The Pool Team: Wanted - One Good Shooter

Everyone knows that the Pool Team isn’t winning many games. We loose pretty regularly. We have some good shooters but one that is not so good. Yaega Lee and ERL are consistently good, Quiet Man, (part owner / partner of the dive) is a good shooter, he’s been on bad streaks. Hector fills in when asked and Ellie does too. Hector is a shark, Ellie has a few surprises when they do shoot. But we haven’t seen some of our “shooters” for a few weeks.

The Kids from Island Park came down to shoot and were in the dive at 7:45, fifteen minuets before the league sanctioned starting time. I waited till ERL showed up and we started with two shooters at 8:40 while the rest of the team staggered in. (Yaega works late and can’t get off before 8:30) Quiet man was a no show for the night so he regulars stepped up.

Hector won his games, ERL and Yaega do their thing well. Shelly was behind the bar and Daria stayed quite a while, even the Met Fan hung out until about 10:30. I attempted to solicit him to shoot for us. He smiled and politely declined. Daria can shoot real well too. But she was just chillin out on the video games up front. Daria said had been to dinner with the big shots at work and just wanted to kinda kick it for awhile. So she did.

But having Hector and Ellie available didn’t stop the inevitable. It was a night full of pitifully bad shooting or just real bad luck. I know that eventually that the bar will again put together a real fine team with great shooters. The Met Fan talked about some other regulars in the dive that were part of some awesome teams in the past, we could have used one this Wednesday Night.

We have great shooters, good shooters and others too bad to talk about. But what the fuck, I will anyway. We have one guy who starts out alright, but gimps all over the place and can’t shoot to save his life. It’s obvious he has problems standing up, that’s why he wobbles like a cross-eyed chicken and is so near sighted he can’t distinguish the numbers on a ball just one foot from the next. What’s so pathetic is that he can’t walk well, can’t see well, can’t stand without wobbling, but he shows up to shoot.

He looks normal, but watching him its obvious he’s all fucked up. Why the hell does he bother to show up? Yaega depends on the looser to be there on time so the rest of the team doesn’t forfeit the game when the good shooters get there ever so fashionably late. That’s not a good reason to have a bad shooter on the team, but it works for the dive. Even this night could have been a forfeit. But the wobbling old fool kept the event in play.

ERL asked him, ‘what the hell you on’ (he wanted some of whatever it was). The man was on two different nerve blocking medications and nitroglycerine tablets (chest pain to die for). The worn out faded shooter was also on a powerful blood pressure medicine, that when mixed with alcohol can cause a person to loose ones perception of time and distance. Yeah, what the fuck is this guy doing on a pool team? Who is this guy? This persistent, pain racked, piss poor shooting asshole is me, RJ.

After loosing a doubles game we should have won ( I missed the eight ball). I sat down at the bar. Shirley was pissed off at me because I bought no drinks that night, I was drinking ginger ale and she thought I was sleeping at the bar. Two out of three she got right. I wasn’t sleeping at the bar, I’m used to the pain getting so bad my eyes tear up without me noticing, when someone tells me about it, I put my head on my sleeve to wipe my face without notice.

“Wanted – One good, reliable pool player” inquire at the bar.

RJ