Runout

"You ever wonder how these terms come about?"

BAM, BANG, BANG, bang, and then a softer plop as the 13 caromed off the 9 and into the bottom right corner pocket. The cue ball bounced sharply off the left side pocket point and came to rest 2 inches from scratching in the opposite side.

"I mean, why would it be called a runout?"

He strode around to the right side of the table, carefully placed his left hand in front of the 7 to form an open bridge, and leaned down, down until his chin stubble gently grazed the familiar warmth of the well-used cue his right hand was gripping. The 12 was not quite resting against the end rail, and the 3, 8 cluster meant he didn't have as much angle on the shot as he would have liked. A little right English should do the trick.

"Where is there running involved, honestly? You get to the table, you break, you shoot, you shoot, and you keep on shooting."

A soft clap, as the cue ball kicked quickly off the rail after contacting the 12. The English took it all the way around the table, hitting 2 rails and coming to rest 2 inches from the left rail. The 12 exited stage left, just like it'd been told to.

"And it's not like you're in much of a hurry really. The table ain't going nowhere. You just have to focus on every shot, make sure you get position on the next."

This one seemed a little easier. There wasn't anything really in the way. The 15 was less straight on, so he could use that angle to follow off one rail and come back into the center of the table.

"But then again, walkout wouldn't make much sense either, would it now?"

Like clockwork, the cue ball rolled lazily off the 15 and into position behind the 10. There was the 3, 8 cluster still, but he couldn't do too much about that right now. Something to put on the to-do list.

"I mean, I guess there is a certain ring to the term, running balls, or running out balls. It makes sense in a way a fella like myself can't really explain too well."

Head down, eyes forward. Blink a couple times, get those eyes focused on the right spots. It was uncanny how he could see the object ball and the cue ball with equal focus. Smoothly, slide the stick back and forth. Keep that arm fixed, and just let the elbow bend back and forth. Back and forth.

"Maybe it's about winning, you know, like a race. Racing has got to be one of the oldest forms of competition. And winning games, running racks or balls, it's all about racing that other guy."

Like watching a replay stuck on loop, that elbow just kept swinging the stick back and forth. Back and forth. He needed to roll the ball up and follow this 10 about 3 inches. The margin of error was about half an inch either way. He had to go get this just right.

"I'd call this more of a marathon, myself. I ain't a sprinter, no sir, not anymore. Maybe back when I was young like yourself."

He allowed himself an inward grin that nonetheless crept into his face a little. Once more the cue slid back and slid forward sharply, the motion identical to the last dozen or so. Except this time the blue-chalked tip struck out a little further, and seemed to prod the 10 along. The cue ball would have stopped on a dime, if there had been one there.

"Anywho, running out, shooting out, winning, it's all the same, right? You just gotta do things the way they need to be done."

He walked back to the bottom end of the table. The 9 rested against the left rail near this end of the table, just under the edge of the shadow cast by his head standing in front of the bleak wash of fluorescence coming from the ceiling. The 11 and 14 were frozen together, back up table. Although...

"You know what's funny, now that we're talking about running and racing? I used to be able to run a 5 minute mile. No bullshit."

With that 2 near the left edge of the top left corner, it seemed the 11 was on-line to carom off into the pocket. He hadn't seen that when he was shooting. He just figured he needed the space to play a safety and snooker the cue ball into the jaws of the right corner pocket, behind the 8. But now, he figured what the hell. It was like finding $5 on the sidewalk.

"Yup, those were the good days back in college. Only really started playing this game then. Actually had good grades too, at least for a couple semesters."

A little left English was in order, to adjust for the off-angle carom. No big deal. If it goes, it goes. He leaned down again, carefully tucking his shirt in first. That 1 ball sitting by the side pocket was like a land mine. This was no time for a foul on a wardrobe malfunction. Two, three practice strokes. Then he just shot it. Shots like this, shots that were 20% vision, 20% execution, and 60% luck, he couldn't see the point of extra strokes. Get down there and shoot it for Christ's sake. With a firm hit, the 11 sped smartly, smack, off the right side of the 2 and straight into the pocket.

"Of course, then I got hooked on pool like you might on heroin. My roommate and I pooled our money and bought an $800 stick our second year. We both played with it, and just used house cues to break. My God, I treated that baby better than I would have my girlfriend."

The cue ball had gotten a little loose on him. He could still see the 14, but this was going to be tricky to make it into the same corner as the 11. Maybe a bank, rail-first, into the right corner. Probably not with the way these rails were playing. He'd made maybe 3 bank shots all night, and none of 'em had been rail-first. So that left a masse then.

"Of course, there was never actually a girlfriend. What sort of woman would be interested in a pool bum? At least a surf bum ends up with a nice tan. We ended up playing pool instead of going to lectures in the morning. Sometimes I'd bring a textbook or two, to read while I was waiting and he was at the table. Got more work done there than anywhere else."

It was sharp alright; these short-ranges masses were never fun, especially with cue ball so far from the rails. Not only did he have to lean his body precariously out over the table, but he also had to strike down on the ball from an almost vertical angle. No practice strokes this time, even less point. Just pull the trigger and pray a little. He almost chuckled at that, praying. God was not all that fond of pool players, in his experience. BANG, the stick drove down like a jackhammer, and the cue ball squirted just barely around the edge of the cluster of solids and squarely into the 14. Another soft plop as the 14 drooled slowly into the pocket.

"Graduated with a miracle of a 2.2 GPA and this feeling in my legs like I couldn't stand still anymore, so I turned down the internships and put the grad school applications in a box, and grabbed the cue and called my roommate. Yeah, why the hell not, we could try our luck on the road, for a few months at worst. Shits and giggles, you know?"

The problem with that kind of masse shot was, he had almost no control over exactly where the cue ball would end up. And he was now stuck all the way uptable, a veritable sea of aquamarine felt between the cue ball and the barely visible 9 lying propped against the left side rail. Well, it was definitely going to be a squeeze.

"We didn't know what the hell we were getting into, but we both had a little money left over and figured we couldn't lose that much over the course of a summer. Hell, it's the sort of thing you do once in your life at least, and hopefully when you're young. Those guys that hit the road in their 40s, with a mid-life crisis and 2 ex-wives in the rearview mirror, man those guys are just pathetic. But us two? We were just being dumb."

He wasn't 100% sure the cue ball would fit between the 5 and 6. It was what he liked to call a "Straight of Gibraltar" shot. Elevate the cue about 15 degrees... a little bit of curve would help the cue ball reach the 9 at a better angle. Softly now, this didn't need to be too hard. The softer the better, since a lot of times that ball will just get slowly sucked into the pocket.

"Anyways, we lasted about 3 weeks, before we realized we had just barely enough gas and food money to get home. We actually won a little that first week, but that didn't last too long. Maybe they were all in on the hustle, guys throwing games so other guys could clean up. Sometimes the whole world seems to be in on the joke and you just don't get it."

Tap. That was all, was a tap, as the cue ball gently, ever so slightly bent through the narrow opening, crawled across the table, and touched the 9. It was like a pat on the back. The 9 ball took the hint, and obediently, deliberately, slowly, was guided by the rail down, down into the pocket. The cue ball even came back off the side rail, giving him a little breathing room.

"So, there went $3000 bucks towards our hustling education. I mean, looking back, it was probably worth it. I learned a hell of a lot about adjusting to different opponents, different tables, different cues, different anything. We even played this chick who offered to blow us instead of paying us the $200 she lost. My roommate took her up on that. Me? I wasn't in the mood for leftovers."

Compared to the last three of four shots, the 8 ball was easy. The 3 blocked it off from a large portion of the table, but he had managed to find an angle from this end of the table. Just a straightforward shot, keeping that 8 on the rail for about 3 feet. He made these shots about 94 out of 100 times. He didn't want to say 95, because multiples of 5 seemed to represent distinct levels of confidence, and he didn't want to be pretentious.

"So how'd I get here, still playing pool and not working a real job? You know, it's kind of a long story."

Four, five, six times the cue slid back and forth, even paced and methodically. It could have been a wire, for all its precision. His muscle memory was photographic. Then, firmly, smoothly, inevitably, the cue ball jumped out ahead of the stick, clapped the 8, and kicked off a few inches. The 8 ball meanwhile headed towards the pocket with a sort of resolute certainty. He didn't know why he gave the balls personalities. But the 8 ball was one he would always treat with a little more respect than the others. His glance shifted towards the stack of forty Jeffersons and Grants sitting on the top of the light fixture hanging over the table. $1400. Half of those had been his, and the other half would now join them.

"Rack 'em up, and I'll see if I can't tell ya most of it."

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Well whaddya know, it's that time of year again. When I dust off the old blog and pretend I can write things. Fun.

Instead Of or In Spite Of

So. Why do conversations start with "so" so often? I dunno.

So... what else is there? Well, there's the ELE lab I should have written up 2 days ago when I had the chance, the Kant that I could have been reading the past 3 or 4 weeks that leads into the midterm paper that's due midnight Sunday when it's actually Monday, the get-rich-quick-by-winning-an-algorithmic-investing-competition which I should be working on since it's something I'm legitimately semi-interested in, the card room 2 miles down the road where $220 fell out of some senior citizens' wallets and into mine because Joey was 2 hours late and that's how I spend free time, the $219 pool cue I got as an early birthday gift from my parents (on Halloween, strangely), the ~$300 trip to Boston to watch the Red Sox play Game 7 of the ALCS, the Bartending 101 class I just paid $100 for, the "I'd Eat That" t-shirt I designed with a picture of a cute puppy dog waiting for me in a mailroom in Princeton, NJ, the erratic sleep cycle I'm working on which is why I'm awake at 2:56 AM, the (second) trip to Gainesville in a week that I got back from yesterday morning which included $26 on dinner as my way of celebrating my poker exploits, a half-baked birthday party, stealing 2 cases of beer from the birthday boy, a drunken/hookah filled poker game, and napping in fits on the loveseat while scrunched into a W-shape, and ... what am I missing? Oh yeah, the sobering realization that this is not the life I really want to be living.

It's not all bad though. It's not even a little bad. In fact, it's pretty much 99.99% good. What do you call it when you start complaining about something that for all intents and purposes must seem like a pretty damn good life from what you might call an objective point of view? Ungrateful? Spoiled? Unappreciative? Crazy? Depressed? Doesn't everyone wonder what would happen if instead of lazily piloting their cars along the black asphalt, following the straight and narrow yellow line to my left or the intermittently existing whiteness on my right, they just hooked the steering wheel hard right and the car with it into that truck coming up alongside? Maybe you really can pass under the trailers of those things, just like in the movies. What the hell, it'd be a bloody good show either way. Well, bloody at least. Good? Why not?

Maybe the problem is not in the 99.99% that's good. Methinks I hear Captain Obvious waiting in the wings. Show yourself! Never, he shouts from the shadows, and slinks back into the recesses from whence he cometh. Is my English get worse?

What I would not give for that last 0.01%. She has no idea. If I ever get to meet her though, I'd want to know if she of all people knew what I meant.