Which player from the past(or even present) do you wish there was more footage of?
- Thread starter Positively Ralf
- Start date
Vernon Elliott playing banks. John B.
Cowboy Dennis
Banned
.
James Evans was supposed to be pretty good player. I wish I could see some of that.
I like everyone mentioned here....it makes me wistful...
...a schoolteacher asked me if I could watch any battle in history, which one to watch?
I said "Hannibal sacking Rome...."He said that's why we get along, that was my choice in
university."
Well, I did have the privilege of seeing Cowboy Jimmy Moore running balls at 14.1...
...he stood high off the cue, had a long slip-stroke, power to spare, and a delicate touch.
Jimmy, the Miz, and Swannee were my favorite 'feel' players.
oh, and Jimmy could make that style work on a 6x12 also...only George Chenier, the
North American snooker champion, could take a win with the Cowboy at snooker on the
big table....I would've loved to see George Chenier in his prime also.
Frank Taberski is another on my list...he was conservative and slow...
...but they couldn't beat him.
He wasn't there to entertain his opponents, he was there to send 'em to the rack.
...a schoolteacher asked me if I could watch any battle in history, which one to watch?
I said "Hannibal sacking Rome...."He said that's why we get along, that was my choice in
university."
Well, I did have the privilege of seeing Cowboy Jimmy Moore running balls at 14.1...
...he stood high off the cue, had a long slip-stroke, power to spare, and a delicate touch.
Jimmy, the Miz, and Swannee were my favorite 'feel' players.
oh, and Jimmy could make that style work on a 6x12 also...only George Chenier, the
North American snooker champion, could take a win with the Cowboy at snooker on the
big table....I would've loved to see George Chenier in his prime also.
Frank Taberski is another on my list...he was conservative and slow...
...but they couldn't beat him.
He wasn't there to entertain his opponents, he was there to send 'em to the rack.
Ah, yes, Frank "The Inexorable Snail" Taberski.
Cisero Murphy, Buddy Hall (the Rifleman), Louie Roberts (St. Louis Louie), Lou Butera (Machine Gun Lou)
I would have liked to see the guy from SF California, Searcy?
A buddy of mine in Memphis was good friends with him as young kids. This guy said he played all day Saturday and Sundays growing up with Searcy. I asked what did Searcy do? He said he played all day EVERYDAY when they were kids and hardly ever went to school....
JAM - Can you ask Keith what he knows on this guy?
Ken
A buddy of mine in Memphis was good friends with him as young kids. This guy said he played all day Saturday and Sundays growing up with Searcy. I asked what did Searcy do? He said he played all day EVERYDAY when they were kids and hardly ever went to school....
JAM - Can you ask Keith what he knows on this guy?
Ken
I will ask him.
On OnePocket.org, Grady Mathews said this in an interview about Denny Searcy: Well, the best one was probably Denny Searcy. I loved Denny and he’s still alive but barely; he had alcohol problems all of his life. Nobody could beat Denny playing nine-ball. When he was at the top of his game, nobody messed with Denny. The good players would never ask him to play any Snooker either; he played great. He played Cliff Thorburn. The Canadian guys came through and they beat everybody except Ronnie. Ronnie beat them but he made them play on a really tough table. It was so tough that if an object ball was frozen on the rail six inches from the pocket, you couldn’t make it. The only way you could beat Ronnie was to play safe but nobody was going to out-safe Ronnie. He was the greatest safety player that ever lived, even by today’s standards. Denny played Cliff Thorburn in Cochran’s on a six by twelve and they played for 40 hours and Cliff came out one game ahead. That’s how well Denny played. And he didn’t even own a Snooker cue; he didn’t know what a Snooker cue was!
Source: http://www.onepocket.org/MathewsInterview.htm
Thats a pretty good list..But you have 4 guys on there, who played about a ball under the other 4!..I will not name them, as it would probably start WWlll..
PS..I will say this..RA would be the only one, who probably could (and did) give almost anyone else on your list, a ball in one pocket..in a long session!
GoldenFlash
Banned
Danny Jones
Harold Worst
(I will buy)
Harold Worst
(I will buy)
It has always struck me as fairly amazing given that he was actually reasonably famous in his own time that one of Mosconi's straight pool championships was not filmed. It is truly a shame.
A long time ago (1988 or so), I went to West End billards in Elizabeth NJ, (I think that was the name) and they had this amazing in house tournament that had known pros like Mizerak and Hopkins playing in it. It was won by an older guy (possibly Cicero Murphy though he seemed older than Cicero would have been at the time, and I seem to remember them calling him Old Man Jesse or something like that) Anyway, he was just an amazing shot maker especially on long difficult cuts, and played sort of long position to take those shots when he could have loaded it up with something and gotten closer. But he just didn't miss.
I went up to him and asked him why he took those long shots and his answer was "Can you make that shot from 3 feet?" I nodded. "Well you should make it from 9 feet then"
Mosconi came up in the conversation at one point and he said that he had played with him and been around him for many years.
He said that Mosconi was far and away the best player and not just at straight pool. He said that Mosconi, especially in straight pool, shot so fast that you didn't have time to even register how difficult the shot he just made was. He could run entire racks of straight pool in a minute or so and get perfect on every shot. He said a lot of people had grown to think that Mosconi was not as good as players like Lassiter and Worst in 9 ball, but he said that was not true, that he could give those guys the "7 out and rape 'em" but Mosconi just wasn't really interested in the other games that much.
Just one man's opinion, but Mosconi was still pretty strong in his 70s in the Fats thing and then those Legends of Pool tournaments, but there is just nothing at all of him in his prime when he was essentially unbeatable. There was another guy I knew that said he know Mosconi from Ames and said the same things about him. He was right age but I have no perspective if anything he said was true.
I played Willie in some random event in LA where you paid $10 to play him a game of 9 ball, and broke and ran out on him. He dryly told me to "not let that go to my head". I still have a signed program from a Willie Mosconi tournament at Hard Times in Bellflower that Earl Strickland won.
Watching Willie play in those Fats matches is what got me interested in pool and I have always looked for whatever I could on him. But it seems all lost.
One more story from my West End trip. I saw Mizerak lose hundreds and hundreds of dollars betting some random dude with a house cue, on a straight in diagonal corner to corner shot with object ball in middle of table and cue ball inside the pocket. Mizerak kept jacking up and missing badly and this other guy was able to sort of slow roll in with topspin. It was clearly "his" shot but it was pretty fascinating to watch.
A long time ago (1988 or so), I went to West End billards in Elizabeth NJ, (I think that was the name) and they had this amazing in house tournament that had known pros like Mizerak and Hopkins playing in it. It was won by an older guy (possibly Cicero Murphy though he seemed older than Cicero would have been at the time, and I seem to remember them calling him Old Man Jesse or something like that) Anyway, he was just an amazing shot maker especially on long difficult cuts, and played sort of long position to take those shots when he could have loaded it up with something and gotten closer. But he just didn't miss.
I went up to him and asked him why he took those long shots and his answer was "Can you make that shot from 3 feet?" I nodded. "Well you should make it from 9 feet then"
Mosconi came up in the conversation at one point and he said that he had played with him and been around him for many years.
He said that Mosconi was far and away the best player and not just at straight pool. He said that Mosconi, especially in straight pool, shot so fast that you didn't have time to even register how difficult the shot he just made was. He could run entire racks of straight pool in a minute or so and get perfect on every shot. He said a lot of people had grown to think that Mosconi was not as good as players like Lassiter and Worst in 9 ball, but he said that was not true, that he could give those guys the "7 out and rape 'em" but Mosconi just wasn't really interested in the other games that much.
Just one man's opinion, but Mosconi was still pretty strong in his 70s in the Fats thing and then those Legends of Pool tournaments, but there is just nothing at all of him in his prime when he was essentially unbeatable. There was another guy I knew that said he know Mosconi from Ames and said the same things about him. He was right age but I have no perspective if anything he said was true.
I played Willie in some random event in LA where you paid $10 to play him a game of 9 ball, and broke and ran out on him. He dryly told me to "not let that go to my head". I still have a signed program from a Willie Mosconi tournament at Hard Times in Bellflower that Earl Strickland won.
Watching Willie play in those Fats matches is what got me interested in pool and I have always looked for whatever I could on him. But it seems all lost.
One more story from my West End trip. I saw Mizerak lose hundreds and hundreds of dollars betting some random dude with a house cue, on a straight in diagonal corner to corner shot with object ball in middle of table and cue ball inside the pocket. Mizerak kept jacking up and missing badly and this other guy was able to sort of slow roll in with topspin. It was clearly "his" shot but it was pretty fascinating to watch.
Last edited:
Gary Spaeth.