Interesting observation in an old Mosconi vs Fats video
- Thread starter Jeff Rosen
- Start date
Not many of us alive today ever saw either one play in his prime. Look at the videos of Fats and Mosconi playing. They both played pretty badly. We're watching them 25 years after Mosconi's 526 ball run. Both old men (1978...65 years old at that time was beyond their life expectancy for when they were born!).
It's really too bad that all we really have is basically just myth and legend now. Don Willis too.
These thoughts are my view of Fats and Willie also...^^^^^^^
...any pool hall would love Fats as a regular customer...Willie was only interesting when he
played. I played a bit in Fatty's home base, DuQuion IL...he lived in nearby Dowell...
...he was playing gin rummy every time I went there....but he was always responding to
everybody's questions....and was SOOOOO entertaining.
Fatty was not only kind to animals....he gave lots of pool players a helping hand.
Fats was an ambassador for the sleazy, lying, hustler culture of pool that has made it impossible for people like you to make a living at the game. After the match with Mosconi we hardly ever got to see serious straight pool on TV again, because Howard Cosell and ABC seemed to prefer the Fats circus to actual, you know, pool. Never before was a such a beautiful game so abused by its culture.
But hey, he was nice to animals.
I was a country kid....didn't grow up on big-city games.....
...but my enthusiasm for basketball was from seeing a movie about the Harlem Globetrotters....
...they were good AND entertaining....and had a lot of fun.
To me, that's what Fatty brought to the game
That is all we have of Fats but we have a lot more of Willie,
For Willie we have a record of absolute dominance of the game over all comers for more than 20 years. His exploits are very well documented. Only through ignorance would anyone put these two guys anywhere near the same plane as players.
I remember when Willie used to tour pool rooms and would play a match against one lucky local player. (I was one of them once). On one particular occasion, the local player got a little too close to Willie and Willie had to sweat a little to win the match. Instead of congratulating the challenger for a good performance, Willie was furious. He threatened the pool room owner if he ever put anyone up against him that played even remotely well, he would never come there again. Eventually, Willie ran out of rooms to go to.
Oh the other hand, Fats was a compassionate, kind person who loved to make fun of the elitist attitudes of some of the better players. I remember he used to make fun of them in their "monkey suits" at world championships. I remember him saying something about the monkey suits covering up who they really were inside.
If Fats and Mosconi were asked to shoot at everything, there was good reason. Here is a few paragraphs from an interesting Billiard Digest story titled "What Killed Straight Pool":
Ursitti conjectures that the 1973 U.S. Open dampened network TV's enthusiasm for straight pool - and even pool in general. Ursitti later helped promote the popular Fats-Moscone challenges..., but those came a few years afterwards.
"They used to televise the U.S. Open on ABC for years," recalls Ursitti. "For years, it was straight pool and only straight pool. For the die-hard fan, that's what you want to see. But it can get boring, and in 1973, they got into about 18 minutes of safety play. And of course, 18 minutes of playing safe is extremely hard to edit. What people want to see is offense. They want to see a lot of downtown shots. And so [the networks] abandoned it. CBS and ABC said, 'That's that. We're done.'"
The whole article is very good:
http://billiardsdigest.com/current_issue/aug_05/index.php
Ursitti conjectures that the 1973 U.S. Open dampened network TV's enthusiasm for straight pool - and even pool in general. Ursitti later helped promote the popular Fats-Moscone challenges..., but those came a few years afterwards.
"They used to televise the U.S. Open on ABC for years," recalls Ursitti. "For years, it was straight pool and only straight pool. For the die-hard fan, that's what you want to see. But it can get boring, and in 1973, they got into about 18 minutes of safety play. And of course, 18 minutes of playing safe is extremely hard to edit. What people want to see is offense. They want to see a lot of downtown shots. And so [the networks] abandoned it. CBS and ABC said, 'That's that. We're done.'"
The whole article is very good:
http://billiardsdigest.com/current_issue/aug_05/index.php
I don't doubt that Mosconi might be upset that a player got close to beating him, even beat him on rare occasion, or just played too many safeties. There's more than one account of him saying to an opponent, words to the effect, "They came to see me, not you."
However, I challenge you to provide anything to support your statement that, "Eventually, Willie ran out of rooms to go to." Anything at all.
As to the rest, Fats was a loud mouth braggart who fed stray dogs. He claimed to have beat "every living human for the gelt" when that was far, far from the truth. Fats wouldn't know the truth if it came up and bit him on his sizable carbuncle. He made fun of the true champions because he knew he could never be one of them. What was that famous line from McGoorty? oh yes, here it is:
"I'm sorry, but Minnesota Fats was never a top player. He was good, sure, but not tops. There have always been at least twenty people in the country who would have been glad to swim a river of shit to play Fats for money."
Lou Figueroa
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Not only that but he did it all across the country... every day... sometimes twice a day... in a different room every day... on different equipment.
Who does that?!
Lou Figueroa
If McGoorty had to scour the whole country to come up with twenty people that could beat
Fats....that makes him a top player....actually better than I thought.
Rack-Em-Up Billiards in Queens was one of the few final rooms Willie would go to because the owner, Bob Sieber, bent over backwards to please him --- That means travel expenses, an expensive dinner before the exhibition, a hefty fee, and a guaranteed inferior player for Willie to play. Bob told me that Willie cut out room after room because they refused to do what Bob did for him every time he came to town. In fact, the one time that a player almost beat Willie in Bob's room, Willie vowed never to come back, and it took Bob two years of coaxing to get him back.
I believe it's possible that Rack-Em-Up was the last room in New York that Willie would come to during a time when there were dozens of places in NY that would love to have him, but not on those terms.
Fats on the other hand was a riot in exhibitions. He was more down to earth and as a result more pool rooms were happy to have him. It was typical in one of his exhibitions to start out laughing and laugh continuously for 2-plus hours. That's what I witnessed. He was a great ambassador for the sport and a wonderful entertainer, and a heck of a nice guy. His trick shots weren't too shabby either. Nobody ever accused Fats of being a world class player. But he was world class in many other ways.
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Elaborate, please.
Wow, Lou...I had no idea you were so 'pro Mosconi'--'anti Fats!..Sorry, but with all his blustering and con, Fatty was ten times more entertaining and colorful than the 'easy to dislike' sourpuss Mosconi ever was!..Of course, looking at it through the eyes of a 'pool purist', there is little doubt Willie was the more gifted player. (at most games
) Did you read the article that someone posted earlier, about the eventual demise of straight pool, by R.A Dyer?..It includes a lot of input from Ursitti, Fels, and other noted pool authors--> http://billiardsdigest.com/current_issue/aug_05/index.php <--Its quite a lengthy read, but I found it very interesting, having been active in pool through a good part of it!
I had to wonder, in reading the article, if it had been Fat's championing and supporting 14.1, instead of "No personality Willie"..if the game may not have lasted a little longer?..But then there were many reasons for straight pools decline in popularity, the main one being of course, it is, and always has been, the most boring pool game on the planet!..It was always more fun to watch Fats miss most of his trick shots, (as he usually did) than it ever was to watch someone run 200 balls..:boring2: :boring2:
Speaking of being an ambassador and getting pool noticed, how many talk shows (Johnny Carson etc.) did Mosconi appear on?..Answer, very few!..Fat's, in his hayday, was on some popular talk show almost weekly, in fact he had his own show for a while!..I do remember seeing Willie once, on "What's My Line"!..(even I nodded off..and I'm a pool nut)..I do remember, he seemed a little miffed that nobody on the panel recognized him, or was even able to guess his line of work!..Thats probably why he rarely made TV appearances!
Its obvious by the flak you are getting in this thread, that you have made yourself an easy target, defending someone like Mosconi, against the most colorful and popular 'scaliwag' to ever pick up a cue stick!..There were very few characters like him, in any sport or game...We were very lucky to have him in ours! :thumbup:
PS..Be careful Lou..You don't want to start sounding sound this guy, do you? (at least you'll always spell better)
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Mosconi's schedule across the country was filled until the day he fully retired. He had a standard appearance contract that was negotiated by Brunswick or AJAY, whatever company he was representing. Perhaps, the room in Queens wanted something extra and that's why, in that instance, Mosconi was asking for dinner and whatnot as compensation. But there is no reason to believe those were standard clauses in his contract because he appeared at the same venues all across the country, year after year. I particularly doubt that you were aware of what terms he was on with the owners of "the dozens of places" in the city since there are accounts of him playing numerous exhibitions in New York, to include an exhibition match at Julian's on 14th Street that drew a particularly large crowd.
Fats put on a few exhibitions, nothing like the thousands of shows Mosconi gave for years. The ones he did give, folks enjoyed his patter and were willing to overlook him missing most of the trick shots in his repertoire.
Lou Figueroa
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Wow, Lou...I had no idea you were so 'pro Mosconi'--'anti Fats!..Sorry, but with all his blustering and con, Fatty was ten times more entertaining and colorful than the 'easy to dislike' sourpuss Mosconi ever was!..Of course, looking at it through the eyes of a 'pool purist', there is little doubt Willie was the more gifted player. (at most games
Did you read the article that someone posted earlier, about the eventual demise of straight pool, by R.A Dyer?..It includes a lot of input from Ursitti, Fels, and other noted pool authors--> http://billiardsdigest.com/current_issue/aug_05/index.php <--Its quite a lengthy read, but I found it very interesting, having been active in pool through a good part of it!
I had to wonder, in reading the article, if it had been Fat's championing and supporting 14.1, instead of "No personality Willie"..if the game may not have lasted a little longer?..But then there were many reasons for straight pools decline in popularity, the main one being of course, it is, and always has been, the most boring pool game on the planet!..It was always more fun to watch Fats miss most of his trick shots, (as he usually did) than it ever was to watch someone run 200 balls..:boring2: :boring2:
Speaking of being an ambassador and getting pool noticed, how many talk shows (Johnny Carson etc.) did Mosconi appear on?..Answer, very few!..Fat's, in his hayday, was on some popular talk show almost weekly, in fact he had his own show for a while!..I do remember seeing Willie once, on "What's My Line"!..(even I nodded off..and I'm a pool nut)..I do remember, he seemed a little miffed that nobody on the panel recognized him, or was even able to guess his line of work!..Thats probably why he rarely made TV appearances!
Its obvious by the flak you are getting in this thread, that you have made yourself an easy target, defending someone like Mosconi, against the most colorful and popular 'scaliwag' to ever pick up a cue stick!..There were very few characters like him, in any sport or game...We were very lucky to have him in ours! :thumbup:
PS..Be careful Lou..You don't want to start sounding sound this guy, do you? (at least you'll always spell better)
I don't think the likability of the two player is at issue. It would be a kindness to label Mosconi's conduct and temperament as "pr*ckly." But he was by far the better player and how he toured the country for decades -- well-dressed, well-spoken, and running 100 every night -- makes him the true ambassador of the game, not Fats.
Mosconi was probably on many more TV shows than Fats, from "What's My Line?" to Carson, Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, and a couple of live matches that were broadcast on ABC's WWoS. Fats did have his own TV show for a brief while. From McGoorty again, "Even playing somebody like Zsa Zsa Gabor on his television show he was afraid of getting beat, wouldn't let her shoot in peace, kept bothering her and distracting her all the time. Now, if a man is afraid to play fair with Zsa Zsa, how do you think he would have done against real players like Wimpy Lassiter, Washington Rags, or even Big-Nose Roberts?"
As to the flak, there are just a couple of folks that want to canonize Fats for his bluster and talent for attracting stray dogs. No biggie. Certainly he could be entertaining. That's beyond dispute. One more from McGoorty, "As a promotion man, that's different. He may very well be the all-time greatest promotion man, or con man. But a player? When he gets on television and says that he was the best, that everybody was afraid to play him, dozens of guys around the country jump out of their chairs and try to get to the toilet before they ruin the rug."
Lou Figueroa
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That's how I've always interpreted McGoorty's quote as well. No pool fan believes Fats was the best. The debate really is, how good was he? McGoorty puts a number to it, which seems to jive with comments I've read in books from R.A. Dyer and Jay Helfert.