I think his name was Jerry McNamara or something like that... a slight of build, black guy, in his mid 40's when I first met him. My first encounter with him was at Classic Cue in Buffalo in about 1988. He came in with some friends and started hitting balls at a table.. One routine he would do was to throw balls down the table for a wing shot. He would not do it like everyone else I had seen, Jerry would throw the balls real fast then fire them in with amazing accuracy. As he was doing this, he would point around the now gathered spectators of pool afficiandos and players alike, and shout out crazy spots to various people. Jerry was not discriminatory and would offer anyone just about anything just for a game. Most of the spots he was throwing out there were quite a bit out of line, but he rarely got any takers.
I watched him give a guy who played a little under me at the time, the break, last 3 and the 7 ,8 wild; and win. It was stupid really. The guy playing Jerry did not play his game, granted, but Jerry seemed to never play safe and ran out every chance he was at the table. It was great to watch and I even played him a couple times with him spotting me the 8. I have no excuses, but I ended up losing twice and beat him once like this, and I felt as though I had somehow escaped.
I have heard a ton of stories about Jerry and seen many of them in true life. He supposedly played and beat Archer gambling shortly after the 1992 US Open, and regularly sparred with Danny D. playing 14.1. He was around for a couple years and his buddies used to get Jerry out of a mental hospital on weekend passes to try and go bust Buffalo in two days. He was a hell of a player and I don't think a whole lot of guys would have played him even while he was in his prime, even some of the greats.
