Lucky: We arrived in Lincoln City, Oregon on a sunny day, which, for March, was pretty lucky. And Lucky was excited to be out of the desert and at the beach. He said he’d already heard a lot about this Western BCA tournament from a friend who also was attending, and he’d been waiting to feel good enough to check it out. I got him settled in his room – he always has to hang up all his shirts and line up his boots in the closet -- and then brought him over to the casino. I’ve been there so many times, I see people I know before I even get in the door. I stopped to say hi to some of the Seattle players, but when I turned to introduce Lucky to them, he was nowhere to be found. I made my way on upstairs and there he was – said he’d come up the back way to avoid the smokers. How he knew that I don’t know… probably me telling him stories from the past. Anyway, I took him inside the event room, and he was actually taken aback. “I’ve seen a lot of pool tournaments,” he said, “but this is huge for a local amateur event. This looks like a lot of fun!” Well, he was right. 1,200 plus players and the biggest in the country? Yeah, it’s fun. I had to go check in at the podium, since I was scheduled to work the event, and last I saw Lucky he was wandering off down the room. I stopped by his room later that night to see what he had to eat and find out what he’d been up to all day. He said after we parted ways he walked up and down the aisles for a while and marveled at all the young players and remembered those good old days, and then he thought he saw someone from his past-- “Donald Duck.” I knew he meant Don Wirtaman, so after I grabbed a deli sandwich out of Lucky’s fridge, I settled in to hear his story. He said he stopped at the table where Don was practicing, and when Don finally noticed him, he said his eyes lit up like a Christmas tree and he dumped his cue on the table, scattering all the balls around, and came over to greet Lucky with a slap on the back and a long hand shake, saying, “You son of a gun! Where you been all these years?” Lucky said they were both acting like it was like a high school reunion or something. Come to find out they first ran into each other when Wirtaman was an 18-year old kid thinking he could take on Lucky. He said the way Don told it he beat Lucky out of a bunch of dough. Lucky laughed and said Don had a little bit of amnesia about that. He almost choked on his food, he was guffawing so hard. “Yeah,” he barely could get it out, “He won a whole fifty… fifty… fifty cents!” He said Don couldn’t beat him playing pool so he tried switching to flipping coins. I guess you just have to decide for yourself what really happened. They reminisced about some of the old days, remembering Old Man Everett and Don Watson, two great Northwest pool players they both had come up against and who were almost as tough as Jimmy Caras ever was. Lucky said Everett used to give Willie Mosconi fits. Everett beat him at 9-ball and 1-pocket and because Mosconi couldn’t dominate, he’d duck him, a story only a few ever knew. Lucky remembers watching fortysome years ago when Portland Don Watson and Bucktooth matched up at Cochran’s in ‘Frisco. Bucktooth asked Watson to play 9-ball, and with all the side bets, over a $100 a game was on the line, a chunk of change back in the 70’s. Anyway,
Lucky and Tsunami
Lucky said Watson stepped up and ran eight racks in a row and looked like he could run eight more, or just never miss. He said Bucktooth’s friend and backer stood up and said it was time to go home and Bucktooth turned all red in the face, and stuttering a little bit, said, “No! I haven’t got to shoot yet! Wait ‘til, ‘til it’s my turn!” Bucky’s friend said, “Ah… Yeah, that’s why we’re leaving… now.” Don told Lucky he was invited to play in this Western BCA Grand Master Challenge and would be in a match a little later on. So Lucky said well, you better keep practicing then, but Don said he wasn’t going to get any better in the next half hour, so he packed up his gear and took Lucky over to check it out. My ears perked up and I said to Lucky, didn’t you see that whole thing was on live streaming and Lucky said, yeah, but he found seats off camera. I knew he never liked getting his picture taken. Anyway, he said there was some young kid attracting a lot of attention in another match over there, and I knew he was talking about Chris Byers. Lucky said they sat down and immediately he started hearing a lot of whispered comments from the spectators, young and old. “It was really something,” Lucky said. “Here was this young kid playing some crazy pool and people’s jaws were just dropping everywhere. You don’t see that every day.” Lucky said he looked composed for someone so young but at one point he missed a shot and showed his disgust. I said, “Well, he’s only 16. He’s bound to blow up a little!” Lucky said “Well, he reminds me of me at that age. He’s a competitor. When I was twelve, I was playing this guy my father knew from Mississippi, gambling with Pop’s money. I’d run out, then he would run out. It went on for a while like that and then I got frustrated that he kept firing back at me. I tried to insult him. I swung my stick in the air. I stomped my Pop’s cue on the floor. I kicked the chair. My Pop taught me a serious lesson that day. He yanked me aside. He pulled a little hand mirror out of his jacket pocket and shoved it in my face and he said, ‘Look! Who are you? Are you a decent human being or are you this guy?’ He said I needed to regain and keep inner control or he was going to pull me out of the game and that would be the end of it for all time. The guy I was playing was watching and was amused, and I was filled with shame. I’ll never forget it and I never lost my composure or my true self again.” We were quiet for a while after that. Lucky was in a dream state, staring out the window at the ocean, looking a little disconnected… with some look on his face like I’d never seen before. Then he said in a soft voice, “I truly hope that kid will stay in school and graduate. You need much more in this world than to be great at one thing.” Then the news on TV took over and the spell was broken. There was a huge earthquake in Japan and in several hours we might be in for a tsunami right outside just feet from where we were sitting! For the rest of that night we were hearing all kinds of rumors. We even saw people right there on our floor pack up all their stuff and leave in the middle of the night! People were running back and forth with new reports of what
www.TheBreakMagazine.com
was supposed to happen. Everyone was glued to their computers or their tv’s or their cell phones. Players’ families were calling them all night long, and the team event that was supposed to start the next morning was looking like it might be a disaster zone worse that the emergency shelters that were going up at the local high school. I was imagining people sleeping on the pool tables. Most of the casino staff went home to be with their families. Finally, Lucky and I and my wife Sassy decided to stick it out on the hotel’s 3rd floor, but we were awake all night. The tsunami did hit in the early dawn hours, but it was nothing more than a fast low tide and a fast high tide, and then poof, it was gone, but its memory and the awareness of what it caused across the ocean was raw in everyone’s minds. After the event, where Dan Louie won the Grand Masters Challenge and Josie Leroy the Women’s Masters, we heard solemn news of a fallen pool player, Leo Newberry. We went to his service to pay our respects, although Lucky sat in the back by himself. I guess he gets kind of choked up about stuff like that. But about Leo, he was one of a crop of teenage prodigies of 70’s and created a huge reputation for himself throughout the years around the Northwest, California and Arizona. To those who knew him well, he had a big heart, but his competitors saw him a little differently. Lucky recalled watching a $20 ring game in California in the late 70’s or early 80’s where some of the best players around -- Mike Sigel, Paul Brienza, Dave Piona and Richy Ambrose -- were going at it. Leo started out with a five-pack and a couple games later put another on another 5-pack. He won a bunch of games in between everyone else and topped that with a 6-pack, which busted up the game. Leo got all the money. When he was in gear he was absolutely fearless. He once said the only secret to 9-ball is to never miss the 9. When he was thirteen years old, hanging out at the pool hall and skipping school, the vice principal came in and told him that he was going to suspend him if he didn’t get back to school right now and Leo said, “Well, sir, you don’t understand that I don’t want to go to school. I’m a pool player.” Anyway, after Leo’s funeral, I kissed the wife goodbye and Lucky and I headed up to a mountain ranch in the Cascades to chill for a while. Lucky had made it through a lot of social stuff and was pretty worn down and tired. We’ve been up here almost a week now, and I’m sitting here looking at it snow. I’ve gotten away from writing some, since the owner here has a really nice table and a bunch of good pool videos. This has been a great opportunity to buckle down and put in some serious practice time, but we’re planning on heading out again tomorrow or the next day. Lucky has a route all mapped out, and eventually we’ll land in Vegas and for one thing check out the Pro 9-ball tournament at the Riv. Last night we were talking about it, and Lucky said he might have to disguise himself. I said it didn’t look like it was going to be a problem since no one had recognized him so far. He threw me kind of a funny look, and said, “We’ll see, we’ll see.” Makes me wonder what he has up his sleeve. I know it’s going to be very interesting, whatever it is.
May 2011 - The Break
15