoordination to a point that I
could hold my own reasonably well. In those days it
was games lik Hurdy-Gurdy, Cowpoke, Magic
City, .. h fondly r calls.
An av rage pinball fanatic, you might say. But
w hat r sulted in harpe's final mind-warp was tlJ-e
germ of an article he wanted to do for a leisure
dition of Gentleman' Quarterly magazine .
The 27-year-old associate editor of GQ and former
advertising copywriter and account executive decid-
ed over a ~e ar ago that it would be simple enough to
write a semi-historical magazine piece about his
favorite leisure pastime--pinball playing--and accom-
pany it with beautiful color layouts of the games. He
also thought it would be a good way to get a good
deal on his own pinball machine.
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"I was astounded when I went to the library and
couldn't find any books about pinball, .. he says. Hi
r esearch projec t alr ady appear d doomed to
frustration and phone calls to
w York ar a
distributors didn't help much eith r. HI had a lot of
phones hung up in my ear . ..
But some were helpful, lik Runyon and Mondial,
and from ther it was mor long-winded phone call
to Chicago and elsewh re, explaining the kind of
article he wanted to do. Finally, his editor suggested
h do a book.
"I took it with a grain of salt, but the mor I
thou,?ht about it, th e more I began to think, why
not.
From that point it has been a n arly two -y ar
journey of love and discovery aU over the world for
harpe as he has researched the history and
excitement of pinball through interviews with
industry executives and players in America and
Europe.
inc his December GQ article [which was
expanded to include other types of coin-operated
games I, harpe has written a major New York Times
piece about pinball, testified before a New York City
Council committee investigating the possible legaliz-
ation of pinball there and defended the industry in an
editorial rebuttal in the New York Daily New to a
ew editorial against legalization.
The New piece argu d that all pinball would bring
in in additional city revenues is $1 million and that
that paltry sum is not enough to justify legalizing
what is at best a nuisanc. harp replied that it's
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