Sport: Stratosphere Pingpong

The most popular sport among German-speaking Swiss (about three-quarters of the country’s people) is the ancient game of Hornuss (from the German for “hornet”). Hornuss is a rough, hard-hitting mixture of golf, baseball, cricket and guided-missile warfare. Peaceful farmers summon up martial blood when they get playing Hornuss; Swiss city folks sneer affectionately at the game as “stratosphere pingpong,” but they turn out in droves to watch it played.

Strikers & Killers. Out of the Alps last week into the old town of Bern, fluttering with flags for the occasion, poured some 5,500 Hornussers with their wives, children and 21 freight-car loads of playing equipment. For the Hornuss Federation’s “World Series,” the Swiss army cleared an auxiliary airfield in the suburbs, then parceled it into 67 playing fields, each about 350 yards long and 50 yards wide. Part of the airfield became an amusement park full of merry-go-rounds, beer and milk bars, and brassy rural bands.

At sunrise one morning, led by flag-bearers, the rugged Hornussers, 264 teams in all, took to the battlefield. There, the 18-man teams paired off to face each other as “strikers” and “killers.”

Up stepped Striker Paul Gruber, a hefty (6 ft. 2 in., 240 Ib.) farmer from Utzenstorf. He carried a murderous loft. Stecken, a whippy hickory shaft with a heavy cylindrical head. Eyeing the small (diameter 2½ in.) hard-rubber disk perched on an elaborate tee made of two upcurving steel rails,* Gruber took aim, lowered his stick twice, then drove with all his might. The Hornuss buzzed off into the air.

The 18 killers, strung out along the field’s narrow (10 yds.) “fair” lane, shouted at the disk’s approach. Each wielded a hefty Schindel, a “tabletop” with a handle. As the Hornuss zoomed within range, the killers, one by one, sent their Schinden spinning up, sometimes as high as 40 ft., to intercept it. The last killer in line, stationed a full 300 yards from Striker Gruber, finally brought the disk down. Gruber’s team got 20 points. If the Hornuss had fallen, unintercepted, in fair territory, heavy penalty points would have been scored against the killers. At halftime, killers and strikers swapped roles.

Black Eye, White Wine. During the tournament’s three days, the air buzzed with flying disks and gyrating Schinden. One Hornnss-stung player was borne off with a brain concussion. At a beer counter, another casualty stood with his head bandaged and his eye black—the victim, like half a dozen others, of a falling Schindel. At tournament’s end, Basel’s Helvetia Society, with 1,112 points, no penalties, got the champion’s oakleaf wreath and a two-gallon, silver-studded drinking horn brimming with white wine. Farmer Gruber, with 104 personal points and one incredible 340-yd. clout, was acclaimed the Schläger Koenig (batting king).

That evening Hornussers, families and brass bands marched, tired but proud, to the Bern railroad station. As the people of Bern cheered their country cousins, the electric trains, trailing music, rolled off among the Alps.

* One rail for righthanders, the other for southpaws. The Stecken head “rides” the rail until it hits the Hornuss.