Where Would Best Players Rank?

[drivermaker]

Since there will never be agreement in any sport regarding who the greatest was or were of all time, lets look at it from another perspective. Where would the greatest of years past rank among today's players? Take Greenleaf, Mosconi, Balsis, Caras, Crane, Lassiter, Kelly and even go up to Mizerak, Hopkins, Rempe, and Sigel. Would they still be winning the top world tournaments or be having to scramble in Joss, Pechauer, or other regional tours to come out on top against the players of today and within the last 5 years?

On the flip side, when 14.1 was the game that decided world champions, how would players of today have fared against them?

Hal is the only guy I know of that was around when ALL of them played and was there to see it in person. Hopefully he'll chime in....

 

[sjm]

Since there will never be agreement in any sport regarding who the greatest was or were of all time, lets look at it from another perspective. Where would the greatest of years past rank among today's players? Take Greenleaf, Mosconi, Balsis, Caras, Crane, Lassiter, Kelly and even go up to Mizerak, Hopkins, Rempe, and Sigel. Would they still be winning the top world tournaments or be having to scramble in Joss, Pechauer, or other regional tours to come out on top against the players of today and within the last 5 years?

On the flip side, when 14.1 was the game that decided world champions, how would players of today have fared against them?

Hal is the only guy I know of that was around when ALL of them played and was there to see it in person. Hopefully he'll chime in....

Well, Drivermaker, you've touched on my favorite topic for a thread, comparing the players of today with the old masters. I've seen every great straight pooler and nine baller since Mosconi, so I do have my opinions on this.

In 14.1, Greenleaf, Mosconi, Sigel, Crane and Mizerak are the standards by which all others must be judged. Could today’s stars have played 14.1 at their level if it was the game they focused on? I’m inclined to say yes. I believe the high level at which today’s top pros play the game of one pocket is a clue, as one pocket may requires nearly as much touch, finesse, creativity and strategy as 14.1. Though most of the professional stars don’t play a lot of straight pool, the pocketing and position skills they have shown in nine-ball along with the aptitude for precise speed control and superior planning they have shown in one pocket lead me to believe they have all the raw materials to be great 14.1 players. Which of today’s stars would be the best 14.1 players? Aside from highly accomplished 14.1 players John Schmidt, Tony Robles, and Ralf Souquet, I’d guess Efren Reyes, Alex Pagulayan, and Jeremy Jones could all be amazing at 14.1. To sum, as so many of today’s players play all the games, they possess the skills to play top notch 14.1, and would compete well with the old masters if they chose to focus on 14.1.

In 9-ball, Archer, Strickland, Reyes, Sigel and Hall probably set the standard. Lassiter’s nine ball pedigree is well known, but I leave him off that list because he never played Texas Express. Luther, arguably the best ever at the “one shot shootout” version of nine ball, would obviously have been a great nine baller today but I think Texas Express would have been less to his liking. Mosconi, often recognized as the greatest position player of all time, and also possessing great touch, would have been a natural. I think Balsis, a stone faced killer and lethal pocketer in his day, might have played nine ball something like Fong Pang Chao. All of them, in my opinion, could have competed with the great nine ballers of today if they focused on nine ball. I don’t know enough about Greenleaf, so I’ll decline comment on him. I’m not as sure that Crane, Caras, Kelly and some of the others would have been capable of playing nineball at the level of today's superstars.

All things considered, I think that today’s players would likely have more success playing 14.1 than their predecessors would have had playing Texas Express nine ball. Of course, we'll never know, but it's fun to consider the matter.

 

[recoveryjones]

Grady Mathews talks about the comparison of old players vs the new players at the end of one of his pool instructional videos.Conditions were different then as they use what he calls mud balls compared to the plastic ones of today.I think he says that the mud balls didn't break up as easily(breakshots in straight pool) however they were a little easier to control in other facets of the game.

In summary he said that the players of today (in general) are better players. He said that player of the past such as Mosconi, Greenleaf etc etc could do well against players of today, however, they wouldn't dominate like they did against their era because back then there was only a handful of dominate players and today there are so many great players.

I can see his point regarding the large scope of good players today as pool is much more international with the Chinese Taipai, the Philipines, Great Britian, etc etc all being added into the mix as to when Mosconi played were most of the greatness just came out of the USA.RJ

 

[drivermaker]

In summary he said that the players of today (in general) are better players. He said that player of the past such as Mosconi, Greenleaf etc etc could do well against players of today, however, they wouldn't dominate like they did against their era because back then there was only a handful of dominate players and today there are so many great players.

I can see his point regarding the large scope of good players today as pool is much more international with the Chinese Taipai, the Philipines, Great Britian, etc etc all being added into the mix as to when Mosconi played were most of the greatness just came out of the USA.RJ

I think that can be said about all sports because countries all over the world are heavily involved and sinking money into their athletes. Look at the ass whuppin' the USA basketball team took in the Olympics to only get a bronze and a number of other events that used to be taken for granted. In golf the US players are getting thumped on their own tour by foreign golfers and there are so many great ones everywhere.

I still think the great players of yesterday would still be right up there and the great players of today would have been at the top back then, mainly because they all have HEART. They would have done whatever it took to rise to the occasion in their play. The # of tournament wins for all of them would have been smaller because it would have been distrubuted amongst more of them. But, they all would have won their share. The heart separates the real champions and the greatest from the rest.

 

[Williebetmore]

I don’t know enough about Greenleaf, so I’ll decline comment on him. I’m not as sure that Crane, Caras, Kelly and some of the others would have been capable of playing nineball at the level of today's superstars.
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SJM,
I know even less about Greenleaf than you, but of course that will not stop me from commenting. I have always found it interesting that Willie Mosconi (to me unquestionably the greatest) was always so bitter, and in his biography never even considered the possibility that other players were even close to his level of skill. The exception was Greenleaf (who was basically his role model at a young age) - Mosconi admits to the possibility that the young Greenleaf may have been as good or better than him. This is an admission he made about no other players.

I also agree with D'maker that any of the top players today could become highly competitive with the greats if they were practicing 8 hours a day for 20 years and playing large numbers of highly competitive tournaments a year as the old school players did. The reason - they are driven to succeed whatever the game.

I have always liked the quote by Nick Varner while commenting on a Johnny Archer straight pool match. In response to a question about Johnny's inexperience he said something like, "I think you will find that you will have a lot of success in this 14.1 if you just never miss a ball."

 

[sjm]

I have always found it interesting that Willie Mosconi (to me unquestionably the greatest) was always so bitter, and in his biography never even considered the possibility that other players were even close to his level of skill. The exception was Greenleaf (who was basically his role model at a young age) - Mosconi admits to the possibility that the young Greenleaf may have been as good or better than him. This is an admission he made about no other players.

I think it's worth noting that Greenleaf, who was a major celebrity in his day, was very kind to the young Mosconi, and did exhibitions with Mosconi when Willie was only seven years old. The attention Greenleaf gave the young Mosconi resulted in Willie's earliest notoriety, and probably explains, at least in part, Willie's respect and admiration for both the man and the player.

 

[Williebetmore]

I think it's worth noting that Greenleaf, who was a major celebrity in his day, was very kind to the young Mosconi, and did exhibitions with Mosconi when Willie was only seven years old. The attention Greenleaf gave the young Mosconi resulted in Willie's earliest notoriety, and probably explains, at least in part, Willie's respect and admiration for both the man and the player.

SJM,
Mosconi and Greenleaf also did 2 long, cross-country exhibition matches (to several thousand balls apiece). In the first (with Greenleaf in his prime and Mosconi still very young) Greenleaf won (the only long match Mosconi ever lost). In the second a fading Greenleaf was trounced by a Mosconi entering his prime (details of both tours in Mosconi's autobiography). Mosconi regrets never matching up in their primes (he was a competitive little SOB).

On another note, Greenleaf was the only top player who preferred side pocket break shots (at least according to my father's friends - a notoriously unreliable set of pool bums). One of my straight pool books also mentions that he preferentially shot the side pocket breakers - they just make me nervous.

 

[JustPlay]

I think RecoveryJones touched on a topic that nobody has mentioned when comparing the past and the present pool players that is the massive amount of championship quality of players of today. when Mosconi (and the rest of that era played there were about a few dozen top players (at least that were known to play well), in the 60's-80's (Rempe, Mizerak, Sigel etc era) there were at least a couple of hundred known top players (I stress the fact that alot of road players didn't expose themselves in tournaments) example, when Mike Sigel won his few US Open 9-ball championships there were only 16-32 players at each tournament and that was it. Now from about 1985 ish (think color of money) to the present each major tournament has at least 128 to 256 (us open( to over 400+ players (think DCC), there are thousands of players WORLD WIDE playing today. And as everyone would agree they are fearless of one another gambling or in tournaments.

I really think that todays players (with modern technology IE accu stats, training videos, pool schools etc...) will out play the players of the past. In a couple of years of solid dedication to pool a C player can become a top A player in that short of time and a couple of years on the road they could become a champion. Time has created a better mouse trap!

 

[Celtic]

According to afew books I have read from the past players it was alchohol that stopped Greenleaf from dominating. He supposedly drank a ton and became dependent on alchohol such that he could not shoot at all without it. Once he was well sauced he was supposedly as slick as anyone had ever seen on the table. McGoorty's book is alot less one sided compared to Mosconi's book when it comes to Greenleaf, but he takes nothing away from the guy.

When trying to compare the great players of old to the new greats you kind of run into a problem. The old players would be playing with new equippment, they would be growing up learning a new game, they would grow up with that much more competition and the different scene. If Greenleaf was born in 1970 he would have been brought up in a very different era, had he played pool he would be awesome, world class for sure but he would be a different player then the guy who played in the early 20th century. Same with Mosconi. Take a modern player, Archer maybe and put him back in the old days, born in 1930. Does Johnny Archer then compete against Mosconi and go toe to toe with him taking into account the very different scene he comes up in? I think the old time players would be even better had they been born to play in todays era, and by the same token you can take any great player today and had that player been born in the past and brought up in the pool scene of old they would not have played as strong as they do in this age. What is comes down to is if a person has in them the ability to dominate pool in any era they probably would dominate it in whatever era they are born into. Would Mosconi dominate the scene today if he was born 20 years ago? Yeah, the kid was a natural and would have been running racks at 6 years old, by the time he was 16 years old he would be pro level, by the time he was 20 he would have been world champion level. Given his natural skill and todays breeding grounds he would have been scary to watch in todays day and age. We have not seen such a natural in this era, Pagulayan may be the closest we have but he is afew years behind where Mosconi would have been and where he was. Mosconi would have been a teenage world champ in 9-ball if he were born in 1980 or so and would have won a huge number of events.

To the person who put Sigel in the question, why not simply keep in mind Sigel dominated pool during an era when Strickland was playing, Archer was playing, Varner was playing, Hall was playing, CJ Wiley was playing, Reyes was playing, ect. He was the top seed and most dangerous player in an era not so long ago, and alot of the players he was above are still considered some of the top players in the game. Sigel would have been the top player of his era no matter when he played, that guy knew how to win. Seeing him and Mosconi go each other in their prime would have been amazing, the clash of ego would make for some unreal action.

 

[nail]

Since there will never be agreement in any sport regarding who the greatest was or were of all time, lets look at it from another perspective. Where would the greatest of years past rank among today's players? Take Greenleaf, Mosconi, Balsis, Caras, Crane, Lassiter, Kelly and even go up to Mizerak, Hopkins, Rempe, and Sigel. Would they still be winning the top world tournaments or be having to scramble in Joss, Pechauer, or other regional tours to come out on top against the players of today and within the last 5 years?

On the flip side, when 14.1 was the game that decided world champions, how would players of today have fared against them?

Hal is the only guy I know of that was around when ALL of them played and was there to see it in person. Hopefully he'll chime in....

drivermaker:
Don't forget Cranfield! I know he dosen't get mentioned often, but that is because he didn't play pool for a living like most of the other pros. He had a steady job all his working life and a family to care for. He considered the income from pool as too unsteady. Remember, he is the only player ever to win the title at all the levels of competition of 14.1. The National Junior, National Amateur and World Professional titles. He was a child prodegy at pool. He could run a hundred balls before he was a teenager. It was said that he was to be the next Greenleaf. Of the players he played against, there were only three that he couldn't beat consistantly: Greenleaf, whom he never beat (Babe was a child when playing him), Mosconi, whom he could only beat about 25% of the time, and Crane, whom he beat about 50% of the time ( Crane fared better in the tournaments and Babe fared better in the exibitions. Babe considered Greenleaf to be the best and I think copied his style of play (except for the side breaks). He had the utmost regard for Mosconi's game but he gave the edge to Greenleaf. Babe may be the high run king. He had a 768 and 40+ runs of over 400. Granted, most of these were practice sessions. Just recently someone told me they saw him run 3 consecutive 300+ runs on three seperate tables (that might be considered around 1000 balls pocketed without a miss). Personaly, if you ranked players by ability, I think Babe would be in the top five. I could die in peace if we could get all the great players of the past and present to play against each other in their prime and find out how they ranked against each other in 14.1. The only drawback to this is that we would have nothing left to argue about. How boring!!!!!
Best Regards
nail

 

[drivermaker]

There have been a lot of good points made and this has been touched on already, but I'd like to reiterate it again. And that has to do with the games that were played and are played that kind of skews the thinking between the past and the present. 9-ball versus 14.1

When you see men and women from all the different tours running multiple racks of 9 ball, you immediately think that there's no way in hell that the player's of yesteryear were even close to being in their league. Maybe the only one that could have ranked was Lassiter, but you see that white hair even when he was younger and you immediately write him off as being a geezer and over the hill.

But 14.1 is a different story and ALL of the gentlemen listed on this thread were veritible robotic machines when it came to the game. I have an accu-stats tape of Efren and C.J. Wiley playing 14.1 and all I can say is that it's FAR from stellar play on both of their parts. I also have the highest regard for Efren as being one of the greatest, and C.J. was no slouch before he decided to become a businessman. In 14.1 the older guys were unbelievable to see in person. I saw Crane sometime in the early to mid 70's when he was already on a downhill slide and I just walked away shaking my head. When I think back on that tournament victory, I can't see how many of today's players could have beat them at the game.

I'd like to issue a challenge to all of today's younger players here on the forum, and that's to play 14.1 for a month in between the 9 ball and see what your high run is. Then go back and look at some of the record books to see what they were doing on shitty cloth and with lousy balls in tournament after tournament. It's a real eye opener. The young player I have the highest regard for right now that I think is still coming into his own is John Schmidt. Look out for him down the road....

 

[sjm]

The young player I have the highest regard for right now that I think is still coming into his own is John Schmidt. Look out for him down the road....

Right on, Drivermaker, John Schmidt is a straight pool machine and supposedly ran a 420 recently. Regining BCA Open champion Tony Robles is also a world beater in 14.1. In the 2000 US Open Straight pool event, Robles ran a 148 against Archer and a 126 against Immonen. My best guess is that Tony has run over 200 about ten times. I've seen him win a race to 200 on the first inning twice, once against me and once against San Souci.

Drivermaker, the straight pool match that would knock your socks off would be Schmidt vs Robles. If only we were so lucky........

 

[Renegade]

Now this is one of the most polite and informative threads I have ever read. There was no bashing, hckling and name-calling. All in all a pretty civil and conservative discussion. So much so that it gets boring. hehe. But seriously, for someone who grew up watching reruns of Mizerak vs. Wanderone, I am thankful for the wonderful insights posted here especially regarding the old greats of the game. I never thought that pool had such a broad and colorful history. These discussions supplement what I only read in pool books. Speaking of which, there should be more of these. As well as reruns of the greats in action (were there televised games back then?)!