Pool's Biggest Showoff

Mizerak’s arrival in 1965 was likened to the second-coming of Mosconi.

Not many top players then or now have college degrees; The Miz got his in education, history, and psychology in 1967 at Alabama's Athens College after spending a couple of years at St. Ambrose in Davenport, Iowa. He worked full-time as a middle-school teacher of history and geography for 13 years before a series of Lite Beer TV commercials in the mid-'70s made him famous.

Being a great pool champion is not enough to make you famous. Mizerak first became a star in a 30-second television ad that ran in 1976. He always referred to it as "the 30 seconds that changed my life." It also had a salutary effect on pool.

I asked him during a 1979 interview if he could still recite the lines from the commercial, in which he performed three trick shots while spouting the ad spiel. He leaned forward and recited the words flawlessly: "When you shoot a lot of pool in bars, you want to stay fast and loose. You don't want to get filled up. That's why I drink Lite Beer from Miller. It has a third less calories than their regular beer and it's less filling. Plus, the taste is great. And even though a lot people don't think pool is strenuous, let me tell you something. You can work up a real good thirst even when you're just showing off." In the spot, as he spoke the last two words, he looked into the camera with a smile and lifted a glass of beer off the table just in time to let the cue ball, coming off three rails, pass underneath and make the final ball. When the decision was made to make a Lite ad featuring a pool player, Mizerak was chosen over several other pros because he was able to project an appealing personality, and, rumor has it, the company felt he looked like a beer drinker. (At the time he weighed 225 lbs.; hefty, but not over the line for his 6'1" frame.) In his 1990 book, "Steve Mizerak's Complete Book of Pool," he stated that when he learned that he had been chosen to star in the original commercial in 1976, "I literally danced around the living room."

The commercial took nine hours to film and required 191 takes. Sometimes the timing between the words and the pool shots wasn't quite right, or Mizerak would muff a line, or somebody would sneeze, or a light would fail, or a door would slam, or the cue ball would end up in the wrong place, or a ball wouldn't drop. It took all of his powers of concentration and stamina to keep at it and stay upbeat until he and the crew had something that was both technically perfect and utterly charming. The commercial was brilliant and a huge success, running seemingly constantly over the course of a year or two. It made him a pool icon for life. Mizerak also became a member of the pitchman fraternity known as the Lite Beer All-Stars, a group of active and retired pro athletes from various sports who appeared in Miller ads. They often made public appearances, and Mizerak in particular was always in demand for exhibitions.

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