Danny Petralba RIP
- Thread starter 8BallWonderland
- Start date
I think that was before my time. I played Ron several times when he had to use a oxygen machine. I didn't start playing pool until the early 90s.
"Frisco Dave" was the best of the three, a very high level shortstop who would bet with both hands. He once won 40K in Detroit and drove home in a late model Caddy. He took a picture of himself laying in bed with all that money covering him. Another great pool character! Danny had me fooled into thinking he had a job. We never gambled, only played a couple of times in local tourneys. I liked him too much to try to beat him at One Pocket where I'm pretty sure I had an edge.
He was pretty tight with Manny Paquiao too, visiting him at his home in Los Angeles a couple of times. I think they were both from General Santos City.
I was pretty tight with Buffalo. Whatever happened to him? I suspect he did okay. He was a pretty smart guy.
Buffalo, long hair and looked like Buffalo Bill complete with cowhide jacket. A wild and crazy guy.
He left LA in about 1975. It was so funny, I went to Tucson in 1976 or 1977 and had a sales job, so naturally I made it to a pool room, started practicing, and a guy comes up and asks me to play for a couple bucks. I agreed, and we started playing. I looked at him and looked at him and said 'Buffalo?'. We had known each other fairly well, but he cut his hair short and I didn't recognize him. I don't even know his real name but he looked like a kid with his haircut. He used to do body work. I heard he was dead not long ago but nothing concrete.
Mark Jacobs, I ran into him too - owned his own janitorial service and did the building I worked at on Wilshire. Little Jeff was still around when I left the Valley six years ago.
Those were some good times. Pool was an escape from reality, a different world. Sometimes good and sometimes bad. All the characters. We all knew it was the greatest thing ever at that moment in time. Not too many happy endings in the pool hall though.
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Danny used to come up to my room for ring games in the middle nineties. He could really spin his ball and make tough shots. Always smiling and looking for action, he and I played many a time. I needed weight playing rotation games and he needed weight playing one pocket. Funny how that works out. I just saw him in January in Bakersfield for a Bar Tournament and he looked a little too tired. He loved to smoke, like me, so we often found ourselves outside smoking and talking between matches. He rarely complained about anything and no one I know could say anything bad about him. I will miss him sorely. RIP BROTHER...........
Danny and Tony Chohan made it to the final. There was a $6000 bonus if Danny won (you had to have played a certain number of tournaments to qualify and Danny qualified but Tony didn't). So, of course, they made a deal that Danny would win and they would split all their winnings (I think about 99% of pool players would make that deal to get the extra $6000).
The problem was they didn't try to disguise it and it was obvious that it was a dump and that was why the bonus was never paid.
(Fortunately, for me, they carried the $6000 bonus over to the next tournament 6 months later and I won it + the $4000 first prize. The $10,000 was the most I ever won in a pool tournament.)