“As immortals are recorded in the heroics of handball, the towering figure of Victor Hershkowitz will stand apart and above all,” wrote the president of the United States Handball Association in November 1968.

Beginning in 1942, by winning the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) National One-Wall Doubles Championship with Moe Orenstein, Vic Hershkowitz accumulated 40 national and international titles, including 9 straight Three-Wall Singles Championships—
from 1950 to 1958—a feat no other player has equaled.

In 1952, he captured handball’s grandslam—the USHA’s Three- and
Four-Wall Singles crowns and the AAU One-Wall Singles championship. “The grandslam,” explains The Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports, “is akin to a baseball pitcher winning 25 games and the batting championship during the same year.” His Three-Wall victories from 1950 to 1955 are considered international titles.

In 1954, Hershkowitz was the first handball player to win a careerfifteenth U.S. national title, and between 1947 and 1967, except for 1959, he won at least one national championship each
year.

Jimmy Jacobs (see next page), who shared dominance of the sport with Hershkowitz beginning in 1955, called his senior court rival “The Babe Ruth of Handball”.