News
January 24, 2008
Front page article from the Friday! section of The Plain Dealer:
Rack 'em up: Having emerged from its seedy image, pool is enticing players of all types
by Sam Fulwood III/Plain Dealer Reporter
Thursday January 24, 2008, 10:00 PM
Shortly after 9 p.m. on a recent Monday, Kim Vergottini was ready for her first match of the night. The game was pool. To be precise, an eight-ball tournament.
Twenty-four players shuffled out of the snow and into Mulligan's Bar and Grille, a nondescript sports bar in Strongsville, for friendly banter and even friendlier competition.
Vergottini, a nurse and business owner from Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood, was one of two women there to play; several others came to watch and cheer on their husbands.
This wouldn't have been a familiar scene years ago, when the pool world was dominated by hole-in-the-wall joints with shady characters, transient hustlers and women (if any dared to enter) were of ill repute. Today, it's nothing shocking.
Chummy sports bars and yuppified salons with hanging ferns and $10 fruity cocktails have replaced the seedy corner pool hall. Many are places where you wouldn't be afraid to even bring your family. And women are now welcome as more than eye candy -- they're playing the game, and many, like Vergottini, are winning.Her opponent at Mulligan's-- a jovial fellow that everybody knew as "Chevy" Frank (last names aren't used much in poolrooms) -- had won a first-round game. Vergottini drew a bye and sat out a round before getting to a table.
So, after more than two hours of practicing and waiting, Vergottini had her turn. Without uttering a word, she stalked the table from all sides, surveying the spread of the balls. She leaned over the table and drew back her pool stick. But she decided against following through with the shot. Something didn't look right. So she straightened up and started the entire pre-shot ritual again.
Finally, she took aim and fired the cue ball across the table. A solid-colored ball dropped into a side pocket. Over and over, she repeated this process until every ball disappeared from the table.
"She's good," one of her envious rivals whispered, admiringly. "She's a woman, but that don't make no difference in here. She'll whip your butt just like a man."
Vergottini, 39, teaches pool at Danny Vegh's stores in the Cleveland area.
She's also an ambassador for the sport.She discovered the game in 1990 after a girlfriend challenged her to play at a bowling alley. Vergottini didn't win, which didn't set well with her competitive nature.
So she plunged into the game, practicing at every opportunity. She mastered the game well enough to earn a Willie Mosconi Scholarship to play pool at the University of Akron. After college, she continued to play pool at night around her day job as an anesthesia recovery nurse at the Cleveland Clinic.
"I was always one of the few women playing," she said. "But, I have to admit, the men were always very nice to me. Well, mostly. Sometimes, the young guys egos would get hurt, but the older guys could take it better."
In the old days, such a thing -- a woman taking down the guys in a pool hall -- was unlikely. Maybe even dangerous.
The 1961 movie "The Hustler" imprinted an unsavory image of the game and its players that to this day largely dominates the public's view of pool. That black-and-white film starred Paul Newman as "Fast Eddie" Felton, a con man handy with a pool stick.
But "The Hustler" also sparked interest in the game. New pool halls opened and large numbers of Americans brought pool tables into their homes to avoid being seen in seedy pool halls.
"Playing pool really good used to be a sign of a misspent youth, hanging out in places you shouldn't have," said Joe Stojkov, who managed the pool tournament at Mulligan's. "But not any more. Now it's just another way for people to get together and have some fun."
Stojkov, who said he's "sixtysomething" and bears a striking resemblance to former pro football coach Jimmy Johnson, has played pool for more than two decades. He's good.
And he's been around the game long enough to know that hustlers still exist and how to spot them lurking on the edges of the bar-league games that he plays in several times a week. But they rarely come near because the players all seem to know each other.
"I'm like everyone else in here," Stojkov said, sweeping a hand through the bar. "I'm just in it for the social end of it."
So are millions of other Americans. The National Sporting Goods Association estimates 36 million people played pool in 2005, the last year for which figures are available, up from 32.3 million in 1998. Those figures rank billiards as the eighth most popular sporting activity behind walking, camping, swimming, exercising with equipment, bowling, fishing and bicycling.
While few daring women always have played pool. Some -- notably trick-shot artist May Kaarlus at the turn of the 20th century and grandmother Dorothy Wise, who won five U.S. Open tournaments in the 1970s -- gained public admiration in pool-playing circles. But the game has belonged largely to men. Today, industry leaders estimate 37 percent of all pool players are women.
That's not good enough for those in the business of promoting pool and the equipment needed to play the game. Getting more people -- especially women -- involved in the game is a key goal.
"The industry is in a bit of a funk," said Nicholas Leider, a writer for Chicago-based Billiards Digest. "While many people play pool, far more people who would play are into consumer electronics or play online poker than are seriously into owning pool tables or playing pool."
In an effort to sell more pool equipment, groups such as the Billiard Congress of America, an Atlanta-based pool promoter, have joined forces with the hospitality industry to change the image of the game. Increasingly, places like Dave & Busters in Westlake and The Corner Alley in downtown Cleveland are putting pool tables in family-friendly places.
Doug Reilly, chief executive officer of Consumers Mortgage Corp. in Middleburg Heights, threw an employee-and-family party at The Corner Alley.
"Who doesn't play pool?" he said. "I picked it for the party because I wanted an upscale place that's fun and that wouldn't be too formal."
Nowadays, that's your friendly-neighborhood poolroom.
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Courtesy of The Plain Dealer. View the original article here.