150 BALL RUN: Crane vs Balsis, U.S. Open 14.1 Championship 1966 FINALS

HawaiianEye

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
This is a game that is good to watch while you are all locked down.

You get to see an old-school guy making it look easy playing under old-school conditions. You will notice that the table is considerably slower than today's tables and the balls don't fly open every time you hit the rack. You have to work for them.

And, to the horror of it, he is using an old-school cue with a long ferrule, probably made of ivory, and with plenty of deflection.

What's even worse is that he's not stalling around, getting up and down 40 times on every shot, and he isn't scared to shoot at some "tricky" shots when he gets into some predicaments where most people would probably play a safety.

OMG!

Crane is using powder on his hand and no glove!

Never once did they clean the cue ball.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er7In9iJ5wM
 
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Texas Carom Club

9ball did to billiards what hiphop did to america
Silver Member
The magic 2 ball i think it is that gets crane out

Seen this several times
Josephs 1st shot is really impressive to me
 

sjm

Older and Wiser
Silver Member
I knew Crane fairly well and this match, by his own account, was one of his proudest ever moments. Joe Balsis was a stone cold killer best kept in the chair, and Irving knew better than to let him get back to the table.
 

PoolBum

Ace in the side.
Silver Member
The shot he shoots right after the break at 1:00:11 always gets me. I think he was just trying to pinch-draw the cueball a little bit, but it got away from him and almost ended in disaster! He was flustered and needed a short break and a sip of water after that!
 

arnaldo

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Balsis’s safety at the 12:05 point quickly leads to Crane’s now famous “wrap-around” shot (shooting CB in one direction -- OB travels and drops in opposite direction). (It's quite similar to the wrap-around seen in The Hustler which the film's technical advisor, Mosconi, set up for Gleason to dramatically execute.)

IMO, one of the countless pleasures of everyone’s lifetime of playing Straight Pool is getting to recognize and execute at least a dozen or more of these crowd-pleasing beauties when they arise. As Cisero famously said, “Making them is easy . . . finding them is a little harder.”

Crane’s barely-avoided scratch at the 1:02:10 point would have halted his run. It visibly (and understandably) rattles his composure momentarily.

The golly-gee-whiz announcer, a bit out of his element, adds an amusing note to the essentially somber, but remarkable proceedings.

About 15 years ago our sorely-missed pal, Freddy B., posted this humorous (and informative) gem (below) about Crane's run out:
---------------------------------------------------------
Joe did it back to him!

A little known fact: The next time Crane and Balsis played it was in Johnston City. This time Joe Balsis ran 150 and out on Crane! The running joke at the time was for them to forego playing and just flip for the break.

The Beard
Bank on, brother! Old school pool
---------------------------------------------------------
Arnaldo
 

asbani

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Thanks for sharing this game!

We need slower clothes just like the old days to distinguish good strokers from weaker players!

I personally believe that today's cloth are helping out the weaker players, it made the game too easy for them, we need the slow clothes of the old days where you will need a good stroke in order to play well, especially for 9ball with that type of cloth.
 

HawaiianEye

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Thanks for sharing this game!

We need slower clothes just like the old days to distinguish good strokers from weaker players!

I personally believe that today's cloth are helping out the weaker players, it made the game too easy for them, we need the slow clothes of the old days where you will need a good stroke in order to play well, especially for 9ball with that type of cloth.

I agree!

I hate the new cloth and fast rails.

It is like playing pin ball instead of pool.

You have to "baby" the ball and "bunt" it all the time.

I like being able to "let the dogs out".
 

WildWing

Super Gun Mod
Silver Member
Have always loved this video, but Crane was something else. He had a dead combination in the corner that you couldn't miss under any circumstances. Yet, he'd stalk it and peruse it from several angles, then finally fire it in like an Olympic gymnast doing a perfect 10 on the vault. My god, those pockets were big too. Especially the side pockets. They were like the uneven parallel bars.

All the best,
WW
 

jay helfert

Shoot Pool, not people
Gold Member
Silver Member
Balsis’s safety at the 12:05 point quickly leads to Crane’s now famous “wrap-around” shot (shooting CB in one direction -- OB travels and drops in opposite direction). (It's quite similar to the wrap-around seen in The Hustler which the film's technical advisor, Mosconi, set up for Gleason to dramatically execute.)

IMO, one of the countless pleasures of everyone’s lifetime of playing Straight Pool is getting to recognize and execute at least a dozen or more of these crowd-pleasing beauties when they arise. As Cisero famously said, “Making them is easy . . . finding them is a little harder.”

Crane’s barely-avoided scratch at the 1:02:10 point would have halted his run. It visibly (and understandably) rattles his composure momentarily.

The golly-gee-whiz announcer, a bit out of his element, adds an amusing note to the essentially somber, but remarkable proceedings.

About 15 years ago our sorely-missed pal, Freddy B., posted this humorous (and informative) gem (below) about Crane's run out:
---------------------------------------------------------
Joe did it back to him!

A little known fact: The next time Crane and Balsis played it was in Johnston City. This time Joe Balsis ran 150 and out on Crane! The running joke at the time was for them to forego playing and just flip for the break.

The Beard
Bank on, brother! Old school pool
---------------------------------------------------------
Arnaldo

I'm pretty sure that "golly gee" announcer was Johnny Johnston, who happened to be a very good player in his own right. These are two of the best Straight Pool players of all time, and I'm quite certain that they both could run 100 balls on a tight table as well. They knew the game and how to work the rack.

On a more personal level, Crane was all business and a little standoffish with a young fan like me. Balsis was a tough guy but had a kind heart. Someone (maybe Danny) told me that he put an ass whipping on a couple of guys who jumped him outside of a Brooklyn poolroom one night. I really liked him and we had many great talks together about pool. He was one of my first pool hero's. Joe was the national Boy's Club champion at 18 and quit pool for something like 25 or 30 years! He had to support his family and owned a meat market, thus Joe "The Butcher" Balsis. He came back well into his 40's and started winning tournaments right away.
 
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garczar

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I'm pretty sure that "golly gee" announcer was Johnny Johnston, who happened to be a very good player in his own right. These are two of the best Straight Pool players of all time, and I'm quite certain that they both could run 100 balls on a tight table as well. They knew the game and how to work the rack.

On a more personal level, Crane was all business and a little standoffish with a young fan like me. Balsis was a tough guy but had a kind heart. Someone (maybe Danny) told me that he put an ass whipping on a couple of guys who jumped him outside of a Brooklyn poolroom one night. I really liked him and we had many great talks together about pool. He was one of my first pool hero's. Joe was the national Boy's Club champion at 18 and quit pool for something like 25 or 30 years! He had to support his family and owned a meat market, thus Joe "The Butcher" Balsis. He came back well into his 40's and started winning tournaments right away.[/QUOTE ....................................
 

iusedtoberich

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Ok I'm going to offer a different opinion on the equipment based on what is visible in the video. Note, I was born in 1978, and obviously was not around then:)

The table is an early GC, and the balls look to me to be an early version of Centennials.

The reaction of the balls off the rails, and the balls off of each other, look like any modern GC table to me. Not a Diamond, for sure, but any recent stream on GC's or the local rooms full of GC's look the same to me.

Can anyone point to a specific shot and say it was slow?

There was even a 4 rail position shot in the second half of the run that worked out perfectly for Crane.

I also think the balls opened up as expected on the break shots. On some of them they did not, (including some secondary break shots), but if you look at them closely, it seems to me it was because of the way the CB went into the balls in those particular racks.

The poolroom I grew up in in the lated 90's, had an old GC1 as the main gambling table, right next to the counter. It bounced the same as all the other newer GC's in the room. Probably the original cushions.
 

jason

Unprofessional everything
Silver Member
Got to love the old school players and the class they brought to the game.
I love the suits especially, but unfortunately, the video quality isn't quite as good as today.
Luckily we have enhancement software.

I noticed something that I wanted to share with you guys.

Take a look at this zoom shot I did. It's unbelievable.


crane.jpg

crane2.jpg

crane3.jpg
 

mikemosconi

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Crane played with his Balabushka there. There are not many players left in the world today who could run 150 in competition given that most of his full rack break shots only opened up 3 or 4 clear balls. Those rack runs by Crane in this video were as old school as you can get in terms of 14.1 play methodology.

Perhaps today's Diamond pro tables have smaller pockets and deeper pocket shelves- but the cloth speed, cushion rebound speed, and ball composition today really result in far less ball clusters off the full rack breaks. The 14.1 game was as much art as it was skill back then; that methodology of play is long gone- sadly.

This video, which I have seen maybe 20 times or more, should be preserved as one of the great Competitive sports accomplishments of all times- it is vastly underrated!! I would say the equivalent of this in -say golf in the mid 60s, would be someone shooting a 65 to win the Masters in the final day of competition. or perhaps a no hitter being pitched in the seventh game of a World Series. This was the final match , from the Winners side leader in U.S. Open competition; and the guy was PERFECT- does not get ANY better in sports!
 
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cjr3559

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
The announcer is “Whispering” Joe Wilson.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

mikemosconi

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
out of the stack
The announcer is “Whispering” Joe Wilson.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

People have commented for years how clueless this guy was in announcing this historic match! It should be voiced over by a knowledgeable commentator and then saved for historical sports significance. Crane makes a backwards combo shot out of the stack and into the bottom right corner pocket early in the match that is similar to the one Mosconi set up in the Hustler movie. That shot is rarely seen in competition, much less a US Open 14.1 final.
 
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Bob Jewett

AZB Osmium Member
Staff member
Gold Member
Silver Member
... the cloth speed...
About the cloth speed, it is possible to measure the speed of the cloth from Balsis' lag shot at the start of the game. It went 7 diamonds in what I measure as 6.57 seconds. With a little arithmetic, that tells you that the rolling friction from the cloth is the equivalent of an uphill slope of 2%.

Typical modern cloths give an equivalent slope of about 1%. This means that a ball starting at a certain speed will go twice as far (assuming no cushion contact) on modern cloth as on that table.
 

Bob Jewett

AZB Osmium Member
Staff member
Gold Member
Silver Member
out of the stack

People have commented for years how clueless this guy was in announcing this historic match! It should be voiced over by a knowledgeable commentator and then saved for historical sports significance. Crane makes a backwards combo shot out of the stack and into the bottom right corner pocket early in the match that is similar to the one Mosconi set up in the Hustler movie. That shot is rarely seen in competition, much less a US Open 14.1 final.
It would be great if the original tape (film? :eek:) still existed and ABC/Disney would release a cleaned-up version.
 

iusedtoberich

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
About the cloth speed, it is possible to measure the speed of the cloth from Balsis' lag shot at the start of the game. It went 7 diamonds in what I measure as 6.57 seconds. With a little arithmetic, that tells you that the rolling friction from the cloth is the equivalent of an uphill slope of 2%.

Typical modern cloths give an equivalent slope of about 1%. This means that a ball starting at a certain speed will go twice as far (assuming no cushion contact) on modern cloth as on that table.

I had remembered your post about using a stopwatch a few years back and looked it up, to see if I can duplicate both lags on my own table (one hit the cushion, one did not), and time it for comparison. Maybe tomorrow:)
 

Sealegs50

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Great video. I haven’t seen it for quite a while. Thanks for the link. A well-spent hour while cooped-up in CT.
 
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