The Hustler, 1989

The world's biggest braggart till, well, you know...

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I’ve wanted to be a writer since January 12, 1961. I pinpoint that date because of the long-lost manuscript I ran across in my parents’ attic several years ago. It was entitled “The Airplane.” The author is identified only as “Paul.” In the upper right-hand corner is the date: “1-12-61.”

It was an essay I had been assigned to write in second grade on big (11” by 14”) triple-lined paper, now yellowed. The writing instrument looks as though it may have been one of those oversized No. 2 pencils that one comedian described as resembling a horse’s leg, the kind of pencil you sling over your shoulder.

My dad flew for Pan Am at the time, so even though I had no idea why he got into a plane and flew to Tokyo and returned a few days later, I envisioned the airplane as being one my dad would fly.

I began in sharp, piercing, Hemingway-like sentences that got right to the point.

“The airplane is big. It is white and blue. It has big wings. The wings have motors on them. It is very fast. It works by bringing people places. Sometimes it hinders people by crashing.”

With such penetrating prose, I could probably get a gig on the president’s speechwriting team, if he has one. There’s not a lot of memorable Lincolnesque speech coming out of the White House these days, the kind of passages school children would be required to recite. Whenever I read one of President Trump’s late-night juvenile, self-aggrandizing screeds texts, I’m reminded first of my second-grade essay and then of Minnesota Fats.

His real name was Rudolf Wanderone, and though he never won a major pool tournament, he was somehow synonymous with pool and, in fact, was inducted to the Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fame for his entertaining contributions to the game.

He was a larger-than-life figure who bragged with the best of them, prompting even Muhammad Ali, no slacker in the bravado department himself, to recognize Fats as his better at boasting.

I was working at TBS in the ‘80s and doing some side work for a show called Good News, when I met Minnesota Fats and challenged him to a friendly game of pool on camera. Sometimes, reporter involvement pieces make the story too much about the reporter. I didn’t necessarily see it that way. I was just playing the part that my audience couldn’t and having some fun along the way. (Google George Plimpton and you’ll get the idea.) I felt that it was more amusing than a sit-down interview and some “B” roll.

I am not a good pool player. Strike that. I’m a terrible pool player. But that wasn’t the point. I was just there for Fats to bounce—or carom, if you will—verbal shots off me to entertain the crowd. That was his thing and he was a master at it. And brother, could he brag—mostly for effect. And it worked.

But listen to Fats chatter away and puff himself up for laughs and you’ll get a sense that in another decade soon to come, this hustler could have been president.

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