Interesting thread. Well, I guess as Keith McCready's other half, I will weigh in on this poll and the subject matter at hand.
First, Keith and I both are so very grateful to Steve Booth for having a category that fit Keith to a tee in the One Pocket Hall of Fame, which is the Lifetime of Pool in Action award. If anybody is deserving of this category, it is Keith McCready.
Keith has never been a tournament soldier as are most, if not all, of the other BCA Hall of Fame pool players. The tournament venues for Keith most times were a gathering place. He was more in tune with the after-hours activities than the tournament itself. That was his bailiwick. When he was competing in a tournament, he was known for comedically interacting with the audience during his matches. The more involved the audience was, the better Keith would play. But make no mistake about it, no one in the tournament wanted to draw Keith's name on the charts because one didn't know which Keith would show up for the match, the Keith that wants to entertain the railbirds with his gift of gab and could run six-packs or the Keith who had been up all night gambling and had no sleep.
There are two kinds of pool people in our pool world, the pool purists and the action enthusiasts. Keith's style of play does not fall into the category of pool purists, which I think the majority of BCA Hall of Fame contenders do fall into. Keith was not liked by pool purists because of his antics and his lifestyle, which has been compared to poker star Stu Unger, yet when there was a big tournament, even the pool players themselves would come to watch Keith compete because he was fun to watch. At the 2003 U.S. Open, Efren Reyes and Francisco Bustamante's match on the live stream table had to stop because everyone in the audience was watching Keith v. Alex Pagulayan on a side table, even Efren and Bustie. Nobody knows what's going to fly out of his mouth, which makes him entertaining. Unlike Stu Unger, Keith survived his early years, thank goodness, and I know he would not be alive today if we had not met.
One of Keith's largest contributions to pool, as most know, was his role as Grady Seasons in "The Color of Money." To this day, even in 2023, he still gets asked to repeat his famous line, "It's like a nightmare, isn't it?" It was the perfect role for a pool player of Keith's ilk to play, and he did it to a tee, even ad-libbing a few lines which were kept in the movie by Martin Scorsese.
I could add a lot more to The Keith McCready Story, but I'll end it here to say Keith most definitely contributed to the legacy American pool in its golden years. His legacy is more akin to the style of Minnesota Fats. Today is a new era in pool, of course, and we'll see where Matchroom, Predator, and CSI take it. It won't be robotic tournament soldiers playing mum pool, and it won't be the road warriors and action players. I do look forward to see where it goes and hope I'm still alive to watch it grow.
If you all have read my post up to this point, I'd like to nominate Jeremy Jones to the list. He's, I think, 51 years old today. I'm not sure what the BCA Hall of Fame qualifications are, but if age is not a requirement, Jeremy would be a great candidate for consideration to the BCA's Hall of Fame.
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