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History of American
Billiards
How billiards came to America has not been positively established. There
are tales that it was brought to St. Augustine by the Spaniards in the
1580's but research has failed to reveal any trace of the game there. More
likely it was brought over by Dutch and English settlers. A number of
American cabinetmakers in the 1700's turned out exquisite billiard tables,
although in small quantities. Nevertheless, the game did spread throughout
the Colonies. Even George Washington was reported to have won a match in
1748. By 1830, despite primitive equipment, public rooms devoted entirely
to billiards appeared. The most famous of them was Bassford ' s, a New York
room that catered to stockbrokers. Here a number of American versions of
billiards were developed, including Pin Pool, played with small wooden
targets like miniature bowling pins, and Fifteen-Ball Pool, described
later.
The American billiard industry and the incredible rise in popularity of the
game are due to Michael Phelan, the father of American billiards. Phelan
emigrated from Ireland and in 1850 wrote the first American book on the
game. He was influential in devising rules and setting standards of
behavior. An inventor, he added diamonds to the table to assist in aiming,
and developed new table and cushion designs. He was also the first American
billiard columnist. On January 1, 1859, the first of his weekly articles
appeared in Leslie's Illustrated Weekly. A few months later, Phelan won a
prize of $15,000 at Detroit in the first important stake match held in the
United States. He was a tireless promoter of the game and created the
manufacturing company of Phelan and Collender. In 1884 the company merged
with its chief competitor, J.M. Brunswick & Balke, to form the Brunswick-Balke-Collender
Company, which tightly controlled all aspects of the game until the 1950's.
Its successor, Brunswick Billiards, is still the largest American
manufacturer.
The dominant American billiard game until the 1870's was American Four-Ball
Billiards, usually played on a large (l 1 or 12-foot), four-pocket table
with four balls-two white and red. It was a direct extension of English
Billiards. Points were scored by pocketing balls, scratching the cue ball,
or by making caroms on two or three balls. A "carom" is the act of hitting
two object balls with the cue ball at one stroke. With so many balls, there
were many different ways of scoring and it was possible to make up to 13
points on a single shot. American Four-Ball produced two offspring, both of
which surpassed it in popularity by the late 1870's. One, simple caroms
played with three balls on a pocket less table, is sometimes known as
"Straight Rail," the forerunner of all carom games. The other popular game
was American Fifteen-Ball Pool, the predecessor of modern pocket billiards.
The word "pool" means a collective bet, or ante. Many non-billiard games,
such as poker, involve a pool but it was to pocket billiards that the name
became attached. The term "poolroom" now means a place where pool is
played, but in the 19th century a poolroom was a betting parlor for horse
racing. Pool tables were installed so patrons could pass the time between
races. The two became connected in the public mind, but the unsavory
connotation of "pool-room" came from the betting that took place there, not
from billiards.
Fifteen-Ball Pool was played with 15 object balls, numbered 1 through 15.
For sinking a ball, the player received a number of points equal to the
value of the ball. The sum of the ball values in a rack is 120, so the
first player who received more than half the total, or 61 , was the winner.
This game, also called "61-Pool," was used in the first American
championship pool tournament held in 1878 and won by Cyrille Dion, a
Canadian. In 1888, it was thought more fair to count the number of balls
pocketed by a player and not their numerical value . Thus Continuous Pool
replaced Fifteen-Ball Pool as the championship game. The player who sank
the last ball of a rack would break the next rack and his point total would
be kept "continuously" from one rack to the next.
Eight-Ball was Invented shortly after 1900; Straight Pool followed in 1910.
Nine-Ball seems to have developed around 1920. One-Pocket has ancestors
that are older than any of these; the idea of the game was described in
1775 and complete rules for a British form appeared in 1869.
From 1878 until 1956, pool and billiard championship tournaments were held
almost annually, with one-on-one challenge matches filling the remaining
months. At times, including during the Civil War, billiard results received
wider coverage than war news. Players were so renowned that cigarette cards
were issued featuring them. The BCA Hall of Fame honors many players from
this era, including Jacob Schaefer, Sr. and his son, Jake Jr., Frank
Taberski, Alfredo De Oro, and Johnny Layton. The first half of this century
was the era of the billiard personality . In 1906 Willie Hoppe, 18,
established the world supremacy of American players by beating Maurice
Vignaux of France at balkline. Balkline is a version of carom billiards
with lines drawn on the table to form rectangles . When both object balls
lie in the same rectangle, the number of shots that can be made is
restricted. This makes the game much harder because the player must cause
one of the balls to leave the rectangle, and hopefully return. When
balkline lost its popularity during the 1930's, Hoppe began a new career in
three-cushion billiards which he dominated until his retirement in 1952.
Hoppe was a true American legend-a boy of humble roots whose talent was
discovered early, a world champion as a teenager, and a gentleman who held
professional titles for almost 50 years. One newspaper reported that under
his manipulation, the balls moved "as if under a magic spell." To many
fans, billiards meant Hoppe.
While the term "billiards" refers to all games played on billiard tables,
with or without pockets, some people take billiards to mean carom games
only and use pool for pocket games. Carom games, particularly balkline,
dominated public attention until 1919, when Ralph Greenleaf's pool playing
captured the nation's attention. For the next 20 years he gave up the title
on only few occasions. Through the 1930's, both pool and billiards,
particularly three-cushion billiards, shared the spotlight. In 1941 the
Mosconi era began and carom games declined in importance. Pool went to war
several times as a popular recreation for the troops. Professional players
toured military posts giving exhibitions; some even worked in the defense
industry. But the game had more trouble emerging from World War II than it
had getting into it. Returning soldiers were in a mood to buy houses and
build careers, and the charm of an afternoon spent at the pool table was a
thing of the past. Room after room closed quietly and by the end of the
1950's it looked as thought the game might pass into oblivion. Willie
Mosconi, who won or successfully defended the pocket billiard title 19
times, retired as champion in 1956.
Billiards was revived by two electrifying events, one in 1961, the other in
1986. The first was the release of the movie, The Hustler, based on the
novel by Walter Tevis. The black-and-white film depicted the dark life of a
pool hustler with Paul Newman in the title role. The sound of clicking
balls sent America into a billiard frenzy. New rooms opened all over the
country and for the remainder of the 60's pool flourished until social
concerns, the Vietnam War, and a desire for outdoor coeducational
activities led to a decline in billiard interest. By 1985, there were only
two public rooms left in Manhattan, down from several thousand during the
1930' s. In 1986, The Color of Money, a sequel to the Hustler with Paul
Newman in the same role and Tom Cruise as a an up-and-coming professional,
brought the excitement of pool to a new generation. The result was the
opening of "upscale" rooms catering to people whose senses would have been
offended by the old rooms if they had ever seen them. This trend began
slowly in 1987 and has since surged, even resulting in a public stock
offering in 199l by Jillian's, a Boston-based room chain. |
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