Bailey Park is where handball king holds court

By Kate Pastor

Handball supremacy has been restored to Kingsbridge.

With a yelp and an emphatic punch delivered to the wall, Satish Jagnandan, a regular at the Bailey Park handball courts, reclaimed the USHA One Wall national championship on Coney Island Sunday morning.

Mr. Jagnandan, who lives in Yonkers, previously held the title for four consecutive years before a heartbreaking loss last year, and his return to the top was shared with a large cross-section of Riverdale/Kingsbridge residents who schlepped to Brooklyn in order to cheer him on in enemy territory.

Along with beach chairs and backpacks, the fans brought with them the Bailey courts’ rich legacy of gritty play. It was that legacy that drew Mr. Jagnandan to the Kingsbridge courts eight years ago. And now he is part of the legend.

Younger players have been coming to be mentored (on and off court) by him, just as he once came to the courts to learn from the kind of old-timers who still grace the concrete almost daily.

“Bailey Park had a lot of veteran players and they kind of mentored me, showed me the game,” Mr. Jagnandan said of his start there.

The courts have been a destination for people with an A-game or who want to develop one, for decades.

Bailey is known as one of the few places in New York where players use a faster, smaller blue ball, making for keener competition. It’s also known as a place where no gambling is allowed, so hustlers are less likely to put in an unwanted appearance.

Milton Jones, who oversees the Coney Island tournament, comes all the way from Far Rockaway, Queens to Kingsbridge — more than 23 miles and two subway lines — to play. Sara Sookdeo, one the courts’ only female regulars, comes from Bedford Park, passing over Saint James and Van Cortlandt Park courts. Dennis Uffer, once a self-proclaimed “Bronx boy” now makes the trip from Syracuse to Kingsbridge to play. 

“Every chance I have I drive down the five hours to play at Bailey,” he said, where he sometimes finds folks he has known for 25 years.

For the greats

The courts had already long been established as a place for the greats when Mr. Jagnandan, a Guyanan immigrant who moved to the Wakefield section of the Bronx in 1991, started to play there.

He got his start playing on the Bronx High School of Science team his freshman year, but while he says all the high schools use the small blue ball for faster play, most courts in the city do not. So he, too, started to make the trek to Kingsbridge.

Now a director of mathematics and science for Mount Vernon City School District and even more recently, a father, he also trains protégés like Kingsbridge resident Emmanuel Fuentes (or “E” for short). The lessons he teaches aren’t limited to handball.

Tutoring, too

In some cases Mr. Jagnandan also offers to pass on other things he’s learned, tutoring younger players like Mr. Fuentes in subjects such as algebra and geometry.

That is the kind of familial camaraderie that draws people from all over to the cement courts, which, to the naked eye, are nothing spectacular or even special.

Situated near West 236th Street behind Loehmann’s clothing store, the courts have a tucked away feel, if for no other reason than having a strip of drab auto repair shops as their backdrop.

In many ways the park is as usual as they come. Players revel in the usual handball culture of nicknames and playful bragging (“When you play with Uffer you will suffer”) and some players don colorful gloves while others lean in bare -handed to slap balls against the concrete slabs.

But there’s nothing average about a single Bronx court nurturing national champs in open singles, master singles, 60 doubles, 50 singles and 50 doubles categories.

“There’s a huge amount of Bailey players here in the tournament,” said Bert Trebach, a Riverdale resident and coowner and founder of Trebach Realty, explaining that the numbers in the category names are for the age of contestants.

Where players are

A long-time handball player and once a regular contestant in the tournaments, he said that while there are courts closer to home, “you go where the players are.”

That was certainly true on Sunday. Bronxites surrounded the players at Mr. Jagnandan’s match, creating three human walls, three or four rows deep with spectators.

Against the unfamiliar backdrop of sea and boardwalk rather than the usual elevated No. 1 train, they attempted to drown out Mr. Jagnandan’s detractors, who chanted “hail Cesar” in support of his opponent, Cesar Sala.

Instead, with one point remaining to win the final game in the tournament 21-9, a shout rang out from the lawn-chairsunken crowd.

“One more. Bring it home for the Bronx!”

This is part of the August 13, 2009 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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