I’m a relative nobody, but I sometimes wear a hoodie with attached ears and a tail to tournaments, and other times I wear an eared cape with separate tail. I also wear them to things other than tournaments, so it’s not a specific pinball habit for me, just a matter of personal style.
I didn’t use gloves until after seeing Dave with them. Afaik, he hasn’t used them recently, though. I’ve probably spread the word on gloves the most due to my visibility, but no, I was not the first user.
2 Likes
I might not have invented Shatzing, but I’m not aware of anyone using it before me. Anybody know of a player who used it before 1972?
I checked my Classics file, first game I remember Shatzing on was Granada.
2 Likes
Man I must just not be paying attention because I haven’t seen a towel in a while.
I saw a few at Pinburgh besides my own. Definitely much less common than a few years ago. I don’t like stretching / dirtying my shirts by using them as wipe-rags; a simple $1 hand towel works much better for me.
Jay Brand was the first to wear a Borat onesie suit. Gavin “Pe Pe Le Pew” Miller sometimes wears a skunk tail that lights up. His Mohawk/ frohawk hairstyle is black and yellow like a skunk stripe.
2 Likes
Lee Moscaritolo first person to tap pass?
I’ve also heard this
Tap pass goes wayyy back. I remember seeing it in arcades in the early 80s
Lee goes wayyy back, too.
2 Likes
I wonder if bowling had anything to do with this phenom… very common in bowling to use gloves and towels… seen both locally and on PBA stuff. Now… people have little exposure to bowling local or on TV. Coincidence??
How far back does Lee go? His first recorded tourney entry is 1980. You are listed in that tourney also, Bob. Do you recall any details? I’ve heard he invented it, though i take it with a grain of salt. The earliest instance ive heard of someone tap passing has had his name attached and i was wondering if it was a true story.
Lee, assuming you’re following this thread, when did you first tap pass?
I began tap passing couple years before the first national championship on record with the IFPA. I know it was 1977 or 1978 on a Bally but cannot remember what machine it was. The one person that would know is Dallas Overturf (first national pinball champion of record). Unfortunately Dallas is not with us today. I was in a bowling alley at the time. Credits were easily scored and credit limits were 25 or about. After building up the maximum amount of credits on a machine, we would either give the credits to some of the younger kids or burn them off doing things like inlane shooting, backhand practice, drop catching, bounce passing etc. On the day in question, I decided to practice tap passing. I was aware of the ability to lightly energize the flipper but neither of us had put an effort into creating a move that was usable during gameplay. I burned off the credit wheel practicing the tap pass. I was quite excited about it. I began tapping the ball back and fourth from one flipper to the other. It was the first pinball move I added into Dallas’s tool box and was one that we used quite often. We both became good at it on Bally machines. We then began working on the Williams, Gottlieb and Stern flippers but those games were much more difficult to tap consistently and used alley passing instead. Bally on the other hand was in the bag.
I used the tap pass in the 1980 national championship qualifying round. That tournament had 20 games lined up on the floor of the Hartford Civic Center. In order to qualify, a player had to maintain the highest score on one of the games. I believe it was three days of qualifying. I selected Playboy. It was a Bally and I was quite good with the Bally flippers. It was advantageous to have the ball on the left flipper. From there you could shoot the outer loop and feed the ball into the 25 k trough which would then eject the ball to the top rollover lanes. The tap pass was the perfect tool. My second attempt on Playboy netted me 3.6 million. I was done. We were very protective of our style of play at the time. We did not see any other players with a style like ours. Stopping the ball, drop catching, transferring, bounce backs, rolling the ball out to the tip of the flipper for a nice backhand angle. It was a fun time. We were told by the local pinball distributers heading into that tourney that there was a guy from Chicago that had a pretty good chance to beat Dallas. Roger Sharp was his name. We didn’t know anything about Roger at the time. It became evident during the last hours of qualifying that he wasn’t there and wasn’t showing up. It wasn’t until our first trip to the Chicago pinball expo that we met Roger. It was either 1985 or 1986. I do remember Dallas felt somewhat relieved that this guy Roger didn’t show but he did express a little unhappiness that Roger did not show up. He always thought that if somebody could beat him, bring them on.
My good friend Dallas Overturf was the greatest pinball player of his time. From 1978 to 1984 there was not a tournament he lost. He won several machines during those years and $6,500 at the first national championship in Hartford CT. He gave me everything he had learned on his own during the years prior to us playing together. Dallas forged me into the player I was from those years until the middle 90’s when we both sold most of our games and didn’t play much anymore.
We never did see any other player tap passing until late 80’s. It was thought that by then our invention was out of the bag much like all the other techniques we used. It is possible that someone else somewhere may have tap passed before we did but it was not at any tournaments and we never knew of anyone using it.
60 Likes
Great story, Lee! Thanks for sharing it. And good talking to you for a bit at Pinburgh.
Let me add one more note. Lee had high score on Playboy, I had it on Lizard, but Dallas had the high score on 3 of the 20 games used. He only needed one to make the playoffs; 2 guys got in with #2 scores.
5 Likes
@zEn could probably be credited for a few things. Meditation balls, pre-plunge calesthenics, and headbandery?
Rosa was the first person I’ve seen peer into the side of a playfield to try and see a tilt Bob swing. I still have not been able to do this no matter how hard I squint or how many carrots I’ve eaten that morning.
3 Likes
Thank you, Lee. That’s the kind of shit i LOVE reading!
1 Like
How was it decided which 2 of the 3?
I believe Dallas had choice of which counted for him, but I’m not 100% certain.
1 Like