But during the interview, Mason needs no more help with his answers than he did with his first audition at age 5, when he beat out 600 other children to become the spokesman for Ivory Snow. After that he endorsed such products as Ralston Purina, Thick and Frosty, and Underwood Meat Spread, winning a total of seven Clios to date. He's been co-host with Mike Douglas for three weeks and has appeared as a television guest with countless other celebrities.

One of my first questions is about children's rights. "I think children have enough rights as it is," he says. "They're with their families, they go to school, they have the pleasure of learning. ... and they realize that when they grow up they'll be able to have more and more fun, as long as they don't go on a mad rampage when they're kids."

Which type of people are most likely to grab him or pick him up? "It's always the middle-aged Italian ladies and the Jewish grandmothers," he says authoritatively. "Some people don't want to treat a kid like a human being. They want them like a puppy dog; instead of petting, it's pinching."

When it comes time to talk about Mason's not-so-successful ventures, Bill -- a producer of audiovisual shows and an expert in 3-D design work -- takes over. He tells about the Broadway show that was written and ready to go, with Mason as one of the leads, that folded up and disappeared without warning or explanation. He tells about the ABC pilot t.i.tled _Mason_, which cost $250,000 to make and was never televised; about the movie offers that were never followed through; about the _Howard Cosell Show_ -- with Mason as co-host -- that was canceled shortly after it began.

In spite of these setbacks, Mason recently did some Munchkins commercials for Dunkin' Donuts and will go to California this summer to do some ads for Birdseye frozen french fries.

While the Reeses remain optimistic about the future, they try not to build up their hopes on a new project unless it is something solid. For show business is, after all, a business.

Mason has lived on the West Side for all of his 11 years. "I don't seem to understand why everyone thinks the East Side is cla.s.sier," he says. "I think they're friendlier people on the West Side, because people on the East Side get sn.o.bby. Most of my friends are on the West Side."

His favorite eating places? "I love the Greek restaurants -- the Four Brothers (87th & Broadway) and the Argo (72nd & Columbus). Greeks are okay, aren't they mom? I like restaurants that are a little bit dumpy, without much decor."

When I run out of questions, I ask Mason if there are any other comments he wants to make. "I think you've asked what everyone else has asked,"

he replies honestly. And then with a smile: "Except that I've given you different answers.

"Wait, there's one thing," he goes on. "I'd like my allowance raised to five dollars." Then, leaning back on the, sofa looking as content as a man celebrating his 100th birthday, he adds: "I've really had no gripes in life.

Except that I'd like people to stop calling me a midget, and to stop pinching me."

Some people who have never met Mason Reese in person unfairly a.s.sume that he is a spoiled brat with pushy, exploitive parents. In fact, Bill and Sonia are warm, creative people who are fully aware of the great responsibility they have in bringing up their extraordinary son. Mason is not only brilliant, but a gentleman. He should be making movies, and with a bit of luck, he will be, soon. Having met him, I can only repeat -- not improve on -- the words of Tony Randall: "I tell you this with neither hesitation nor embarra.s.sment. ... I'm a fan of his for life."

WESTSIDER MARTY REISMAN America's best-loved ping-pong player

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Marty Reisman was ready for _The Tonight Show_. But was _The Tonight Show_ ready for Marty Reisman?

In a recent TV appearance, his name was announced and he started across the stage toward the desk of guest host John Davidson. Then suddenly he seemed to get lost in the floodlights. For a few seconds the television audience didn't know what was happening. An anonymous cameraman raced out of the wings to guide Marty to his destination.

"My gosh, that's never happened before," laughed Davidson. But Marty's humorous stumbling may well have been part of his act because, as America's best-loved table tennis player, he very often does things that haven't been done before. On _The Tonight Show_ he returned shots with his foot and behind his back, broke a cigarette with his slam shot (that has been clocked at 105 miles per hour), and soon had Davidson sprawled across the table trying to reach shots that came back of their own.

At 48, Reisman (rhymes with "policeman") is still the nation's highest paid Ping-Pong player in exhibitions. The stunts that he has developed over the past 30 years make his games pure entertainment. But Marty is more than a player; he is a personality, a man with a thousand stories to tell, and an instant friend to the people who visit his table tennis center on 96th Street just west of Broadway.

"I feel I'm moving with the times," he remarks, late one evening at the center. "When from an athletic professional point of view some people would think about retirement, my career is on the point of fresh blossoming." He is referring to the fact that his autobiography, _The Money Player_, published in 1974, is now being converted into a movie script. And other things are happening. Several months ago his table tennis parlor was the scene of a unique recording session -- a piece of music t.i.tled _Tournament Overture for Flute, Cello, Synthesizer, and Two Ping-Pong Players_, composed especially for Reisman. The event was followed by a regular tournament. And this fall Marty has a long-range exhibition tour lined up.

"I started playing on the Lower East Side, about 1942," he says. "A year later, at the age of 13, I was the New York City Junior Champion. ... At 17, I represented the United States in the World Championship which was held in London, at Wembley Stadium. There were 10,000 people watching. I lost in the quarterfinals. ... The next year I made it to the semifinals and received a rating of number three in the world."

That year, 1949, was probably the peak of Marty's career from a purely athletic standpoint, although he was good enough to win the U.S.

Championship in 1958 and 1960. What distinguishes him from other players, however, is the variety and richness of his experiences in the world of Ping-Pong. For three years he toured with the Harlem Globetrotters as their star attraction at halftime. He spent several years in the Far East as well, and was in Hanoi when the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu. Altogether he has played in 65 countries, and has picked up such t.i.tles as South American Champion, Canadian Champion, and British Champion.

He once taught the game to a chimpanzee; the chimp managed to return the ball up to four times in a row. "But the most astounding thing about him," recalls Marty, "was his short span of attention. When the ball was about an inch from his racket, he'd turn his head away and get smacked in the face."

As the t.i.tle of his autobiography indicates, Marty has also been known to place a wager on occasion. "I've hustled when I've had to," he confesses.

"But it hasn't been my way of life. I don't misrepresent myself. I play against the best players in the world, all over the world. Wherever I am, I create the drama, the action, the excitement, because of the large sums of money I bet." In one of his biggest hustles he flew to Omaha, Nebraska, under the guise of a baby crib salesman, to help a man who had been hustled himself. Reisman played for $1,000 a game and emerged from the contest 14 games ahead.

West 96th Street has long been a hotbed of table tennis activity. A Ping Pong parlor opened there in 1934, and Marty took it over in 1958. Today, many of the world's great players stop by for a game when they visit New York. Dustin Hoffman, Walter Matthau, Bobby Fischer and Art Carney have played there also. Marty's regular customers range from 8-year-old boys to a man of 83 who plays twice a week. The center opens in the afternoon and doesn't close until 3:30 in the morning, seven days a week.

"I live on the West Side and so do most of my friends," says Marty.

A man has been standing nearby during the interview; Marty introduces him as Bill, his former manager.

"Manager?" snorts the man with a gruff smile. "He can't be managed.

Human beings can be managed, but Reisman is something different. If he says 'I'll be there at 3 o'clock' he might show up at 4 -- the next day.

But," he concedes, "if Marty didn't have those idiosyncracies, he wouldn't have those rare talents."

WESTSIDER RUGGIERO RICCI World's most-recorded violinist

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It was Sunday, October 20, 1929. Four days later, on Black Thursday, Wall Street would be rocked by the biggest losses in its history and the nation would be plunged into its greatest crisis since the Civil War. But October 20 still belonged to the Roaring Twenties, and on that date the most highly publicized event to take place in Manhattan was a violin concert by a 9-year-old wunderkind named Ruggiero Ricci, who delivered a flawless performance of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and was lauded as a genius by the city's leading music critics. That concert made Ricci's career; in the 10 years that followed, the boy virtuoso earned an annual salary higher than that of the president of the United States.

The story might have ended there, but unlike most prodigies, who burn themselves out early, Ruggiero Ricci has continued to grow in stature as an artist. Since the 1940s he has been considered one of the greatest living violinists, and, with more than 500 recordings to his credit, he is the most-recorded soloist, instrumental or vocal, in the world today.

Especially in demand abroad, he has made five trips to Australia and three to the Soviet Union, where he was obliged to play nine encores at his debut appearance. Twenty of his concerts in West Germany were sold out a year in advance, and more than a dozen of his South American tours have been sellouts as well.

"I travel most of the year, except maybe a month off in the summer," says Ricci, a short, good-humored man of 60 with large, sparkling eyes, jet black brows, and a soft, slightly accented voice that sounds as if he were born in Europe. He sits curled up in a corner of the couch in his magnificent Westside apartment. "I dislike to travel. In the old days, there were a lot of airplane breakdowns, and we were always hung up in airports waiting for them to fix the plane. Today they have all these hijacking searches. You have to go through the machines; they have these enormous lines. And when you get to the hotel, there's a line a mile long."

He believes that Russian audiences are "the best public in the world. They don't applaud between the movements, like they do in New York. ... It's always interesting to visit a place for the first time. I don't want to go to Russia so much anymore. We found out it's boring. There's nothing to do. And it's not much fun. There's no tipping, so the hotel service is very bad. It takes an hour to get breakfast; you can sit there and be completely ignored by the waiter. To make a telephone call: it's easier to go to the moon."

Ricci's repertoire, which includes more than 60 concertos from the 17th to the 20th centuries, is the largest of any violinist's now before the public. This calls for a lot of practice. "When you're a kid," says Ricci, "you hate to practice. And when you're a grownup, practice is a pleasure.

It lets you escape all the other junk. ... I don't have any trouble practicing in this building, because the old buildings have heavy walls. But if you want to practice in a hotel, that's hard. Sometimes you can use a mute. Or you turn on the television. Then they don't complain. If they hear a fiddle, they complain."

Ricci has two major concerts in New York this year. The first will take place at Carnegie Hall on Sat.u.r.day, March 3, when Ricci will join such celebrities as Andres Segovia, Yehudi Menuhin, Jose Ferrer, Jean-Pierre Rampal, and Peter Ustinov for a historic musical program to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Symphonic.u.m Europae, a foundation whose aim is to promote international understanding and cooperation by sponsoring performances in every country.

Ricci's other New York concert will mark another anniversary. It will be on October 20th -- 50 years to the day since he took the city by storm.

"The early concerts I remember very well," says the maestro, who was born in San Francisco to a family of Italian immigrants. "For most prodigies, the problem is the parents. My father just wasn't every smart about how to handle me. Nowadays they don't have prodigies anymore because there isn't any profit in it. In the old days, a kid could get $2,500 to $3000 dollars a night. Everybody had their kid study."

None of his five children has turned out to be a prodigy, but three of them are already professionals in the performing arts. Ricci's slender, attractive wife, Julia, is an active partic.i.p.ant in his career. Westsiders for many years, the Riccis enjoy such local restaurants as La Tablita, Alfredo's and the Cafe des Artistes.

Asked what he likes best about his career, Ricci says it is making recordings. "It's more leisurely. You don't have all the headaches. ... The newest development is direct-to-disc records. The music goes straight from the mike into the cutting head master, and there's no way to erase.

If it's a 20-minute recording and you make a mistake on the 19th minute, you have to start over. I just finished recording the _Paganini Caprices_ on direct-to-disc. It's coming out this month. The caprices are very rarely performed in public, because they're so difficult."

WESTSIDER BUDDY RICH Monarch of the drums

1-5-80

"Mediocrity has no place in my life," says fast-talking, hard-driving Buddy Rich, wrapped in a bathrobe at his luxurious Westside apartment.

"Anybody who is expert at what they do, I admire, whether it's drumming, tennis, or whatever. If they do it at the top of their form, constantly, I become a fan."

Dragging deeply on his cigarette, the man whom critics and fellow jazz artists have frequently called the greatest drummer in the world -- perhaps of all time -- dismisses such labels with something approaching annoyance.

"I don't think anybody is the best of anything in the world. Babe Ruth's record was broken, Joe Louis was knocked out. ... I'd rather not be the world's greatest anything. I'd rather be what I am, which is a good drummer."