PHILADELPHIA—
When illness forced billiards great Willie Mosconi into a nursing home toward the end of his life, his equipment sponsor donated a pool table to the Cherry Hill, N.J., facility.
Mosconi refused to play the game he had dominated for much of the 20th century. Finally, he agreed to play just once to quiet his grandchildren.
“He hadn’t played in years. He ran 15 balls in. He said, `That’s it,’” son Bill Mosconi recalled of his father, who died in 1993 at age 80.
With the death last year of Mosconi’s widow, the family is selling his beloved pool cue, a personal pool table and other memorabilia at a weekend auction in Chicago.
The auction house handling the sale believes Mosconi’s famed “Balabushka” cue could bring $100,000. The stick, with mother-of-pearl inlays, gets its name from the Russian-born craftsman George Balabushka, considered by some the Stradivarius of cuemakers.
Mosconi used several Balabushkas during a career capped by 15 straight world championships from 1941 to 1957 and his record 526 straight shots at a two-day exhibition in Ohio in 1954. Several will remain with the family. But the one being sold was a favorite, as evidenced by the blue chalk residue and light scuff marks.
“It’s (like) Babe Ruth’s bat in 1927 or Johnny Unitas’ helmet,” said David Hunt of Hunt Auctions in Exton, Pa., which is organizing the sale.
Mosconi grew up in a large family in South Philadelphia, where his father, a boxer, ran a first-floor pool hall that doubled as a hangout for boxers. Mosconi’s father hoped his son would someday join a cousin’s vaudeville act. Instead, the pint-sized pool prodigy was competing against the sport’s heavyweights by age 6.
While still a youngster in the early 1920s, he was being paid $75 or $100 for appearances around town.
“The City of Philadelphia stepped in and said, `You can’t do this. You’re not even allowed in a pool room,” the son said.
Mosconi went on to spend his lifetime in pool halls, criss-crossing the country much of the year for exhibits and matches. A devoted family man, he hated both the pool-hall lifestyle and the constant travel. But his drive to win - and to support his family - kept him out there.
“I think it was a very lonely life, even though he was a tough character. He was devoted to his wife, and certainly to his kids. I think that’s why he did it,” Bill Mosconi said. “(He would say), the only way you could make a living is if you’re a champion. You can’t lose.”
Mosconi earned $10,000 to $15,000 a year in the 1930s, and 10 times that by the 1960s.
And by the late 1970s and 1980s, television had come calling. He appeared in televised grudge matches against his rival, Rudolf “Minnesota Fats” Wanderone Jr. Brash ABC sports anchor Howard Cosell announced some of the showdowns between the tuxedoed men.
Bill Mosconi, 69, of Philadelphia, attributes his father’s success to his fierce competitiveness, stellar vision and soft stroke.
“He could make the cue ball stop on a dime,” the younger Mosconi said Monday, standing beside a mural of his dapper father on a somewhat neglected stretch of South Street in Philadelphia. The mural shows Mosconi playing with the black pool player Edward “Chick” Davis.
Mosconi, at the height of his power, at least once refused to play unless black players could compete beside him, his son said. Though he concedes that he heard that story - and many others - second-hand. His father did not spend much time talking about himself.
“I never heard him brag. But he was so unbelievably competitive, that if somebody said he could beat him, he had to beat him. He couldn’t let that go by,” the son said.
Mosconi, who also had two daughters, ran a pool hall in North Philadelphia but raised his children in the New Jersey suburbs and stressed education at home. His son became an accountant and his grandson a doctor.
After suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, Mosconi died at home in Haddon Heights, N.J. His wife, Flora, died in March 2010.
The family is keeping several of his pool cues and tables, but no longer has room for all of them.
Proceeds from the Balabushka cue and pool table being sold will go to the individual descendants who own them. But the son hopes to make enough from the other items - from event posters to portraits to billiards paraphernalia - to fund something in his father’s name in Philadelphia, perhaps linked to education.
Hunt says it is difficult to estimate the value of the auction lot, but he believes it will attract collectors from several generations.
“With baseball, there are so many iconic names. But ... he was clearly the father of American billiards,” Hunt said.
