TOM FOX: Herald of the Hustler Era

Through the 1960s, Fox chronicled the lives of the era's great talents with regular articles in The National Bowlers Journal and Billiard Revue. His subjects included Luther Lassiter, Johnny Irish and Hubert Cokes.

"He loved pool, and he loved the characters," recalled Mort Luby Jr., the publisher of The National Bowlers Journal and Billiard Revue, the magazine from which Billiards Digest would eventually emerge. Luby started running Fox's freelance pieces shortly after the two met in 1963. "It was a tremendous break for me," Luby said of that first chance meeting at that year's Johnston City event. Fox introduced many of the players to Luby. He also began writing for the magazine - and boy could he write. So colorful, so brash, so outrageous were his pieces, that Luby said they actually helped divert the course of his magazine.

Luby said that before Fox came along, about 90 percent of the magazine was devoted to bowling. But Fox's stories ran long and would often dominate everything else. Luby said the growing resentment from bowlers influenced his eventual decision to spin off Billiards Digest in 1978.

"I was the editor and publisher and one-man band," Luby recalled of his days running Bowlers Journal. "This was the early 1960s, and there was a tremendous slump in the bowling industry. The magazine wasn't doing too well, and so Tom Fox was a godsend to me. He wrote so well. ... Frequently, his stuff was the best stuff in the magazine. The man could really spin a tale. He was a terrific writer."

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