Marty’s chutzpah is justified by history; the character is loosely based on the table-tennis hustler and champion Marty Reisman, who died in 2012, at the age of eighty-two. Like Marty, Reisman came from the Lower East Side and travelled overseas in 1952 for an international tournament. Other details, freely tweaked, mesh, too, but the main similarities are in temperament—a megawatt personality and a penchant for braggadocio.journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter