the glasses are eyelits, a paid sponsor.
the glove i am sure is the same thing.
earl often times says that he can't win, and it is a reverse psychology move. earl has many 'moves' that he puts on his opponents, everything from verbal absurdities like being too old, to verbal abuse to the opponent and the crowd, to criticizing the equipment to the point where his opponent doesn't see how he could possibly run out on it. Also, he has this thing that he does when it's humid, like it always is at the us open, he actually 'dries' the cloth and balls with his towel to make his opponent think there is something wrong with the equipment. don't get me wrong, earl is one of the greatest champions of all time, but watch his antics during a match, especially if he's playing a friend of yours or someone you know, and you will definitely lose alot of respect for him.
having said that, perhaps the tail can wag the dog like kid delicious has done against earl. danny's slow play makes the pearl so angry that he cannot bring it together and beat him. not to take anything away from danny, he's a great player, jam up for the dough and when the heat is on, but c'mon, this earl strickland, multi us open champ, multi world champ. most here would agree that as strong as delicious is, he's not the favoriate against the pearl, but, he wins. hey earl, don't dish out the moves if you can't handle them yourself.
i saw a nice display of earls antics against a great player from vineland, nj a few years ago at valley forge. earl could see that he was in danger of losing to this man(rightfully so) and started with the full barage of moves, holding nothing back including cursing at the hometown field of people cheering for Garcia. Earls antics earned him a win in that match, and 2 dozen more fans that lost total respect for him. btw, the game was 8 ball, best 2 out of 3 races to five. Earl was the stone cold underdog, and he realized this and thats when the bag of tricks came out. Earl knows Jose, Jose whooped him playing straight pool at the NYC straight pool tournament at amsterdam years ago. Yet, as part of his antics, he refered to Jose as a 'B' player. Those of you who know who I'm talking about know that Jose not only is not a B player, but is subject to defeat any world class player playing 8 ball, 9 ball, 10 ball, 14.1, whatever. I was an earl fan since i was a little kid, right up until I saw what he did to jose. If anyone here has ever watched Jose play, they will know exactly what I am about to describe. Jose is a straight pool player, hmm, lemme rephrase that, a straight pool purist. He plays the game in the time honored fashion, tap here, nudge there, never hits a ball hard. He plays all games just like that, tap here, nudge there, and next thing you know, you're outta the tournament. Well, this drove earl nuts, he couldnt believe that jose was rolling all of these balls in, running out and beating him. And, on top of that, he couldn't believe that myself and and 18 other jose fans were cheering for him everytime he won a game and that nobody cheered for earl. so, he turns around to us and says, and i quote, 'this b player runs around the table tapping all the balls in and you cheer for him like he's a world champion'. lol earl, you didn't make any friends that day.
sorry, didn't want to make this into a jose garcia thread, but thats my earl story.
