Every SW hits like a broomstickI had a SW that hit like a broom stick
Biggest lies in pool stories
- Thread starter hang-the-9
- Start date
Not wrong
I did, and won....a lot
Mickey Bell was a generation before Bucky….he was a legend in our area.
I'm still waiting for more of yours Hu!! I'm sure they're much more entertaining than my dry dribble.
Bar Box Master Mike.
Never broke stuff or acted out. I used the good ol boy a lot. Wrap up a coupla fingers and say you broke em at work, most guys don't mind droppin a few bucks to a real friendly fella. Buy a round now and then. One for the house. Read the room. Make em think you're coming back again. Tell those stories and liven the place up. Never failed.
In all fairness in some interviews Mosconi claimed he quit at 526 because he was tired, not because he missed.
I think it has a lot to do with your father and older sibs if you had any. Getting exposed to that as a kid you pick up a lot that carries thru and you want to impress the Fam, so... The neighborhood you grew up in also plays a huge role. The kind of kids you were around everyday. Pecking order. Everybody wanted to be the leader, but you could only have one.
Being Street Smart at a young age put you head and shoulders among the rest.
Since this thread is about lies, Shore!!
Yeah, I have seen video where Willie said both. The earlier video said he missed, later video he said he just got tired. Best I recall the shot he missed was pretty easy so probably a bit of both. Willie was clicking off about four balls a minute for getting close to three hours best I recall. That is including racking in that time so Willie wasn't wasting much time. He was very efficient.
I have seen the end of a handful of high runs and most of them weren't tough shots. A person gets tired, maybe loses focus, maybe tries to cheat a pocket a little too much...
There was a lawyer present and the idea of the signed statement came up after the run. We can only wonder what Willie could have ran to had he been focusing on an attempt like the modern players. Charlie Ursitti(SP?) said he saw Willie run over six hundred in practice with no exact count. Willie told Charlie he could have ran over a thousand. We will never know.
I have bragging rights on some major competitors in other activities more than pool. I have beaten a handful of world record holders, hall of famers, champions. Like you I suspect, those I competed against regularly beat me a lot more than I beat them!
I met an elderly gentleman who was very upset. Somebody had taken out a two page color ad in the major bloodhorse magazine. Aside from contact information all it said in diagonal lines over and over was "Beat Avenger M!" Was a fine old gentleman and I could point out to him his horse, Avenger M, had won a handful of major stakes. The horse that somebody else was advertising had met Avenger M nine times, had lost to him eight times!
A lot of bragging rights are like that. Because I usually owned a business or was in positions I couldn't drop and pick up readily, I didn't travel much. A few days, maybe a few weeks. Anybody that came to me on the tables I played on near nightly and they weren't familiar with might run into a chainsaw on a given night. Odds are they would beat me on a table they knew and I didn't, likely even on a table neither of us knew. On my home turf they might not get a real shot for very long periods.
Bar Box Master Mike.
I am not someone that disrespects bar boxes and bar box players. It is pretty well accepted that Dave Matlock ran 28 racks on a bar box. Very few that put down that feat can come anywhere close to doing that, or beating Dave! He fared pretty good in big table play too.
One of my favorite stories is about bar box action. I slashed through a rack in speed pool time to discourage a stranger. I considered the local boxes my private pasture and strangers coming poaching in my pasture were likely to get a rude greeting. It was generally understood that local gamblers would get a chance or two at the table, strangers received no such courtesy. I stripped them of their cash slowly or crushed them for coming in my honey hole depending on the mood I was in.
The shoe was on the other foot sometimes. I ran into home town heroes with 20-40 people cheering them on when I was alone. I have been in that spot many times when I fully expected to be in that position and it wasn't a problem. Stepping into that situation when I wasn't mentally prepared for it was like playing the whole room full of people, one against dozens.
Lots of exciting times from the first couple of years when I was young and dumb. I took advantage of having a 6'-5" oilfield roughneck with me to stop in a place that was hostile but loaded with cash. Usually Cajun culture places were cool. This one wasn't. A small town english wasn't the native language in and they didn't welcome strangers coming in taking the cash! With Mike at my back I went in and left everyone that tried me broken and bleeding, no tact at all, I was like a bull in a china shop! Once I got to my vehicle I wasn't worried about anyone staying with me on that very twisty bayou road. Driving dirt track late models most weekends, sideways on a paved road didn't bother me a bit. As expected, we led a parade of about a dozen people to my car. Didn't bother me but a few miles down the road I noticed Mike was still pale and shaken a bit. He hadn't expected to lead half the guys in the place across the parking lot.
Mike wasn't bashful about fighting and wore his clothes out from the inside first, made me think I might have gotten a bit too casual about trouble in strange bars far from home. This particular bar wasn't a full fifty mile drive from home but it was in a different world. From that night I changed my ways and tried to leave people happy after I beat them. I never was like Scotty Townsend who could take all the money in a place and have them begging him to come back the next night but I was at least welcome to return. In my first two years of serious gambling I probably broke a dozen cues to get out of places. I would have a twenty tucked in my shirt pocket to toss on the counter or bar to pay for the cue on the way out and usually be welcomed back by the owner in a few weeks or months. Paying twenty bucks for a banged up cue that only cost twelve dollars new went a long ways! After I mended my ways I might have broken three cues in the next twenty years. Things could still go sideways when I was a stranger and alone but I usually made my exit much more smoothly, warning people I would have to leave soon and always saying I would be back soon even when I was a thousand miles from home with no intention of ever returning,
Might be noted that I only used one cue that I broke on somebody, mostly I just used them to clear a path to the door. First time I broke a cue was when somebody tried to strongarm rob me in a very rough place. Jammed the broken cue into a man's face ripping it from the corner of his mouth to below his ear. Rough place indeed, I was back in there three nights later and nobody even mentioned the incident. I was a regular in there practicing on the old five by tens from the time I turned fifteen. I was a high roller too, the drinks I was already too fond of were seventy-five cents and I would tip the other quarter!
Even Danny Medina who was as skilled in all aspects of the road life as anyone said it was a hard hard life. With the boom and bust life in the oil patch I sometimes worked the tables a few months at a time but I never tried to make a go of it full time. The great thing back then was the crazy days the companies paying off weekly or bi-weekly paid. Somebody was getting a paycheck every evening from Tuesday through Saturday. I usually had a wad of cash in my shirt pocket as chum on the water, sometimes I added a pay check stub that might be six months old but looked new.
Good times or bad, things were always entertaining! If I had it all to do over again I wouldn't change much.
Hu