He could almost run balls as well as he ran his mouth! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA :rotflmao1:
( Sorry, Russ, wherever you are... it was a joke. Just a joke :grin: )
Verify the 526 run size table.
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He could almost run balls as well as he ran his mouth! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA :rotflmao1:
( Sorry, Russ, wherever you are... it was a joke. Just a joke :grin: )
And he played that golf pretty sporty too, Z. Harry HATED it when Russ would get in the golf game. Russ was one of the few who would beat Harry's brains in at any game, including golf and Harry couldn't stand that. He always had to be the biggest, baddest rooster in the barnyard and when Russ was in, he wasn't. And everyone knew it. And that drove Harry NUTS. :grin:
Harry..... who?
Hey Russ - Harry was a regular in our room for 30-some-odd years, whose opinion of his own game was probably 2 or 3 balls better than anyone else's opinion of his game ( a disease shared by TONS of pool players as I'm sure you know! ).
I was replying to one of Z Nole's posts. Z and I go wayyyyyyyyyy back. To guard his privacy, I won't go into the why and wherefores, but... suffice to say he knows zactly what I'm talkin' bout. :yeah:
Hey Russ - Harry was a regular in our room for 30-some-odd years, whose opinion of his own game was probably 2 or 3 balls better than anyone else's opinion of his game ( a disease shared by TONS of pool players as I'm sure you know! ).
I was replying to one of Z Nole's posts. Z and I go wayyyyyyyyyy back. To guard his privacy, I won't go into the why and wherefores, but... suffice to say he knows zactly what I'm talkin' bout. :yeah:
Okay.. Just making sure we aren't talking about Harry Peetros, or someone else I might have heard of.
Definitely not Harry Platis, cuz I don't think he ever had a big ego...
Nah... Harry was a good ole boy from rural Georgia. When we were kids, he would pay us to make runs out to his van ( he was a wallpaper-hanger ) with his half filled cup of Coke to top it off with the bourbon he kept out there. If you saw one of my posts @ a week ago regarding the wannabe in the room who erased the entire chalk board used to keep score in the golf game ( so he could "neaten it up" ), in the late stages of a BIG action game ( Harry and Dino, a local bookie, were betting 50 and 5. A LOT of cheese for 1973 or so, at least in the golf game ), the guy whose jaw hit the floor just before screaming "WTF are you DOING???", that was Harry... he was a trip.
Id say that is a pretty good list.. I knew a guy who was in the army with Elvis. I think the normal tendency would be for many to resent the "big shot" but my buddy told me "everyone liked him". Such a shame his last 10 years or so.
As is always the case with historical events, there is a lot of misinformation out there...which seems to get passed on and on while the details get more obscure.
I’ll address only a couple of them that were mentioned earlier in this thread - and by all means, if there’s something not sounding right and can’t be verified, speak up. We don’t really want the facts to get more muddled
We all know it happened March 19-20, 1954 which is easily within the time frame for many AZB folks to chime in that could have been there or can chime in with experiences like a few have.
The referee was Earl Newman (clearly notes on the official affidavit).
The table was noted as a “4 x 8 Brunswick Pocket Billiard Table” on the affidavit, with no references being passed along anywhere that was recorded about it being an (*oversized*) 8’ table. That’s pure speculation.
* the comments I’ve seen about the “oversized” part very easily could have been in reference to the larger, albeit common, 5+” corner pockets on the table. Which was the documented standard outlined in the Official BCA Rule Books of the era..... As if anyone else in those days could tame a 5” pocketed table better than Willie
As for the OP question regarding a “full sized” 4 x 8 versus a smaller home size, I’m not sure I understand that query - unless he’s asking if it were a typical 8’ table of the day or an oversized 8’ table. Again, it has always been purported to be a regular 8’ Brunswick table - nothing has been found saying there were oversized 8’ers in the East High Billiard Club.
A “full size 8’ table” IS still 44”x88” - the oversized 8’ table is still 46”x92”.
There seems to be confusion amongst AZBers on this for some reason no one can figure out. Easy. There never was a “home size” vs a “club size” 8’ table. Local slang perhaps - which doesn’t belong anywhere in talks about Willie’s record on this day.
Exactly 37 people signed the affidavit. Easy to see and count.
The affidavit shows Mr Haas as the owner.
What else can we dig up from the archives about this amazing event in history, folks?
~ K.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I’ll address only a couple of them that were mentioned earlier in this thread - and by all means, if there’s something not sounding right and can’t be verified, speak up. We don’t really want the facts to get more muddled
We all know it happened March 19-20, 1954 which is easily within the time frame for many AZB folks to chime in that could have been there or can chime in with experiences like a few have.
The referee was Earl Newman (clearly notes on the official affidavit).
The table was noted as a “4 x 8 Brunswick Pocket Billiard Table” on the affidavit, with no references being passed along anywhere that was recorded about it being an (*oversized*) 8’ table. That’s pure speculation.
* the comments I’ve seen about the “oversized” part very easily could have been in reference to the larger, albeit common, 5+” corner pockets on the table. Which was the documented standard outlined in the Official BCA Rule Books of the era..... As if anyone else in those days could tame a 5” pocketed table better than Willie
As for the OP question regarding a “full sized” 4 x 8 versus a smaller home size, I’m not sure I understand that query - unless he’s asking if it were a typical 8’ table of the day or an oversized 8’ table. Again, it has always been purported to be a regular 8’ Brunswick table - nothing has been found saying there were oversized 8’ers in the East High Billiard Club.
A “full size 8’ table” IS still 44”x88” - the oversized 8’ table is still 46”x92”.
There seems to be confusion amongst AZBers on this for some reason no one can figure out. Easy. There never was a “home size” vs a “club size” 8’ table. Local slang perhaps - which doesn’t belong anywhere in talks about Willie’s record on this day.
Exactly 37 people signed the affidavit. Easy to see and count.
The affidavit shows Mr Haas as the owner.
What else can we dig up from the archives about this amazing event in history, folks?
~ K.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
You are asking a valid question , I can't remember exactly how many who said they were there, I spent lots of time there for 12 years and it seems like that's about how many people I was introduced to. Only 1, that I remember, didn't agree with big pockets.
Several of the old timers introduced that Byrd or Bird guy to me as the referee, still not sure what that's all about , all are long dead now This was from about 1990 to 2002. Then I got very sick.
If you do very much study at all into the history of billiards , you will begin to find that it is full of anomalys.
Everything from having the wrong names of players , to giving them credit for titles, they never actually won.
And everything in between. Good luck to you.
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Thanks. I appreciate the thought.
There were 3 or 4 of the old timers in the action pool room in Springfield ,who remembered this guy when he came in the one time, and they told me he was the ref?
They all called him Bird or Byrd? and he wouldn't talk about the run, like it was the plague.
I'm starting to understand why.
I tried to buy it, but got Lizzie Bordens by mistake.
I wonder if anyone has Lizzie's? The way that story has held up in history after 125 years-that thing might go for a million or so. Ive seen pictures of it from back then but no current location.
hmm
well I would say who ever surpasses the record will have some connections within the industry. I have learned that it is close enough for gov't work to pull for the dark horse. After the skid/kick I had (with outside english and not a soft speed) for my 352nd hit - I would say it might be difficult to do. I hope it was mother nature that stopped the run - and not the dreaded 'THEY' human error - but I cannot know for sure. to this day I have never seen a ball skid the way that one did. Plus I have hit over a million pool ball's easily -so it ain't my first rodeo. If the run is not captured on camera then I don't really believe all the hype, I have learned there are some peeps that try hard to promote or make it look like THEIR player should be the one bein marketed as #1 - and 'they live'. Many great players from the past that did not have brunswick to set up a table that had huge pockets and all, not to knock Mosconi - i believe he was a legit champ and i know camera equip back then was very rare. Fats went around with a camera man, he is very famous today but would have been run over like a penny on the rail road track by fellows like Crane, Cook, and Lassiter (to name a few). Just sayin.
well I would say who ever surpasses the record will have some connections within the industry. I have learned that it is close enough for gov't work to pull for the dark horse. After the skid/kick I had (with outside english and not a soft speed) for my 352nd hit - I would say it might be difficult to do. I hope it was mother nature that stopped the run - and not the dreaded 'THEY' human error - but I cannot know for sure. to this day I have never seen a ball skid the way that one did. Plus I have hit over a million pool ball's easily -so it ain't my first rodeo. If the run is not captured on camera then I don't really believe all the hype, I have learned there are some peeps that try hard to promote or make it look like THEIR player should be the one bein marketed as #1 - and 'they live'. Many great players from the past that did not have brunswick to set up a table that had huge pockets and all, not to knock Mosconi - i believe he was a legit champ and i know camera equip back then was very rare. Fats went around with a camera man, he is very famous today but would have been run over like a penny on the rail road track by fellows like Crane, Cook, and Lassiter (to name a few). Just sayin.
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Good point. All of that is because pool's historic record keeping is so bad. I'm not sure why, but I have a feeling it is because of a combination of carelessness, lack of resources, and its generally splintered nature in terms of governing bodies. I'm actually eternally shocked someone had the forethought to get an affidavit and witness signatures for Mosconi's run. So much other pool history is lost or is only hearsay. And when that is the case people know they can make up their own history or embellish it. That only serves to further muddy the waters.
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In general the way things get recorded is by reporting in periodicals, whether newspapers or magazines. Newspapers rarely cover pool these days and the monthlies seem to be dying at the rate of a couple per year.
The BCA used to have a records committee. So far as I can tell, there is no official record keeping for pool any more anywhere, which makes any try for a long run record potentially pointless.
Don’t be so hard on the pool world, gentlemen....
...it’s the human condition.....memories can be faulty, info misunderstood.
In Barbara Tuchman’s “A Distant Mirror” she wrote about a battle that France sent
100,000 men to....Barbara searched the old records and found there were provisions
requisitioned for just 5,000 soldiers....I doubt there were 95,000 camp followers and
peasants with pitchforks going to that war....Fake news has been around a long time.
I was pretty young when I played on Willie’s table...wasn’t exactly a table connesieur....
...hell, I would’ve played on a sidewalk if there was a bet....
...but it bothers me that I can’t remember the brand of all the other tables....
...Russ Maddox told me, but the name didn’t stick.
Not being hard , just stating my experience with finding information. I even went through thousands of miles of microfilm in the late 80s.
But I don't think it would have been a tremendous amount of extra work, to at least spell their names correctly.
I also have heard the name of the tables but I can't come up with it either, , if what people have said is true , some of them have been in a couple of the pool rooms in Columbus Ohio , sold after the East High Billiards went out of business,
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I think they might have been A.E. Schmidt (out of St. Louis). They were very solid tables. I think they're still in business.
I sort of remember that from my talk with George Rood.
Lizzie Borden took an axe
She gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one.
Lizzie Borden got away
For her crime she did not pay.
All the best,
WW