THE RETURN OF THE HUSTLERS

It was thirty years ago this June, the anniversary of the return of the real Hustlers, Minnesota Fats and Fast Eddie Felson. We all remember the Oscar winning movie The Hustler, with Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats and Paul Newman as Fast Eddie Felson. A movie based on a book by Walter Tevis, who also wrote the book The Color Of Money, which sadly failed in the re-telling to the screen.

Walter Tevis was a pool player himself who played the money circuit along with Fast Eddie and knew the story of the real meeting of Minnesota Fats and Felson which didn't take place as the movie said in Ames Pool Hall in Philadelphia, but in Paulie Jasco's nightclub in Johnson City, Illinois, a small farm town in southern Illinois, maybe a hundred miles from St. Louis.

Paulie Jasco was a hood from Cicero Illinois, the town Al Capone called home on the far west side of Chicago, a town I lived in for nine months, playing pool in the "Social Clubs" for plastic chips, along side the poker tables where players also played with the same chips. The Cicero Social Clubs were for members only, where you could buy some chips for a small donation, then just play cards or pool with the boys, pay for the free drinks with the play chips, then if you wandered down the street to a little bar on Roosevelt Rd., they'd have a guy who would "collect" chips, strictly for a hobby, he'd pay a dollar for the blue ones, and five dollars for the red ones. I still can't figure out why he liked collecting those dirty old chips anyway.

Paulie retired from the social club business after a raid, by the Feds since the Cicero cops were very friendly to Paulie, and he to them. And for some reason, retiring to Johnson City (pop.250, in harvest season) was acceptable to the Chicago Feds as long as he stayed out of Cook County. So he built a night club down there amongst the cornfields of southern Illinois "If you build it, they will come." This was Field Of Dreams ala The Sopranos, since all the hoods would just drive down there to play in the cornfields where Paulie built a huge stone house and a "Social Club" next to the restaurant, and eventually added on a Social Club Inn for his guests.

Just 25 miles from Johnson City is a town called Frankfort, Ill. and in Frankfort just happened to live a guy named Minnesota Fats. A retired (as much as pool hustlers ever retire) pool hustler for the ages, from the 40's and 50's, who by the 70's was willing to retire from the road life as one of the greatest pool players of his time. His favorite saying was "you wanna talk, show me the cash." (A good thirty years before Tom Cruise said "show me the money").

But Paulie was also a hustler as well as an entrepreneur and a promoter, and he knew Fats and knew most of the pool hustlers at that time and knew the story behind the legends, and also happened to know Fast Eddie Felson (called Fast Eddie not because of his pool playing, but his way with the women) through the pool halls from Oakland California, where he came from, to Chicago, where he now lived.

Paulie owed money to the very people who would spend their weekends in Johnson City practicing Seven Card Stud 300 miles south of the Cook County line and dancing to a live band while the crickets chirped in the cornfields. And so he contacted Felson, and made him a deal he couldn't refuse, and what came out of that conversation was the World Hustler Tournament, with the main course to be a game of straight pool between Minnesota Fats and Fast Eddie Felson a return to the setting of the movie. If Felson won, he would tear up his marker and give him a thousand bucks, but what was better was the tournament he had planned around these two guys, and the players were by invitation only, and the players that showed up were like the Olympic games of pool.

Willie Mosconi, Alan Hopkins, Luther "Whimpy" Lassiter, Paul "Machine Gun" Williams and a nineteen-year-old kid from St. Louis named Keith Thompson. The tournament was set for June 1st. 1971 in the club that was transformed from a nightclub to a pool hall with the tournament set for Saturday night. But this wasn't any ordinary pool tournament. Paulie wanted only the best pool players and in 1971 that meant the road and big city hustlers who made their living by playing dead until the big money came around then jump up and bite the moneyman, and they didn't want their faces or names in the newspaper or on Wide World of Sports and so the invitations went out by private messenger to his buddies in Chicago and St. Louis, Kansas City and Denver and the west coast. Only a recommendation by the big named players would get you into the tournament.

My uncle who still lived in Cicero was invited to attend and since Johnson City was only a 30 minute drive from Carbondale Illinois where I attended school at Southern Ill. University so this would be a great chance for my uncle and I to do some important bonding over a pool table and a few beers and get to watch these guys play, but best of all was the one and only chance I'd ever get to see Minnesota Fats and Fast Eddie Felson play each other in straight pool like they did the day Walter Tevis wrote The Hustler into history.

Thursday night after classes I met my uncle at the pool hall in Carbondale. A small joint with 12 tables and a hot dog and beer stand in back. As we played pool an older guy walked in without much fanfare he pulled a leather satchel from under his arm and asked the cashier who the best player in the place was. He pointed out a local named Tony who I always thought was the best pool player I'd ever seen. From the satchel he pulled out a two-piece pool stick, beautiful birds eye maple butt and shaft, shiny nickel joint with a smooth white Irish linen wrap and the most beautiful mother-of-pearl and wood inlays I'd ever seen.

He racked the balls and Tony made the usual straight pool break shot, the man walked up to the table and ran 47 balls, the last 17 he picked off one handed jacked up with the other hand in his pocket. He announced to the few of us that he was headed to Johnson City for the tournament and he was extending the invitation for us to come watch, and though we were already headed there, he handed us some tickets to sit in the bleacher seats instead of standing in the walk-in area.

We headed up to Johnson City, which basically was a straight country road through the cornfields that grew 10 feet high until it finally opened up to a clearing. There in the clearing was a big house, white wash and picket fence with a large deck lined with yellow light bulbs and a huge sign that said Paulie Jasco's Club. Next to it was another smaller building and a parking lot that was quickly filling with cars and people in suits and even tuxedos, women in long evening gowns and minks, Cadillac's and Lincolns, Mercedes, and Park Avenues, mostly black, all clean and shiny and the place was alive and buzzing with the excitement of the event.

Once inside it was hard to believe they could fit six full sized Brunswick tables into the converted nightclub and still have room for a couple bars and room to walk around to watch the several games in progress. I knew the names but never seen the faces of the great pool players. There were guys in tuxedos with expensive looking two-piece sticks along with scruffy guys using house cues. They were definitely playing for money as the cash crossed the tables stuffed into the pocket for the winner to collect, a tradition in pool as though the cops wouldn't see the payoff and bust you for gambling if you stuffed the money into the side pocket.

But the show was in the next building. Walking in was like walking through a tunnel into a ballpark, as the room opened into the high bleacher seats surrounding two beautifully carved mahoganey Brunswick 1894 green felt tables.

We got our spots picked out and sat down for the show.

The lights went down as the tuxedo clad guy that resembled a linebacker walked to the tables and picked up a microphone and announced that he was Paulie Jasco and welcomed us to the First World Hustler 9 Ball Tournament. Race to seven, winner breaks. There were sixteen contestants and these guys were good. Most games were run-outs and the bigger names were actually the better players. Mosconi was getting old as was Fats who both were in their late fifties but they would run rack after rack so the years hadn't slowed them down at all. Then Paulie introduced a gentleman who was considered the greatest one-handed pool player ever. "From Omaha Nebraska, Omaha Fats".

There he was, the guy from the pool hall who was now wearing a tuxedo and walked out with his cue stick under his arm. He jacked it up and balanced the cue perfectly in his right hand and began to tell his life story as he threw the balls on the table and began to shoot one handed. Fifteen minutes later when Paulie finally walked on and told him he had to wrap up the exhibition so they could get the tournament started, had yet to miss a shot, he must have ran at least a hundred balls without missing one handed as he bowed to a standing ovation and all I could think was "this guy isn't even in the competition?"

The bleacher seats were moved in towards the pit where the two lone Brunswick's stood awaiting the players. The overhanging lights were lowered to just over the tables as the contestants were paired off to begin the 9 Ball tournament. The game was set for the first round race to 5 games. The first person to win 5 games would advance and the loser would revert to the loser bracket, which would give them another chance to get back into the tournament.

It was more difficult because you had to win more games than the winner bracket, but the winner of the loser bracket would play the winner of the winner bracket, so for some of the mediocre players, the preference was to drop to the loser bracket and try to play your way out of the hole. But the tournament was really second place to the real purpose of the evening. The straight pool playoff between Minnesota Fats and Fast Eddie Felson.

There were sixteen players in the tournament, so for a race to 5 considering the level of players, it took only an hour and a half to get to the final. The players tangled through their best and worst games except for one, Keith Thompson, a nineteen year old kid that played like he was possessed. He hadn't lost a game yet and by the final four players, two winners and two losers, although he was unknown to everyone, he was clearly the favorite against the aging Luther Lassiter (they called him Wimpy because of his love for hamburgers). Lassiter broke, pushed out for a safety on the 1 ball, and never stood up again as Thompson ran the seven games to win the tournament hands down.

The one table was cleared from the floor as the remaining seats were filled for the real reason everyone had shown up that night. The lights were turned off and a spotlight hit the empty doorway as Paulie announced "And now from Oakland, California, one of the greatest pool players ever, the subject of the Oscar winning 1960 film The Hustler, FAST EDDIE FELSON.

And out he came in a three-piece white suit and blue shirt and a blonde on his arm carrying his pool stick, this guy was slick. He walked around the table shaking hands and taking his seat as the lights went off again and the spotlight came up and Jasco announced "And the other subject of the film The Hustler, from Johnson City Illinois, MINNESOTA FATS" and the people went nuts. A standing ovation was given as the fat man came from the back room, no blonde, just a pool cue, and all three hundred pounds of greatness. He didn't stop to shake hands, he walked to the table and opened his case and removed the most beautiful hand made cue stick I've still ever seen. He turns to Felson and says "I'm here for the CASH, WHERE'S FELSON?"

Felson the showman, stood and waved as his girl removed the cue stick and placed it on the table. Jasco placed the balls in the rack and announced "This will be a game of Straight Pool to 125 for $5,000, winner take all, along with this beautiful trophy, and if there was any doubt as to the real outcome of the movie, all arguments will be settled here tonight "

Jasco placed the three-foot high gold trophy of the lone pool player on the table as the spotlight hit it and the $5,000 and Felson finally calmed down and started to look serious. The coin was flipped and Felson pushed two balls to the rail for his break shot. As if reading dialogue from the movie, Felson says, "I didn't leave you much Fats." Fats walked around the table looking at the rack like a surgeon looking over his patient before surgery, as if taking his cue from Jackie Gleason, who really took months studying the way Minnesota Fats would play pool, turned and answered "You left just enough." and with that slammed the cue ball into the rack, calling and making the 12 ball.

The rest of the 124 balls took Fats maybe an hour as he liked to talk to the audience between shots as if talking to himself out loud "Cash, that's all this is about, that's all I want to know, just give me the cash." The audience laughed and joked back with Fats and often-small conversations broke out between him and the spectators to the joy of everyone to know this was a real guy.

By the time the score was 100-Fats 13-Felson, Eddie walked up to Fats and said "I'll be in the bar if you need me." and the roar went up from the crowd as he walked out of the tournament area and to the bar for a few shots of whiskey while waiting for another chance to get to the table which came only once and lasted only one shot. Fats came back to the table and said, "This guy won't even let me sit down."

Fats walked to the rack and ran the next 25 balls for the game and tournament trophy and of course the $5,000. As soon as the game was over and Fats had picked up the cash, I rushed down from my seat to meet him and had a poster of the tournament I wanted him to autograph. As the person in front of me walked off I could see the fat man, he was beautiful, big clumpy hands and short fingernails and the air about him that just stunk of pool.

I murmured "Hello sir, can I" and with that he grabbed the poster, took a rubber stamp from the pool table and pressed it on an ink pad and then onto my poster, handed me back the poster and just said "Here ya go kid" and that was that.

When I got back in the car I unrolled the poster, seeing his rubber Minnesota Fats stamp on the poster thought "I wish I was so popular I could get my name on a rubber stamp instead of having to sign it by hand." Then I thought RUBBER STAMP!! Opened the window and tossed the poster and thought. "Screw him, he couldn't even sign by hand, a rubber stamp don't mean shit."

Then years later after he passed away, found out that poster was probably worth some big bucks since it was the first, last, and only World Hustler Tournament ever played since Paulie Jasco was busted in Johnson City for gambling a few months later, and never heard from again.

As to the rest of the players, Felson never did much; he was a drinker and couldn't keep his game up, the last I heard he owned a pool hall in Oakland. Willie Mosconi, probably the best pool player ever, just played for cash in the back room and didn't like crowds, he was the pool player you saw make all the Paul Newman shots in the Hustler, and taught Tom Cruise to play for the movie The Color Of Money, but since Cruise wasn't much of a player, Mosconi did much of the bank shots for him, a year later Mosconi passed away still one of the best and classiest of players.

As for Keith Thompson, he also was never heard from again, a one time phenomenon, or was he, it seemed as the players dropped out of the tournament in front, they retired to the back room where they played each other for ten times more cash than was up for the tournament. As for me, I stuck with pool over the years and got pretty good at it, winning the 1983 and 1989 Top Shooter 9-Ball tournaments in Las Vegas, but after the first win, and even after the second win, was never asked by ANYONE for my autograph on anything except the check for the entry fee. And here I had the rubber stamp all picked out just incase.

-Ken Pearlman