Pool Night: Loosing to Ancients at the Dive

The Pool Team representing the Ancient Dive is marginal at best. The problem is that we have marginal attendance by our shooters at our games. The other problem is that we don’t shoot that well at home.

One of the major reasons for that is a pool table that is broken, un-level, with worn felt and poor maintenance. We have lost close games to both good and bad teams. We lost games we should have won and won some we should have lost.

Last week we shot against a local team from a local bar. I won’t mention the name of that bar for fear of ongoing embarrassment. The shooters on that team had me thinking about the stereotypes that we have and the thought processes we use. I had to rethink the drinking part of Pool Teams. I will drink a lot less when shooting, although that Wednesday night, I had two beers all night. I knew we were in trouble.

I knew the old man in his early eighties, ‘James’ has been shooting pool since he was sailor in WWII, that’s right, a combat veteran of IWO JIMA and the Naval invasion of OKINAWA. This old gentleman, almost medium height, had a smile and a kind word for everyone he talked to. Many of our shooters knew him. He was known to be formidable. But what freaked me out was one of his shooting partners.

A little old lady in her eighties, frail and gentle, Maggie had to work to climb to sit up on the bar chair. James told me that Maggie used to own a bar in Hempstead, recently taken by the Town by right of eminent domain. Maggie’s pool stick was taller than she was. The two other shooters were a gent in his late 40’s and the other was in his mid 30’s. The two frail old timers moved slowly but quickly figured out the pool table was fucked up.

The argument made to shoot that night is that we all are shooting on the same table. That didn’t give me any comfort because we were at home, these old timers probably shot on all kinds of fucked up tables, if so, they had an advantage on me. Sure enough, I was right. The little old lady used her pool stick like a straight razor in a bar fight. Maggie cut us up and down making shots that were reminiscent of the ‘Black Widow’ and James looked like Willie Mosconi giving lessons to shmucks.

We lost almost all of our games. I shot two good games and lost because the table kept rolling my shots to the left (even practice on the crooked table dictated I make good shots) and of course a scratch. I knew we were screwed when the sweet old lady didn’t drink anything, not even a soda. Maggie had medication in her purse to help her out, she wasn’t feeling to good, only good enough to emotionally abuse us with her pool cue. Sad fact is we deserved it.

James stayed after he and his team administered their ass kicking. The didn’t gloat and were quite polite. Besides, starting a bar fight with an little old lady would get you talked about for the rest of your life, if Maggie didn’t straight out kill you. James told me about WWII, his kids, this bar, and other teams in the league. I really appreciated James and Maggie, they are treasures as people and competitors, I considered it a privilege to shoot against them and talk to them.

That night a lot of regulars were in attendance, including the menhaters and the dayshift. Candy passed a comment on my shooting and our overall approach as a team. I don’t recall the exact words but to paraphrase it was something to this effect: “Good experience can’t give great experience a chance.” A crooked table did not favor the home team that night. I closed the place with Shelly.

So much for my happy Halloween.

Love.

RJ