Nobody has said that John Schmidt is a greater player than Willie Mosconi, and i doubt that anyone believes that, especially John Schmidt.
What did happen is that John Schmidt had a run of 626, breaking a record set by Mosconi. He hasn't dominated the world of 14.1 like Mosconi, but he put in a lot of focused effort to surpass just one of the records that Mosconi established 77 years ago.
John Schmidt isn't the BCA league champion from the pool hall down the street. He's a professional player with world-calibre skills. One sign of that skill is his professional record. Another sign of that skill is that no one else has surpassed Mosconi's record in 77 years. And yet another sign of that skill is that he surpassed Mosconi's record with less 14.1 experience than Mosconi.
Once Mosconi surpassed Caras record by more than 200 balls, he probably felt there was no need in trying to surpass his own record. In the newspaper reports and in his book, he was clearly proud of the 526. But if Caras had run 550 the following year, do you think Mosconi would have tried to surpass it?
Everyone who's congratulated Schmidt for his accomplishment knows that it isn't the end of the story.
We all know of players out there who have skills equal or greater than Schmidt, and many of them have far less experience than him. Hopefully the coverage will encourage other players to try to surpass Schmidt's record.