Ceulemans vs Shorty

3kushn

3kushn

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Bob Byrne donated some of his memorabilia to the USBA. I just started going through some of it and found a file of score sheets of Ceulemans in the 1978 Las Vegas Tournament. This is when the famous match vs Boston Shorty who claimed Ceulemans wouldn't be able to hold up to American Safety Play.

You will notice discrepancies in the final score and the ending score. Unless someone pipes in and teaches me how to read the card. Never the less, Shorty got trounced. Boston-Shorty-vs-Cuelemans-1978.jpg
 
Shorty got an equalizing inning. They each had 26 innings. Shorty had 10 in 26 for an average of 0.3846. The 60 innings for Shorty is wrong.

At the start of the match Shorty is reported to have asked, "You wanna play for somethin?"

Here is my copy of that sheet (with Shorty's final 2 not marked):

Ceul02m.gif
 
Here is the chart for that tournament. As I recall, the round robin had an interesting scheduling setup. In the first 6 rounds, the top six players each played each of the bottom 6 players. In the last five rounds, the top players only played each other (and the bottom 6 only played each other).

Ceul01m.gif
 
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3kushn said:
This is when the famous match vs Boston Shorty who claimed Ceulemans wouldn't be able to hold up to American Safety Play.
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I was sitting w/Allen Gilbert when Shorty turned to him to say "Let's see how Ceulamans does against a dose of good ol' American oooiiiiiillll" (please envision Shorty's accent when he said 'oil'). Not sure of the entire sentence's accuracy, but I remember the "good ol' American oil" like it was yesterday. Did he get razzed after the game being beaten 60-10.

hahahahahaha

Thanks for Bob donating stuff and the memories.

Dave
 
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12squared said:
I was sitting w/Allen Gilbert when Shorty turned to him to say "Let's see how Ceulamans does against a dose of good ol' American oooiiiiiillll" ...
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A surprising statistic from that tournament is that Ceulemans had more or less the same average from other players' leaves (his first shots of his innings) as he had from his own leaves. This is astounding considering how often he appeared to be playing position on his shots.
 
Bob Jewett said:
A surprising statistic from that tournament is that Ceulemans had more or less the same average from other players' leaves (his first shots of his innings) as he had from his own leaves. This is astounding considering how often he appeared to be playing position on his shots.
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interesting, thanks. How do you know so much? ;)
 
12squared said:
interesting, thanks. How do you know so much? ;)
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When your mean boss at the magazine demands a column every month for twenty years, you accumulate stuff, like barnacles on whales. Here is the applicable part of that column from 1996:

One other thing we can check from the score sheets is how well Ceulemans plays position. To do this, compare his scoring percentage from his own leaves versus the shots his opponents leave him. Having seen him play position and his opponents do their best to leave him nothing, I'd guess 75 percent and 50 percent for the two accuracy percentages. Here are the raw numbers so you can do the calculation yourself as homework: his own leave, 414 of 639; his opponent's leave, 238 of 383.​

For those who have forgotten how to do division, the two percentages are 64.8% scoring from his own leave and 62.1% from his opponents' leaves. He was 80% on his 10 break shots which I think I counted separately.

CropperCapture[74].jpg
 
3kushn.... Bob Byrne donated some of his memorabilia to the USBA
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Tom, does this mean USBA will hold an auction, or Display them as an Exhibit, Maybe at the Super Expo or 3C National Tournament.
 
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