Pinball Wizards: A Visual Tour of the Pinball World Championships

Pinball is far from dead for the roughly 2,000 people that invaded a remote warehouse to enjoy four straight days of the game.
8/26/2009 9:10 AM | 5 Comments | Page 1 of 3

Take the 376 West through Pittsburgh, then go down 279 South five miles or so, out to the sleepy suburb of Carnegie, Penn. Cruise down the four-lane Main Street, past the abandoned used car lot and the Wheel and Wedge sandwich shop ("Foot-long sub special: $3.99 + tax"). Hang a left across the Hammond Street Bridge to the industrial park on the other side of Chartiers Creek.


For 360 days out of the year, the big white building next to the Clark-Fishman Flooring Solutions warehouse looks like just another underused industrial property. But for four days in August (and a one-night charity event in February), the warehouse opens its doors to reveal over 30,000 square feet of immaculate space, housing over 400 pinball machines and classic arcade games. Welcome to the annual World Pinball Championships, put on for the 12th time in 2009 by the Professional & Amateur Pinball Association (PAPA).


It's a sign of pinball's recent tough times that the game's premier tournament has to take place in such a remote and seemingly inauspicious setting. But it's hard to feel gloomy about pinball's fate standing inside the sprawling PAPA headquarters, listening to hundreds of pristine, playable pinball tables dating back to the '40s fill the air with their clanging. There's a nervous energy as hundreds of attendees mill about the wide aisles, feed tokens into random machines, gently jostle cabinets to avoid gutters, talk strategy with old friends, or simply look on respectfully as the best of the best show off their skills.


For the 2,000 fans and nearly 400 competitors that will stream through the doors over these four August days, this obscure warehouse is the center of a vibrant, competitive pinball subculture that is far from dead. This is the story of just some of those people.



Plainfield, Ill., petroleum engineer Mark Henderson, 48, leans over a "24" table with his 11-year-old son, Joshua, during a split-flipper mini-tournament, where one player controls the left flipper and another controls the right.

Despite his relatively small age and stature, Josh is currently ranked 111th out of the thousands of players tracked by the World Pinball Player Rankings. While most kids would probably be thrilled to be that good at something, Josh's goal is to work his way into the top 100 by age 13.

To that end, Josh travels with his dad to 10 tournaments a year, from Maine to California, trying to qualify for a spot in the top division finals and a chance to compete directly with the pinball legends ranked ahead of him. "The schedule and stress can be hard for an 11-year-old," Mark says, "but I don't push him. He's just driven."

Mark says his son faces unique challenges in competitive pinball because he has "different sensory perception" and lacks the "upper body strength to move the machine around" to affect the movement of the ball, a crucial skill at this level of play. But he hasn't let these problems stop him, Mark says. "He really does have the skills ... every time he plays he builds his skill set. People don't understand the concentration involved [in pro-level pinball]. It only takes a split-second to lose a ball."

But Mark says Josh also has an advantage because some opponents "write him off as a little kid." In fact, Mark says, some competitors have thrown tantrums after losing to Josh. "For a 30- or 40-year-old guy, it can be emotionally difficult to lose to a kid," Mark said. But more often these days, Mark said, most people see him coming. "They say 'The kid's gonna be trouble,'" he said.