Back on track
Back on track
This was an aiming thread before the Sand J.O. derailed it. Since he is so against any form of aiming system, why is it that he always take such an interest in these threads? He's like those atheist's that fret so much over people of faith.
Now for whomsoever still had some idle curiousity about the master player, Sailor Barge, regarding aiming and such, I am posting some pages out of the forward of my first book. For those who haven't read it yet, you may find it interesting. For those that don't care, there is always a re-perusal of Dennis's well-meaning hi-jack, with those big bootied cheer leaders.
Quote from Banking With The Beard:
.....we are going to study a wonderful bank aiming method based on ideas developed by "Port Chester Mickey" Carpinello. "Port Chester Mickey" learned the system from a master player named William "Sailor" Barge. What readers will get here is a refined, simplified version of "Sailor" Barge's sighting method that I used in high–stakes competition for many years.
"Sailor" Barge, who had a high run of 356 balls on a 5 x 10 table, was an eccentric champion who snuck around undercover, winning local tournaments under assumed names. "Sailor" was a mystery man who kept a low profile up and down the eastern seaboard. Fifty or no count on a 5 x 10 was a game he often gave a sucker. "Sailor" was known, and avoided, by all the top players in the East. Sailor's student, "Port Chester Mickey," was cut from the same bolt of cloth and he eventually became the greatest, unknown player in the country.
The reason Mickey stayed an unknown was his dope habit. Mickey was a heroin addict. He would stay burrowed, deeply, into his dope world for years, never playing a game of pool. Mickey would emerge periodically, when "Sugar Shack" Johnny Novak and myself traveled to Port Chester, NY and dragged him out of his drug world and took him with us on the road.
While on the road, Mickey would go "cold turkey" and stay in the room for weeks kicking his habit. "Sugar Shack" insisted that Mickey must be totally straight while he was with us. It usually took about 30 days for Mickey to become a human being again.
After about three weeks, Mickey would start practicing diligently for hours every day. Two weeks of hard practice and he would be ready. Then we would turn him loose on the pool world. It was like unleashing Dracula on a necklace show. Nobody knew Mickey, so he went through the best players wherever he played like a chain saw going through butter. It was a massacre.
When Mickey was straight he had no bad habits. He didn't drink or smoke and could play for hours on a cup of coffee and a candy bar.
Mickey was a brutal sadist on a pool table. He would get ten or twelve games ahead playing 9-Ball (the only game he played) and if his opponent showed the slightest signs of revival, like trying to win a game, Mickey would change the rules in ways that favored him even more — no lucking in the 9-Ball — call your shot, and when he was really feeling ornery he'd make opponents call their position for every shot, which is a test many professionals cannot pass.
Seeing Mickey in action was like watching the 3rd Infantry division rolling through Iraq. Mickey's position play was so flawless that it seemed that he never had a hard shot. I told him, "I'm not sure if you can really play. You beat everybody, but all you ever shoot is hangers."
How good did Mickey really play? Good enough to sneak up on Wade "Boom Boom" Crane, aka, "Billy Johnson" in Atlanta in the sixties, when Billy only missed about a ball a week playing 9-Ball.
When he was off the drugs, Mickey was a clear minded philosopher whose views on any subject were worth recording. With that in mind, I once asked him, "Mickey, with a mind like you have, with such a clear, pure perspective on everything, how the hell could you become a lifetime heroin junkie?"
His reply was a typical Mickeyism, "When I am on heroin, my mind is not so clear."
All things must come to an end. After a few months of looting and pillaging top players, we would wake up one morning and Mickey would be gone. Gone back to Port Chester with his winnings. Gone back to the dope world. Back with freshly healed veins, where the dope, for the first week at least, would actually feel good. Back to no pool and anonymity for a few more years, until "Sugar Shack" and myself would dredge him up again and repeat the ritual.
Hall of Famer, "Iron Joe" Procita thought enough of Sailor's aiming system to steal it in toto and sell it to pool students all over the country in the form of a small cardboard aim finder that was also developed by the Sailor.
If you asked Joe Procita about the top players of the day, Joe would say that he had to spot all of them, which he usually did. However, Joe neglected to mention that he also got robbed trying to spot guys like Johnny "Irish" Lineen, and the like. Joe didn't think anybody could play, but Joe gave Sailor his greatest compliment when he confessed — with his head down — that he couldn't spot Sailor anything. That was Procita's highest praise.
Do not confuse this aiming system with the inaccurate drivel routinely displayed in most instruction books — the imaginary cue-ball system. That nonsense has been pounded into our heads ever since Willie Mosconi's instruction book (the red one).
Imaginary cue-ball aiming was even believed and taught by no less then Irving Crane as late as the sixties.
Beard