By LEAH WEATHERSBY

Seattle's professional sports teams have had a mixed record over the years. In basketball and baseball we're been great from time to time. In football - well, we try.

Of course, in ping-pong we brought home three world titles.

But not many people know that. Windsor Olson, a Wallingford resident, is the man most responsible for Seattle's victorious table tennis record, which our professional team, the Sockeyes, accumulated back in the 1970s.

Olson, now 75, was inspired to start his own professional ping-pong team when he saw the same team President Nixon sent to China play in Canada in front of 10,000 spectators. Olson said that event led him see table tennis as an opportunity for professional sports. He enlisted the help of one of the players, Judy Bochinski, and her coach, Jack Howard, to find three other leading U.S. players to join his new venture, the Seattle Sockeyes. The team, comprised of Tom Ruttinger, Joe Lee, Rob Roberts formed in 1973. Bochinski and Howard also played for the Sockeyes for a short time.

Ruttinger, who also acted as the coach, had been playing professionally since the age of 16. A West Seattle native, Ruttinger was "discovered" at his local table tennis club and hired to tour with the Harlem Globetrotters doing half-time exhibition ping-pong matches during basketball games for $500 a week, which he did for about a year.

For four years the Sockeyes toured around the world playing matches and splitting the team's earnings. According to Olson, the largest fee they ever made for a single game was $16,000, and they got to travel as far as Haiti and China to play for world titles. While in Haiti, Ruttinger won a world championship and a prize of $10,000.

The Sockeyes played in Seattle at several venues including the Mountaineers building in Queen Anne. According to Olson, the team regularly drew between 600-800 spectators.

The Sockeyes often faced other North American teams, such as the Portland Penguins and a team from Canada called the Cohos. After a particularly successful event in Los Angeles, where the Sockeyes' match drew more spectators than an Eartha Kitt concert at the same hotel that weekend, local sports writers dubbed Olson the King Kong of Ping-Pong.

Despite this imposing title, Olson said he never played professional ping-pong himself. "I can hit a ball around, but that's about it," Olson said modestly.

However, the Sockeyes' success ultimately played a part in its demise. According to Olson, the team had trouble finding competitors who were an even match. The Sockeyes disbanded in 1977.

Today, Olson considers himself semi-retired from his most recent career as private detective. However, he still finds time to help promote the No. 1 ranked player in the United States and Seattle's biggest table tennis star, Yi Yong Fan. Fan is currently a ping-pong instructor at Bitter Lake Community Center.

Ruttinger, now a Broadview resident, works as a real estate investor and plays softball professionally in a open men's league for players ages 50 and over. He's recently taken up ping-pong again after a 15-year absence from the game. He says at Bitter Lake, Fan is the only one he can't beat.

While the Seattle Sockeyes are history, Olson believes table tennis has only become more popular since the 1970s. Who knows? The story of Seattle professional ping-pong may not be over yet. (