Easy Times the hard way

[pwd72s]

I just read a great old Sports Illustrated piece, written in 1977. The writer having spent (obviously) quite a bitof time with Danny D. Danny Diliberto...what an exciting life. The places he's been, the people he met...all because of his street smarts and being blessed with excellent hand/eye coordination. Early in life, a pro boxer less than 20 fights, but he won them all. The majority by knockout. Bad luck there, he suffered from broken hands. A guy named Angelo Dundee told him to hang up his gloves. His real talent was with a cue in his hands...a very top level player in his day. I leaned of him by watching live streams and videos of top pool matches, he doing a great "color man" spot in the commentary box..

Here's a link to the article...a long read, but very top notch writing. You'll probably want to click after reading the first paragraph here:

"Darkness. Eighty miles from Albuquerque, and the 3 a.m. air is clear and still outside the tavern save for a chorus of singing tires fading down the highway. Shapes jumble together in the parking lot: Cadillacs, pickup trucks, even a police cruiser, all squatting near a faded frame building whose rusty sign urges consumption of a local beer. A visitor knocks on the front door, mumbles a greeting and is ushered inside and down a long hallway. Another door opens, and for an instant the heart quickens and pupils contract at the sudden glare, the smell of money and the hint of violence."

https://vault.si.com/vault/1977/08/08/easy-times-the-hard-way

So, where is Danny D. today? There's a thread on a pool site I visit with a link to a go fund me page. Danny is now 86 and living through a very hard time...both money and health. Yes, the life of the pool hustler is a lot like the grasshopper's in the old grasshopper and the ant fable. I was very much an ant...didn't have time for pool during the decades of working, saving, investing, raising a child...all those things a pool hustler considers a sucker's life.

Knowing all that...knowing that Danny D. would have laughed at me for my choices...Hell, maybe I was an ant because I knew I was a terrible no talent at pool. Whatever....yeah, I donated...If for no other reason, for the laughs he gave me while listening to his commentary. That, and maybe we ants need the grasshoppers of the world...they give us adventures vicariously, don't they?

[Nostril Cheese]

Mierenneuker....