"If I ever had to have someone else shoot pool for my
life, win or lose, live or die, Wimpy Lassiter once said, the man
that I’d have shooting for me is Don Willis." "If I ever had to have someone else shoot pool for my
life, win or lose, live or die, Wimpy Lassiter once said, the man
that I’d have shooting for me is Don Willis."
Lassiter should know. He and Willis traveled together for 15 years, back and forth across the country shooting pool. They never had their own cue sticks. They always used house cues. And they never had to resort to the tricks of the trade - lemoning or stalling - because as Willis says, When you’re as good as we were, you don’t need all that. All you do is out-shoot everyone else.
Yet among players, Willis is a mystery. After all these years, some still didn’t know him, except by reputation. People who know of Minnesota Fats and Wimpy Lassiter and some of the others have no idea that Willis was even around at the same time.
But he wants it that way. As he says, "limelight costs me money". So Lassiter and Fats get the headlines and get magazine articles done on "How I shoot" and Willis stays in the background.
He hasn’t had a picture taken for publication since World War II.
He has been the greatest Wing-shot artist the game has ever had. The Wing-shot, probably the hardest of the trick shots, became a Willis specialty years ago. It means rolling a ball down the table and shooting and pocketing it as it rolls.
"They called me Wing-Shot Willie", Willis says. "My record is 42 in a row. I’ve done that twice - once recently - 42." They sometimes called him the Cincinnati Kid, too, he says. Willis plays cards also, like he plays pool - double-tough and he doesn’t scare out.
"I was playing down south once and one guy yelled, ‘Hey Cincinnati, cumhere!’ The guy didn’t know much about Ohio except Cincinnati, so I was ‘The Cincinnati Kid.’
That and Wing-shot Willie - they’re all the nicknames I’ve had. I have ‘em and I don’t. Eddy Taylor has always been ‘The Knoxville Bear,’ but everyone calls him Eddy. I’m Don Willis. That’s all, but I’m Wing-shot Willie or the Cincinnati Kid sometimes."
‘The Cincinnati Kid’ not withstanding, Willis has lived for years in Canton, Ohio. He rarely talks about his game and travels, but now he’s semi-retired there and will look back now and then on pool and cards and traveling and Wimpy and hustling and Willis.
Willis doesn’t talk like a hustler. He has a large and surprising vocabulary. It’s a cross between the vernacular of the pool hustlers and the erudite speech of a community leader. That’s one of the reasons why Dean Chance and Bo Belinsky are friends of mine, Willis laughed. I met them several years ago and I guess they didn’t know what to expect. They were used to thinking of pool players as stereotypes.
What is missing with a lot of these pool players is sophistication. Some of them, I won’t say which ones, are always looking for the next week’s room rent. They live in walk-ups and cheap hotels. That’s why the game has the bad image it has. Some of them are very irreputable.
I compare some of them - those others - to Damon Runyon - some of them are very Damon Runyonesque, he explains. No, I take that back, some of them are back-alley Runyonesque.
But don’t get me wrong - I don’t knock any pool player. All of them are my friends. I get along with everyone. Even with Willis, Mosconi who doesn’t like anyone. I don’t knock anyone. That’s part of my reputation. I don’t say anything against anyone.
The grime of the Canton, Ohio streets doesn’t elate Willis any, especially in the winter, but as he began to talk more and more about billiards, he began to brighten. Little can conceal his love for the game and his friends.
A few years ago, when Minnesota Fats began to gain popularity, all the other players were knocking him. They said he wasn’t any good. They said other things like that. I never said that. They finally asked me what I thought of Fats and I said that I thought he was a gentleman and a great player - a champion - and Fats read that in print and cried, broke down and cried. He’s very emotional. ‘Don’, he said, ‘you’re the only one who said that.’ It’s true, I don’t knock anyone.
But I think my best friend is Wimpy Lassiter. What a team we were. We were together for 15 years. In 1959, he came to Canton and stayed a year. We practiced together and played together. We never had our own cues when we were out on the road. It used to be when you came into a new house with a cue under your arm, everyone’d say, ‘who’s this guy with the cue?’ But everyone has a cue - every 12 year-old has his own.
It didn’t used to be like that. And we never had to lemon or stall either. We just out-shot everyone. We never lost either - never left town broke. Sure we were down low at times, but there was always someone else to play.
Lassiter was the one who said I had the heart of a lion and I think that’s the best thing anyone has said about me. I doesn’t cost me a dime to compliment others - not a dime. To make Fats feel good. To help him when everyone else is knocking him. Lassiter thinks that way too. It didn’t cost him anything to say that about me but he did. It didn’t cost Dean Chance anything to say that I’m the best nine-ball player around. Not a thing.
I began playing during the depression. Everyone was out of a job. Everyone. There were a lot of hustlers around, trying to make some money with game. I got so I could beat them and I kept on playing. It got to be the greatest thing on earth.
But there’s a difference between the lions and the lambs - the money players and the ‘fun’ players. Most tournament players can’t play for cash. What is a tournament? Lassiter is a real lion. Some play in tournaments, then when there’s cash on the table, they can’t make a shot. That’s the big difference, I guess. I don’t play tournaments. Never have. I might now, in a few years, two or three. I might go down to Johnston City like Wimpy does. Or to Las Vegas to the tournament there.
Willis turns to pro football, remembering the Pro Football Hall of Fame, imposing modern museum of football in Canton.
Football - pro football - I love it. Follow it all the time. Bob Waterfield, the great back for the Los Angeles Rams is a protege of mine. He’s a pool buff. I showed him how to play. He’s in the Hall of Fame now. Dan Reeves, the owner of the Rams is a friend of mine too. They’re two of my best friends.
In a suit and overcoat, Willis looks like some prosperous Canton merchant. At 59, he’s a little out of shape, but the build is still there. If you look at him right, you’ll realize that he has been an athlete.
I played semi-pro ball around here years ago, he says. I went to Canton Timken High then and played shortstop, forward in basketball, and halfback in football. The good semi-pro teams then were the Nolan Coals and the McKinley A.C. That was in 1928 and 1929.
There was no premium on height then, for basketball players. You could be a quick little man and do all right. I was a pretty clever player.
I was pretty good at shooting longs and shorts. And running backwards . . .
Willis laughs, thinking about it - years ago.
Running backwards. I could beat anyone running backwards. We’d race a hundred yards and I’d give them 10 or 20 yards and still win. Backwards. I was a champ at that.
Willis was serious for a moment. This isn’t a question of bragging. Or being too egotistical. You have to be confident. A lot of pool players are nothing but braggadocio. You have to be confident. You have to have confidence in your secret heart, I mean.
I have to live here in Canton. If others around here read stuff that isn’t the truth, what’ll they think of me?
What about the movie The Hustler?
Jackie Gleason and Paul Newman (the stars) are both professionals. They could pass my muster. I’m pretty discerning. They are good. Pretty good. Gleason did his own shooting. I guess that Newman was good or Masconi was good for him. Either way, that film was the renaissance of pool.
Willis considers his year and one-half year-old Oldsmobile. This is a good car. I had thought about getting a new one, but why bother. This one’s just as good as brand new. My wife has one like it too. Same make, same model.
In the trunk of his car, Willis thought he’d find some old clippings. He rummaged around in the trunk, pulling and twisting boxes of clothes. My wife saves clothes or something and she gives away these clothes, he said, referring to the cardboard boxes in the trunk. My wife never had to work. I was always a pretty good provider. We’ve got six children, all grown up by now. All live in this area of Ohio. Five daughters. The oldest is 39. And one son, Don Jr. He’s a sign painter here in Canton and is good at it. Has his own shop.
Here they are, he said, pulling old newspapers and sheets of paper out of the trunk. There on the yellowed sheets were the quotes and scores:
Jimmy Moore - one of the top players of all time. "In thirty-five years I lost only once for money. I lost to Don Willis in Louisville, Ky."
(The late) Harold Worst, Worlds Champion Three cushion player in Sports Illustrated, Mach 20, 1961 - "Don Willis in my opinion is the best nine-ball player in the world."
Al Coslosky, veteran Pennsylvania player who won the World nine-ball title a few years ago says, "Every Worlds Tournament I attended Willis had an open challenge to play anybody."
And from the files of the Canton, Ohio, Repository:
Erwin Rudolph 35 Don Willis 125 (high run - Willis) 88 Bobby Moore 33 Don Willis 125 (high run - Willis) 48 James Caras 97 Don Willis 100 (high run - Willis) 87 - unfinished Ralph Greenleaf 40 Don Willis 125 (high run - Willis) 66 - unfinished Willie Masconi 65 Don Willis 125 (high run - Willis 70 - unfinished
And a hand-out, a press release from a new billiard room, The Golden Cue, in Bloomington, Minnesota, owned in part by Dean Chance: ‘The likeable chubby Willis is famed throughout the world for his wing shots or as he says: My duck hunting trips. He’s an accomplished juggler using the table cushion for feats.’
"Hell", Willis snorts at that, "don’t say I’m chubby. I’m not. I’m 240 pounds now and five feet eight and a half. That’s not chubby or shorty, as I’d been called."
He laughs again. "That juggling. A gimmick. Yeh, I can juggle three balls and a chalk at the same time. I can shoot on the floor too. On the linoleum. I’m accurate even at 60 - 70 feet."
"Sure, I’ve even won bets on the proposition that I can’t name in order the 130 largest cities of the U.S. There are 130 cities over 100,000 population. It’s easy."
"I used to do a lot of things like that. Once ran 126 in straight pool. Beat Jimmy McClure who was then the World’s Table Tennis champion. Beat him for money. I played him in Canton, Indianapolis, and Canton again. Also beat George May, who was then the world’s horseshoe champion."
"I used to play three cushion billiards too. I was the only billiards player who could figure a four horse parlay in his head. It’s a gimmick, just like memorizing the 130 cities."
Willis begins talking about the current players. Handsome Danny Jones? Sure, he’s a good friend of mine. He’s up and coming. I went with him to the New York Tournament in 1967.
Jimmy Moore? He was the best all-around player a few years back. Weenie Beenie Staton - yes, I like him very much. Eddie Kelly, Red Breit, like them too. Eddy Taylor, Wimpy Lassiter.
He thought of the time he was playing - playing who? - well, playing somebody and the guy said, I wish Don Willis was here, he could beat you as bad as you’re beating me now.
Willis said, "I wouldn’t play him."
There was another time I was playing and the guy said, ‘You must be Don Willis, nobody else could beat me this badly.’ That was good logic on his part, I just left.
Without telling him?
"Yes. Somebody once wrote that I won sums like telephone numbers, Willis laughs again at this, like telephone numbers. Then someone else added ‘with area codes’ - that really tops it!"
"Pool has to excite you. It used to really excite me. I never practiced just for the sake of practicing. I always wanted to play - to play someone. That was it. I lived well on the game. I still do. I’m not so interested in it anymore. One guy around here has always seen me just sitting around or having a drink or something - never working - and he finally said, ‘What do you do for a living?’ and I said, ‘Sit around.’ He believed it - that was all he had ever seen me do."
"Now and them my friends call me and tell me to come to Kansas City or some place and play a youngster who think’s he’s the best there is. I do it. Not very often anymore. Once every few months or so. Yeh, I know them all, the pros and the fun players."
"I guess if you had to sum it up, you could say that I’d rather play Joe Blow for $7, than the World’s Champion for nothing."
"That sounds pretty good. Yeh, that’s it. I’d rather play anyone for $7 than the World’s Champion for the fun of it."