Joe Durso, Handball Champion, Lacks Recognition but Not Confidence The handball champion Joe Durso may be short on recognition, but not on confidence. For 40 years, Joe Durso, 58, has been strutting and fretting upon the Seaside Courts next to the Boardwalk in Coney Island, the mecca of one-wall handball, and a place that claims Mr. Durso as perhaps its greatest and most frustrated player. "Tennis for savages" is how Mr. Durso describes his quintessential New York City street game. But since it never caught on much beyond the New York City playgrounds, Mr. Durso's fame never spread past the Cyclone roller coaster down the block. "I suffer from the same tragedy as handball itself: we never got the recognition we deserved," he said. How could I not be bitter? I'm the greatest-ever at something the world knows nothing about. Mr. Durso has more than two dozen national handball titles. "I'm the best on three levels," he said with characteristic understatement. I have the titles, I look like an Adonis, and no one could ever outtalk me. I'm like a giant among pygmies. With age, he acknowledges, he is no longer the best. But even losing to the occasional schmo cannot stop him from showing up daily here - even if he has sold his big macho motorcycle and let his slicked-back hair start going gray. "The problem is, I like it too much to quit," he said. These days, I have to accept the fact that I'm going to lose sometimes, but I still have moments of transcendence. A couple of those moments came on Wednesday during a game against a 26-year-old player nicknamed Vanilla. They competed using only their left hands, and bet $10 per game, plus side bets with spectators. Mr. Durso started in right away with the trash-talking, mocking Vanilla's earring by telling the crowd, "He's wearing a fake diamond." Shirtless, Mr. Durso posed for passers-by and crowed about his shots. He called out theatrically to women on the Boardwalk and whipped up the crowd by ridiculing Vanilla - a good Brooklyn player whose real name is Michael Merckling - after every winning point and pointing out how tired and sweaty the youngster was. Still, Mr. Durso narrowly lost the first game. He seethed through the next, yelling at noisy construction workers nearby, and berating onlookers. He protested a questionable call by gathering his belongings and storming out of the park, only to be coaxed back and then to repeat the walkout. "Every day, he does this," one regular, Patrick Adams, 64, known as Patty Cakes, said with a shrug. Mr. Durso was raised by his grandmother in public housing in Coney Island and began playing at the Seaside Courts as a teenager. He was built like a tight-end: tall and muscular and blessed with a huge wingspan and hands like paddles. He hustled handball and worked stints as a schoolteacher and then as an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn. "I was 8 and 0 with felony trials," he said, as if rattling off the day's results on the handball court. He retired, he said, because "my life revolved around that stupid ball." On the court, Mr. Durso may follow up a Shakespeare quotation or an Einstein reference with the most vulgar of barrages. Sportsmanship is for suckers. "Sports is not about being nice - it's about trying to dominate the other person," he said. Where is it written that you have to give the other guy compliments? Is it in the Bible? His goal has always been to elevate his game to an artistic level, in the manner of a Michael Jordan or a Bruce Lee. At his best, he said, he managed to slow time and warp space with his speed and his strategy, and defy geometric principles with impossibly angled shots, as though he were a character from "The Matrix." "I was never interested in winning, it's secondary," he said. I was interested in going back to creating the perfect volley. It goes back to the Platonic ideal, the realm of ideas that only philosophers can reach. I'm trying to create perfect volleys even if I have to sacrifice the point. That's what gets me excited, creating beauty. But he added, "All these people see is the arrogant guy with the big mouth." He knows handball will always disappoint him, but he keeps showing up, trying to paint his masterpiece by beating a blue ball against a concrete wall. I was upset when I had it, and I'm upset now when I've lost it. I should have had the world watching me, not eight bums sitting on the sideline," he said. "But hey, I did my job," he said. My job was to be great, and I was.