Jersey Red vs. The Ice Man.

"Now watch this, Mr. Nagy. I'm gonna bank the eight off the end rail and it's gonna kiss off the deuce and the one ball's gonna tear up the stack and I'M GOIN' OUT! This is the RAIDER! Whoo! Eight off the deuce and racky-dacky! Ha, look at that!"

-- An excerpt from a match-up between Jack "Jersey Red" Breit and Gene "Ice Man" Nagy, as recorded word-for-word in chapter nine of John Grissim's 1979 book, Billiards.

Memories of Red

Brian Goodwin, of Texas, writes: "I worked a 24hr pool hall in houston called playoffs @45 south and college around 1994 1995 as a bartender. jack aka Jersey Red would often visit to check out 9ball action or one pocket. At the time i had no idea who he was. he would come in ask 4 coffee and a rack. The owner would always say, if red comes in help him to his 9ft table and rack balls at absolutely no charge. I can remember him in his last days making 5-8racks straight w/o missing a ball and he would say my eyesight is not as good as yours as he would tell a story about a game in 1961 and how he should have played baseball."

March 17, 2009