Shakespeare’s Hamlet coined the phrase It’s “caviar to the general” public, meaning that a person who had not been introduced to haute cuisine would bridle at the idea that fish eggs are a delicacy.
For the initiated, straight pool is the cat’s pajamas. Do I date myself with that expression? It means straight pool is “the pants on a Roxie usher.” And straight pool is about as out of date as those two expressions.
But it is still gorgeous.
Small story. I was years ago at a straight pool championship in Chicago. I ran into a person I knew but who was from the dark, backward Midwest where they had never seen straight pool. He suggests that we make sweat bets on that day’s matches. He asks me whom I like in the first match. “Lassiter,” I say. He answers, “Yeah, sure. Everybody likes Lassiter. You’d have to give me weight.” Matches are to 150 points. I ask, “Well, how much weight do you need?” He thinks for a second and says, “I’d need thirty-five points.”
Have you ever had a spiritual revelation? I realize in an instant that this guy, who is a really sharp cookie back between Boon and Docks, has no idea what major league straight pool looks like. I, in a previous stage in my life, had been a semi-regular in McGirr’s Billiards on Eighth Avenue, waiting on a bus back to Jersey from the Port Authority, just down the street. I groan and grumble, I hesitate, and I finally, unwillingly concede thirty-five points to Luther Lassiter’s opponent. I realize I have to play this nice and slow. Don’t lose this fish!
I point out to my acquaintance that I have made such a bad bet he should give me a chance to get even. We should probably bet on some of the other matches so I at least have a chance. It’s a round robin. We bet on six more matches. Keep in mind that at this point nobody has as yet stroked a ball in the tournament. The secret has not been revealed. We make six more bets, and in every match I take the favorite and give weight. I don’t remember exactly what the names were, but my stable looks something like Luther Lassiter, Irving Crane, Joe Balsis, Dallas West, a young Jim Rempe, Jack Colavita ( look him up), and Cisero Murphy, in that order. And the most I am spotting anybody is that thirty-five points Lassiter has to overcome. (Yeah, I’ve got Jack Colavita, but you’re getting twenty points on the wire. Good luck feeding your family with that!)
Lassiter now plays the match we have bet on. The horses run true to previous form. My acquaintance sees the outcome. He also sees the winning margin. He evaporates. He becomes a vapor. For the rest of the tournament, he’s nowhere to be seen. What he doesn’t know is that eventually three of my champions wind up spitting the bit and, not overcoming the saddl weight of the point spread, let the other horse poke his nose across the wire first. I can’t believe it. I had a mortal lock, but as we begin the seventh match I am dead even. And I’ve got my money on Cisero Murphy, with whom it is always a question whether his loopy stroke will hold up through one hundred and fifty points,
It does. “Ain’t nuthin’ dead solid perfect,” but I finish one unit ahead.
For another thirty or forty years I would bump into my acquaintance, and never once did he ever mention that we had made several wagers in Chicago, and how did that come out? I don’t think he even watched any of our matches after Lassiter lapped the field. Never a word about any transactions we may have made in The Windy City, and we must have seen one another sixty or seventy times. I never raised the matter. I wanted to see how long he could maintain his guilty silence.
It has occurred to me over the years that the only way the story could have been sweeter would be if Murphy had lost.
