THWAP! Foosball legends unite

I used to play foosball in college. I wasn't very good. My pal Lyman was really good. Lyman was from Alamogordo, N.M. He wasn't a cowboy, but he dressed like one, except sometimes he wore puka shells. This would have been during the '70s.

The other good foosball players at the student union did not look like Lyman. They looked like Bruce Springsteen during "The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle" days. Long hair. Floppy hats. Unruly facial hair. They were hippies.

A lot of foosball players during the 1970s -- the Golden Age of Foosball -- were hippies, iconoclasts and social outsiders.

Sometimes I'd spend my lunch hour watching Lyman and the social outsiders play foosball. One of the long hairs would drop the little ball into the little cup, and then the little ball would drop onto the little playing field.

Click, clack, click. Clack, click, clack.

The little ball and the foosball rods and the guys working them like the pistons in a souped-up Mustang would produce a familiar cacophony.

Eventually, the little ball would wind up in the forward wall, from where most foosball goals are scored. And then there would be a momentary interlude when the guy controlling the rod with the three forwards and the guy controlling the goalie and the last line of defenders would wipe the sweat from their palms.

At this moment, the foosball players were like gunfighters at the O.K. Corral. Only with floppy hats and unruly facial hair.

There would be multiple feints and head games and lots of tension and

THWAP!

That's the sound the little ball makes when it smacks into the back of the foosball goal when guys who are really good are playing.

THWAP! THWAP! THWAP! THWAP! THWAP!

That's the sound the Sunset Ballroom at the Flamingo Las Vegas was making Friday afternoon. It was all around, on 67 official Tornado table soccer tables.

The Independent Foosball Promotions Hall of Fame Classic was under way.

I was chatting with three guys roughly my age. They were from Colorado, where there once were a lot of iconoclasts and foosball players of some repute.

Mike Bowers, 60, who sort of looks like Jimmy Buffett, was wearing an orange polo shirt. Tim Burns, 54, was dressed like an assistant golf pro. Kevin Everson, 52, was wearing green and white stripes.

These were thin disguises. You could tell they used to be iconoclasts who wore their hair long.

Bowers still wears shells around his neck, only these are made of turquoise. He's now in the gem and mineral business. He once was the best foosball player in the world, the first inductee in the foosball Hall of Fame.

Burns will be enshrined tonight, after the big tournament at the Flamingo.

Everson, a darn good player in his own right, drove down with the foosball legends, for there were old stories to be told, and blanks in them to be filled in.

Bowers, a former accordion player -- it's always been in the wrists with him -- learned his foosball at the Tau Kappa Epsilon house at the University of Colorado; Burns at the Blue Max, a smoky pinball hall in Lakewood, Colo.

When Bowers discovered there were big tournaments outside of Colorado -- like in Missoula, Mont., which also has its share of iconoclasts -- that paid thousands, he changed his major, from business to foosball.

Burns also was driven by economics. He said a guy could spend a lot of quarters playing pinball. If he got good in foosball, he'd have to spend only one, for there would be no shortage of challengers who would plunk down their quarters attempting to beat him.

A foos and his money soon are parted when a guy such as Burns is running the table.

There used to be a foosball tour, where guys who could work the rods like Bowers and Burns might make $40,000 in a good year. That also was in the '70s, during the Golden Age of Foosball. When there used to be 250 tables or more at the big tournaments, not a measly 67.

It was about the same time that an engineer at Atari Inc. by the name of Allan Alcorn invented the first video game. Before long, places such as the Blue Max in Lakewood began removing their foosball tables and replacing them with Pong machines.

But on Friday at the Flamingo, foosball was back. And so were Bowers and Burns and some of the other legends.

Today's foosball phenoms, the young'uns with the dark glasses and the tattoos and the body piercings -- instead of the floppy hats and the unruly facial hair -- sidled up to pay homage.

Eventually, Mike Bowers was coaxed onto the tables.

Seconds later, I saw him cock his wrist and kick up his leg, the way he had when he beat this guy Caldwell in Missoula, Mont., during the Golden Age of Foosball.

THWAP!

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.