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TV Fiasco Spawned Mosconi-Fats Duel
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| Ursitti's first plan was to milk May-December hustlers Christopher (left) and Fats. |
"You've seen those players' seats - you know, they're up fairly high - they are like huge, massive thrones," recalls Ursitti. "Well, Willie was sitting in one, and happened to be holding a cue. It was a house cue. And he bolts out of the chair like Carl Lewis off the starting blocks.
I swear to Christ, for a guy 60-something years old, he would have beat Carl Lewis for the first 30 feet.
"And I remember he says, 'You beat me? You beat me?' They're face to face, toe-to-toe, belly-to-belly. Willie is 64 years old, and Fatty is 64 years old, and they're screaming. They're waving their cues. 'You bum,' Willie says, 'you never beat anybody in your life.
I played you in 1948, in Philadelphia, and beat you five games in a row.'
"Willie goes crazy.
'We played your game, one-pocket, and I had to give you train fare home,' he says. There was a lot of screaming and yelling."
And lest you think Ursitti exaggerates, William Mosconi Jr. has a similar recollection. I called him at his New Jersey home recently. He still chuckles when he thinks about that day.
"It was like salt water going up my dad's nose, every time Fats talked," said Mosconi Jr. "And I remember that my dad was doing color for that other match on TV, and Fats was going on like Fats usually did, and my father just exploded. They had to restrain him.
"'I'll play you right now,' he said. 'I've been trying to get to play you for years, to shut you up.'
He couldn't stand anyone saying they could beat him, let alone Fats. He was beside himself wanting to play him.
"Fats was a great talker, and he was an entertainer, which my father was not. My father was very quiet and modest. He was the antithesis of Minnesota Fats. The only thing [my father] cared about was winning. And if anybody said they could beat him, he would go crazy and he couldn't stand it. Til his dying day, if anybody said they could beat him, his first reaction was, 'Let's get on the table.' That's what he did."
And it was during that moment, a moment prompted by a loose wire or a blown fuse. A moment of dead TV air, but electrified with promise - "It was then, at that moment, that the idea hit me to have Willie play Fats," said Ursitti. "The light bulb went off over my head: This was the next match. And it was all because of a camera malfunction."
It probably also didn't hurt that Howard Cosell was there, and that he witnessed the drama unfold first hand. So Cosell could report back to his network bosses that the money potential was real. Moreover, Mosconi was practically ready to sign on the spot - anything to get a chance to play Fats and shut him up. "He hated Fats
in the beginning," said Mosconi's son.
And of course, signing Fats was no problem, none at all. He'd do practically anything to get himself onto TV.
Ursitti said they managed to get the camera fixed, but the day's match paled in comparison to the off-screen drama between Willie and the Fatman. Ursitti said, "The whole show was just the two of them screaming, with Mosconi's jugular popping out." And so the network never televised the challenge between Bruce Christopher and Minnesota Fats, but made a mint off the later matches between Fats and Mosconi.
Ursitti said the first Shoot-out was televised before a sell-out audience. He said it cost $600 just to get a seat. According to the June 1978 issue of National Bowlers Journal and Billiard Revue, the Feb. 25 episode received a 36 audience share, and reached 10,940,000 homes. And so it was before all those Americans that Willie Mosconi beat the hell out of Minnesota Fats, and Fats told the jokes and won over the crowd.
"They were magic together," said Ursitti. "Fats and Willie - they were like any of the great teams: Abbott and Costello, the Marx Brothers. Willie was an introvert, and Fatty was an extrovert. Fatty loved to talk, and would never shut up; Willie was a modest and humble man.
"And in those first years, the ratings were astronomical. We had so much media attention. It was unbelievable."
R.A. Dyer is author of "Hustler Days: Minnesota Fats, Wimpy Lassiter, Jersey Red, and America's Great Age of Pool." For more info, go to the Untold Stories Web site, at www.hustlerdays.com.
Have a story about Willie and Fats? Send them in. I'll try to post a few in a later column or on the "Hustler Days" Web site. Drop me a line at hustlerdays@yahoo.com.
R.A. Dyer, an Austin, Tex.-based writer, is the author of "Hustler Days - Minnesota Fats, Wimpy Lassiter, Jersey Red and America's Great Age of Pool."
For supporting materials, archival photos and more, visit: www.hustlerdays.com
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