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To that I'd only add that many road players back then had to use house cues in order to promote the stall. And some of those house cues weren't exactly straight.

In Spring Training of 1962, Danny DiLiberto won a similar bet against Roger Maris that he could throw a golf ball through the uprights of a goal post 100 yards away.

Funny, you just mentioned one of my first sports heroes, Neil Johnston. Since Washington didn't then have an NBA team and my mom was from Philly, I attached myself to the Warriors in a year where they went something like 12 and 57. But IIRC Johnston still led the league in scoring. One night...

In a way I compare pool to my other favorite sport: Baseball. I started following baseball way back in 1952, when I was all of 8 years old. Back then, with only 8 teams in each league and no interleague play, it was easy to keep up with nearly all the players. And except for the World Series...

Stu, I think you have to distinguish between the sort of players you'd find in tournaments and the sort of players you'd find in action rooms. Alex is certainly as entertaining as any golden age player you would've found in tournaments BITD, but once you got into gambling matches that's when...

Now here would be a team match that would put asses in the seats: One team decked out in tuxedos, the other team in wifebeaters.

You literally have to go back 100 years to find pool featured in the sports pages of major American newspapers. And when was the last time we had pool matches on ESPN? I love Derby City's Bigfoot Challenge, but other than that I usually wait for the last few rounds to watch anything else. And...

This is also what keeps me interested at 81, and with luck for years to come. Just in the last year I've loved watching the emergence of Neuhausen and the rise of Atencio, who's fast becoming my favorite player. That doesn't take away anything from the great players of the past, like Buddy...

Tournament play is infinitely better these days, with far more events, an international field, better equipment, a variety of games and widely available streaming. OTOH I'm more partial to the days when there were dozens of pool rooms in nearly every big metro area, and in many of them you...

The Brass Rail in Durham BITD was full of characters. Most of them were just cushion beaters, but the room was air conditioned and it was a good place for the "Students of Life" to hang out and avoid real work. There was an old shoeshine chair right near the entrance where a guy named Wayne...

First time I even knew about this stupid rule was when Karl Boyes pulled it against Shannon Daulton in the 2015 U. S. Open. It was in one of the early rounds, and Daulton was cruising with a fairly big lead when Boyes called him for putting his cue on the table at the end of a rack that...

In Maryland there was a local trick shot artist named Chester Morris who once got quoted in a local newspaper as saying he'd "swim a sea of sewage to play Minnesota Fats." When I saw that article, I got a girl I knew at the pool room, Jenny Gale, to draw a picture of Chester swimming across the...

At the old Guys & Dolls in Silver Hill MD, there was a notorious locksmith named Murphy, always recognizable in his wifebeater and always looking for the nuts. None of the regulars would ever play him, since he was always asking for ridiculous spots and half the time was playing on ass, but one...

That's interesting, since just 3 months after that People's Park riot, my GF and I were in Berkeley for the entire month of August. And although I also gravitated to Kip's, I only remember 3 players of any note, and no college students at all. In fact most of the time I was there, the place...

This isn't really a "pool story", although pool rooms play a part in it. It's part of a series of reminiscences I've written for my wife and few close friends. 2. Brunswick Billiards (1419 Irving St. NW, Washington) This upstairs room, with its featured 1920’s Brunswick 5’x10’ front...

Couldn't have been Santos, since in the early 70's he would've only been a very young teenager (he's 65 now), and at the time this guy was at least in his mid or late 30's. I'd love to see any pictures of Georgia Boy if you could ever post them here. As you know from your own experience, he...

Could well have been. The Georgia Boy I met at McGirr's in the early 70's was a Black guy who then appeared to be in his early 30's, and was spoken of by the other players with a tone of real respect. I once actually played him some cheap $5 nine ball for about half an hour before confirming...

I was never close to being an A-level player, but whenever I got up to New York in the 60's and 70's I always made it a point of dropping in at the pool rooms. I got to Ames one time only, in 1964 or 1966, apparently just before it closed. It was just after they'd opened for the day, and other...

BITD there was a Durham (North Carolina) A Player named Mike Wynn, who could spot any of the local players the 7 and beat them easily. And then one day the young Cole Dickson came through town and had poor Mike dogging balls that previously he would've made blindfolded. The moral is that...

In the DC metro area, the late Danny Green was the perfect embodiment of a shortstop. Extremely talented, plenty of heart, but lacking that little something that would've gotten him to the highest level. In David McCumber's Playing Off The Rail, "The Dew Factor" chapter has a highly...