![]() Now, I have a collection of 20 to 25 machines at any time and I’m hosting tournaments.” Chuck Webster (with the Bruins shirt) runs The Wicked Pissa Pinball Pit out of his home in Wakefield. Made my office a into a miniature arcade. "I redid the basement so I could fit more machines in here. Webster’s wife, Nancy, bought him a pinball machine in 1992. The event takes place in the basement of tournament director Chuck Webster’s house, aka The Wicked Pissa Pinball Pit. In Wakefield, 16 players are competing for a trophy and a top prize of $110. It will take place later this year in Pittsburgh and feature 800 players vying for $100,000 in prize money. Kerins directs one of the largest pinball tournaments in the world. "You feel the pressure of the people watching you, the broadcasters, the trophy, the opportunity.” “I’ve played pinball for as much as $10,000 for one game and you really feel it," Kerins says. Bowen Kerins of Salem helped start the New England Pinball League. “It’s an opportunity to act like a pro athlete for a few weekends a year, and then go back to your real life. “The appeal of competitive pinball, to me, is the pressure,” Kerins says, a three-time world pinball champion. Salem’s Bowen Kerins, 41, was instrumental in starting the league. The New England Pinball League has grown from 25 to 250 players during the last four years. And those events are attracting young kids, millennials and a nostalgic older crowd that remembers machines from pinball’s heyday. Renewed interest in the game has led to competitive leagues and championship tournaments. Pinball is a sport that’s in the midst of a resurgence. I never thought I’d be the best in the world in a sport. You can become one of the best in the world. It’s something you really can get better at. “They may look at it like, ‘Oh, you’re good at tic-tac-toe. “It’s a special thing that not a lot of people understand fully,” Curtis says, who’s been playing competitive pinball for about a decade. “C’mon…Good stuff.” Mitch Curtis at the Wicked Pissa Pinball Pit (Joe Difazio for WBUR)įor these players in Wakefield, pinball is about more than passing time in an arcade. Then, Curtis talks to the game balls coaxing them toward high scoring targets. ![]() And it’s where the best pinball players in Massachusetts are battling for the 2017 Massachusetts State Pinball Championships.Īfter nearly five hours of competition, the field is down to two finalists: 34-year-old Mitch Curtis of Reading and 41-year-old Kenny Weiner of Stoneham.Ĭurtis and Weiner compete on machines named Spiderman and AC/DC and Evil Knievel. It’s a scene straight out of the 1970s - all buzzers and bells and flipper fingers going at full speed. Welcome to “The Wicked Pissa Pinball Pit” in Wakefield. (Joe Difazio for WBUR) This article is more than 5 years old.
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