So sorry to hear the news, Billy. He was a little before my time, so I decided to do a wee bit of research this morning to find out who Bernie Schwartz was, and I came acrsos this article written in January 1970. It takes place at the infamous Jack and Jill's pool room, owned by Weenie Bennie, in Arlington, Virginia:
Tonight in Jack n Jill Cue Club, a pool rustler named Bernie Schwartz clinched the U.S. Open Nine Ball Tournament. With this new achievement. Schwartz may be the best nine ball player in the country.
The tournament lead was shared by Schwartz. Luther "Wimpy" Lassiter, "Champagne" Eddie Kelly, and Jim "The Springfield Rifle" Rellihan at 5-1, but then the balding Schwartz roared back to lead, 11-2. and eventually win.
Jim Morgan in Drag
Schwartz bets liberally and has won as much as $15,000 in a week. In the all-night sessions, his girl friend, in her blonde wig, black leather pumps, and imitation sealskin coat, is an important factor in his success. She sits near Schwartz and gives him Marlboros and coffee.
Denizens of Jack n Jill are now talking up a large money match between Lassiter and The Hawk, Lassiter has always been acknowledged as the finest nine ball player in the world, but now there are some doubters.
In Joke
As one familiar face known only as "Pumpkin" said. "When you've been out of action for four years like Lassiter has, it's got to hurt, and I don't care who you are."
Source:
Wig, Marlboros Win Virginia Pool Tournament [Retrieved 12 May 2013]
What a shame he didn't get into the One-Pocket Hall of Fame while he was still alive to enjoy it, but, thank goodness, he did make into the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in Western Pennsylvania in 2002. This is a cool pool read:
Bernie "The Hawk" Schwartz, a pool hustler who began chalking up as a kid in Oakland in the late 1940s, will be inducted into the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame of Western Pennsylvania tonight.
Purists might argue that a game that can be played with a cigarette 'twixt your lips is no sport. Phooey. If Tiger Woods is lauded for making his living with a bagful of sticks, how much more impressive is a man who could earn his family's keep carrying one?
Schwartz, now 67, was this good: He didn't just meet Minnesota Fats under Kaufmann's clock; he cleaned Fats' clock in Kaufmann's when the braggart blew through town promoting pool tables in 1968. Schwartz won the Las Vegas Invitational, the world nine-ball championship, in 1970. And a friend told me that the wads of cash that changed hands when the big players came to Schwartz's basement pool hall on Murray Avenue, "The Hawk's Nest," could have choked a stable of horses.
So I called Schwartz in suburban Detroit, where he moved 31 years ago after selling the pool hall, to hear his tale.
His father died when he was 6. He, his older brother, Paul, and their Russian-born mother, Gertrude, moved from the Hill District to the new housing project in Oakland, Terrace Village. Cotton's Pool Room was down the hill on Fifth Avenue, and the Schwartzes, tall for their age, entered that world of gambling men at 12 and 13.
Brother Paul says he was backing Bernie with $200 bets by their late teens. By then, the family had moved to Squirrel Hill, where Paul still lives and where Bernie was mentored in Ross' pool parlor by Bunny Rogoff. Are these names great, or what?
"His skills in pool were as good as Arnold Palmer's in golf," Paul said.
But Bernie got married at 22 and quit the game. He worked in sales and, after a decade away, drifted back into the poolrooms. He bought the Hawk's Nest in 1967 when he was 32. Before long, bleachers were brought in for tournaments that featured name players such as Irving Crane, Luther Lassiter and Steve Mizerak.
"They had to take a ticket to play me," Bernie said. "Like in a bakery."
He'd always try to get them to play him on the corner table, under the air conditioner, which cooled the rubber cushions and changed all the angles.
"I used to play really good on that table. I'd say, 'Let's go back there and play in the corner,' and before they knew it, they were empty."
Not that he couldn't win elsewhere, and with style. When he won the championship in Vegas, he bested "Champagne Eddie" Kelly, who was famous for shouting "Champagne for everybody!" just before he'd sink the last ball of a match. So just before Schwartz sank his winner, he shouted "Manischewitz wine for everybody!"
These were the days when Schwartz would take short road trips with his late wife and soul mate, Ruthie, by his side, his in-laws watching their three children. He beat a local hero in Eatonton, Ga., in 1969 for $6,000, and got the only standing ovation of his career. On a later trip to Detroit, a high roller in the cookware business asked him, "What's a nice Jewish boy like you doing hustling pool?"
Within a year, Schwartz sold his pool hall and was in the cookware business himself. Like Sandy Koufax, he quit at the top of his game.
"You can't make a living playing pool. You've got to work. I had three kids by then."
They're with him this weekend, along with his four grandchildren, among the five carloads driving into town for the induction ceremonies at Beth Shalom Synagogue. Brother Paul even sprang for a billboard congratulating The Hawk above Poli's parking lot.
Schwartz never forgot his roots -- nor could his opponents. The story goes that not long after he beat Minnesota Fats, the rotund one went to Chicago to another department store. When he once again bragged of his pool prowess, out of the crowd came a shrill voice.
"You're a liar, Fats! My nephew, Bernie Schwartz, beat you in Pittsburgh!"
Bernie's Aunt Esther is no longer with us, but that story being told tonight is about as close to a sure bet as anything since Schwartz left his corner table.
Source:
Storied nine-ball ace is athlete enough for hall of fame [Retrieved 12 May 2013]
RIP to a legend in the pool world.
May he rest in peace!
