It was either Mark Twain or Herbert Spencer who claimed, A proficiency at billiards is a sign of a misspent youth. If that's the case, then my formative years were a colossal waste of time. Between the ages of 15 and 18, if I wasn't in school or at home, I could be found in a poolroom called The Club on 5th Avenue near Broadway in Gary.
At the time I didn't consider playing pool a frivolous activity. In my neck of the woods, learning to shoot pool, smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, and acquit yourself honorably in a street fight were hallmarks of a well rounded education. I never did become a good street fighter (something about a yellow streak) but I did excel at smoking and drinking, a skill set that has served me well to this very day.
I also became a pretty good pool player, not great, but good enough to hustle a few bucks now and then. I played all the games, 9-ball, 8-ball, straight pool, rotation, one-pocket, and pea pool but my money game was snooker. At the tender age of 17 I won $52 in a marathon snooker contest against an old man we called The Admiral, because he always wore one of those cheesy yachting caps favored by Elvis and Count Basie.
I lost interest in playing pool around my 18th birthday. There were three reasons I gave up the game:
- I got seriously interested in girls. It's tough enough to get laid under any circumstances, but it's almost impossible when you hang around a poolroom all day.
- I had gotten as good as I was ever going to get. I had hit the proverbial wall and rather than trying to break through it or go around it, I decided to avoid it altogether.
- I came to the realization that being a "pretty good" pool player would have absolutely no effect on my future. Why waste any more time with such a silly game.
Boy, was I wrong about reason number three.
About 12 years later I was living in Chicago, scuffling to make a living as an editor, proofreader, and freelance writer and failing miserably at all three. Desperate for work, I answered a blind ad in the Chicago Tribune looking for an editor for a sporting magazine. To my astonishment, I got called in for an interview.
Let's call the person who interviewed me Bob. He was the owner and publisher of a group of poorly written, cheaply printed magazines that dealt with fringe sports like archery, table tennis, pinball, and, lo and behold, billiards. The position I was interviewing for was managing editor of Billiards Gazette.
Bob was an odd little man - twitchy, shifty eyed, and affected. The walls of his office were covered with autographed photos of celebrities, like Sinatra, John Wayne, and Raquel Welch but I noticed that all the autographs seemed to be signed by the same hand. He considered himself a titan of the publishing industry, a first cousin to Bennett Cerf. In reality he was a low-rent hustler. His publications were mainly vehicles for attracting advertising revenue. I doubt if circulation of any of the rags was more than 2,500 and those went mainly to the specific industry. I don't recall ever seeing any of them on a newsstand or gracing someone's coffee table.
Still, I desperately needed a job, and running a shlock magazine seemed to be as good a gig as any.
After a few moments of idle chatter, Bob asked, "Do you know anything about playing pool?"
"As a matter of fact I do."
"Are you sure?"
"Why would I lie?"
"To get this job," Bob smirked.
"You'll just have to take my word for it."
"No I don't," Bob said. "I'd rather see for myself. You have to know the game to run my magazine. Let's play a game of 8-ball."
It turned out that Bob had a pool table in his warehouse, a Brunswick that was in pretty good shape. He also had all of the accessories: chalk, hand powder, a bridge, and a rack of cues hanging on a wall. Now by that time, I played pool only four or five times a year, usually on tavern tables and usually when I was drunk. I was still a decent player but nowhere near the cocky young pool shark that I was at 17. I assumed Bob had to be good.
Nervous, I was relieved that Bob won the lag and went first. He broke, ran a few solids but missed a bank shot on the 4-ball and it was my turn. I suspected that he missed on purpose. It wasn't that hard of a bank shot and he seemed to be a better player than that. But the purpose of the game was to see if I could play, not to show off Bob's skills.
"Let's see what you've got, "he said, stepping away from the table.
I took a deep breath, stepped up to the table and played the game of my life. Like Toni Kucoc used to say, I vas in da zone. I didn't miss a shot and some of them were tough. I made long cuts, bank shots, and a combination. I felt like a kid again, on my way to beating some chump out of a few bucks. When I leaned over the table to line up my final shot, Bob reached over and picked up the 8-ball. He looked at me, nodded his head in approval and said, "When can you start?"
I ran the magazine for nearly a year. It was one of the more interesting periods of my life. I met a lot of pool hustlers, earned a decent buck and heard some great stories. My favorite story concerned Jackie Gleason and Paul Newman.
Gleason was a genuine pool shark. He learned to play as a kid on the mean streets of Brooklyn. As he used to tell it, his skill at pool helped him survive some very tough times. Paul Newman learned to play pool during the filming of "The Hustler," one of my all-time favorite movies. The director had hired Willie Mosconi, arguably the greatest player ever, to coach Newman. Newman actually became a pretty good player under Mosconi's tutelage. Unfortunately, he wasn't as good as he thought he was.
Shortly after Gleason's death, Newman was interviewed by a reporter who wanted to discuss the film and Newman's memories of Gleason. The interviewer asked if he and Gleason had ever played pool for money.
"Yes we did," Newman replied. "And I beat him two out of three games. I won the first two games for fifty bucks each and Jackie won the third game for five hundred."
A classic hustle, if you ask me.
