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Message: [QUOTE="Bama fan, post: 3843850, member: 7757"] Fats was a great pool shooter, but an even better promoter and hustler. He won the money games. Willie Mosconi was known as the consumate pool player. He was efficient and quiet and came across as cold and aloof. But Fats was gregarious and boastful and playful. Fats lost to Mosconi in a televised eight ball match on ABC's Wide World of Sports in the late seventies. In the eighties there was a rematch with Fats, Mosconi, Steve Mizerak, and some other guy I don't recall. Fats ran his mouth and drove Mosconi nuts, and that day beat Willie in a game of seven ball. On his tombstone it reads "I beat every living creature on earth, St Peter. Rack 'em up." I know this stuff because I spent the formative years of my life growing up in Nick's Pool Hall outside of Pittsburgh, Pa. There was a duck pins bowling alley upstairs, and a local tavern next store. You walked down a long, narrow, dark wooden floor hallway to get to the doorway. Fats was a legend, and Greek Nicky told us stories about the old, great ones. He also cleaned and blocked hats there and the chemical smell mixed with cigar and cigarette smoke greatly improved our young minds. There were some good shooters at Nicks, and a few good hustlers but none like the Fat Man. I racked a million sets in that place. I still miss the place from time to time! [/QUOTE]