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One wall of the basement is lined with games from the 1970s. These were carefree years for this Sciuto and his friends from the Hill, who often spent weekends playing pinball at his family's country getaway. "If it was raining, we'd play pinball constantly," he says. Sciuto turns to Hit the Deck, a 1978 game that features a bikini-clad woman perched on the bow of a dinghy. Neptune rises out of the sea, upsetting the card game in progress aboard the little boat. "The artwork was so cool," he says.

On the opposite wall is a row of games from the '50s and '60s, in which the artwork features more conservatively clad women. "Look at that," Sciuto says. "They were all smiling, happy, having fun. It was a different time."

Sciuto has owned pinball games since he was seven years old, and started fixing them when he was nine. Periodically, he walks the aisle of his pinball stable and pulls the plungers. Then he listens. Each turn of the scoring wheel makes a different-sounding "ding." "If it misses a beat, I can tell," he says.

His tinkering skills enabled the obsessive collecting that took hold later in life. "I really went crazy in '90," Sciuto says. He was fresh from a divorce and earning plenty of overtime pay at a printing shop. On weekends he'd drive to Detroit or Philadelphia, just to buy and restore broken pinball machines. Then he started farming them out to businesses where they could earn some coins. Beatnik Bob's, the carnival midway-themed lounge inside the City Museum, is one of Sciuto's top earning locations. The rest are an odd assortment of places where people might have some time to kill. Sciuto's quaint pinball machines — complete with dinging sounds — from the '60s and '70s can be found in a Chinese restaurant on Chippewa Street and at Hampton Car Wash.

Most vendors who supply games to bars no longer bother with pinball, as all those moving parts mean continual maintenance. As a collector who has spent hours laboring with sandpaper and a soldering gun, Sanderson has great admiration for those who literally keep pinball alive. "In the hobby," he says, "the guys that can fix them are the kings."

When pinheads talk shop, it's like a gathering of car nuts or comic-book geeks. Such a scenario develops as Chuck Sanderson explains why he decided to use a Western-themed game called Frontier in the mini-tournament that will close out the evening. Sanderson borrowed Frontier from his friend Brian Bannon, a meticulous steward of pinball. Bannon took the 26-year-old machine apart and sent its wooden playfield to a specialist, who applied a protective layer of automotive clear coat. Now the ball rolls so fast on the high-gloss surface, Sanderson says that no one can play it for more than a minute. "It's just a real lethal game."

That proves to be true, even for the game's owner. Bannon squeaks into the tournament after arriving to the arcade late. He came straight from the airport after a business trip to San Antonio, Texas. First he squares off against John Miller, his old nemesis from the bowling-alley circuit. Bannon wins the best-of-three round and advances to the single-elimination final.

His opponents are Sanderson's younger brother, Rob, and the east-side heavies, Randy Carter and Mike Kassak. Bannon thinks he can win easily. After all, he's scored as high as 4.2 million on Frontier, and in beating Miller he put up more than 800,000 points.

The last to take a turn in the final round, Bannon only has to beat Kassak's score of less than 400,000. But pinball has its unlucky moments. His last ball goes down in a hurry. Kassak's high score stands, and the bearded millwright from Alton is congratulated with a round of high-fives.

Donning a hunter-orange stocking cap and work boots, Kassak reflects on the road to victory. "I collected bonus over the entire game," he says. "Once you understand how it works, then you have to make the shots."

Other than that, the details of his would-be ESPN moment are a blur. With a shrug he says, "I just played."

Contact the author kathleen.mclaughlin@riverfronttimes.com

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