In a revelation that has rocked the world of competitive pinball, international champion Derek Dolohov, commonly known as the “Pinball Wizard,” has been outed as a fraud. Dolohov gained fame unsurpassed in his sport partly due to his inspiring accomplishments in the face of claimed deafness, dumbness, and blindness, but yesterday’s events showed him to be fully sighted.
The revelation came after Dolohov’s confrontation with fellow pinball enthusiast Roger Daltrey. After reluctantly agreeing to play blindfolded to “even the odds,” Daltrey became confrontational after Dolohov defeated him for the six-hundred-twenty-seventh time in a row. Daltry, in a fit of rage, hurled a pinball at the Wizard’s face. When Dolohov ducked, an unnamed five-year-old in the audience pointed and laughed, shouting “You flinched!” while onlookers sipped their tea and muttered typical British phrases indicating agreement, including “spot-on,” “indeed,” “right-o, old chap,” and “tut tut, what a philanderer.”
When reached for comment after the incident, Mr. Dolohov appeared unrepentant. “Plays by sense of smell? Come on people, did you seriously believe that crap? I mean, Helen Keller had trouble with W-A-T-E-R,” said Dolohov.
“Actually, yeah, that did seem somewhat suspicious, now that you mention it,” admitted Dr. Martin Shale, President of the International Association for the Advancement of Enclosed Steel Ball Gravity-Driven Flipper Games (IAAESBGDFG). “His was such an inspiring story that we just sort of ran with it, but the very idea of a rapidly-moving steel ball producing some sort of odiferous signal by which one could pinpoint its precise location on a table is utterly preposterous. That’s not even taking into account the Plexiglas sheet in between the player and the ball, or the intrinsic limitations on the speed of information diffusion in an air-infused medium. Oh God, we’re such idiots.”
-JRV ’12
