Millennials and Gen-Z grew up following the fictional exploits of Captain Jack Sparrow in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise. Little do they know how much their modern world has been influenced by the real-life adventures of a real-life Captain Jack. On Oct. 20, 1934, Jack Howard was born in Brooklyn, New York. He would grow up to be one of the top table tennis players in the United States, peaking at #3. Howard logged an impressive (yet surely frustrating) number of second place finishes behind perennial 1960s-1970s US champion Dal-Joon Lee at the US Open and US Nationals. Howard's place in history was cemented in at the 1971 World Championships in Nagoya, Japan. As captain of the US team, Howard was on the front page of every magazine and newspaper in the world as the US and China engaged in "Ping-Pong Diplomacy," a two-year love fest between the previously antagonistic nations. After altering the course of the world's history, Howard went on to reinvent American table tennis. An IBM employee, Howard used his technological skills to adapt the computerized chess tournament rating system into the current table tennis ratings which obsesses every USATT member. Howard envisioned his rating system as the ideal way to remove subjectivity from the US Team selection process. "I started the national rating system in order to ensure that among other benefits, world team member selection would not be affected by individual bias," wrote Howard in 2016. "No matter how knowledgeable a section committee is, or what attempts at fairness a small group of selectors makes, selection by committee has unavoidable inherent flaws that make it the poorer technique for world team selection." His goal has been realized in the revised US Olympic Team selection method, which combines international rankings with a qualifying tournament. Howard also long dreamed of a revised scoring system to make the game more engaging for spectators. This dream continues in both the 11-point game, introduced two decades ago, and the even faster and more furious "T2" format currently gaining traction. Captain Jack Howard was no sparrow. Rather, he was an eagle of American table tennis, mighty, brave and with a far-reaching vision.

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