Remembering the Dugout, and Larry Lisciotti

Remembering the Dugout, and Larry Lisciotti

A teenager discovers the game of pool, and meets the great Larry Lisciotti

I was thirteen years of age when I made my first visit to Manchester Connecticut’s own den of iniquity, the pool hall known as the ‘Red Sox Dugout’, or just the Dugout for short. The year was 1963, and I was in the seventh grade at the Illing Junior High School. That year I also met the great pool player and future world champion, Larry Lisciotti.

The pool hall had quite a reputation among the parents in town. Most considered the place a haven for hoods and thugs, but the Dugout was not a hangout for the stereotypical tough of those years, a sneering youth wearing a leather motorcycle jacket. If you are old enough to remember the days of the ‘Mods and Rockers’, the Dugout was definitely a ‘Mod’ type of hangout. The people who hung out and played pool at the Dugout in the mid 1960s, were primarily a well-dressed group who sported penny-loafers, chinos, madras shirts, and a white London Fog raincoat when required. On Saturday nights, the older guys (who owned and drove cars) would stop at the Dugout for a game of pool before a date. They typically sported a crisp cotton shirt (usually with a pack of Kools, Camels or Lucky Strikes in the front pocket), a pair of leather shoes and a nice pair of slacks. A couple of shady characters did frequent the place, but the regular group was not comprised of the miscreants and degenerates envisioned by the local ‘Legion of Decency’ do-gooders. 
 
The Dugout was located in the center of town on one of Manchester’s busiest intersections, Main and Center Street. A large building with a curved front sat on the corner and housed several businesses, including the pool hall, which was located in a basement beneath the Center Restaurant. The entrance itself was in an alley off Main Street where a set of cement steps led down to a portal on the right fronted by a large solid door.
 
Upon entering, you stood in a corner of the basement, with the room extending off to the right. The pool hall was a dimly lit world, and your eyes needed a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. Eight pool tables sat spaced between the large square concrete pillars that stood throughout the cellar. Two lights, with large green shades, hung down over each table to illuminate the felt playing surface below. Several small rectangular windows with frosted glass were set in the wall of the building about seven feet above the basement floor, and they allowed a small amount of light to filter in from the alleyway.

A table stood just to the right inside the door. You skirted this table on the left and then turned right along a cement wall for a few steps. When the wall ended, a hard left brought you into the ‘office’, a small open area where the owner, Don Fitzgerald, conducted business. The office consisted of several small chairs next to a desk and a cash register, a dim desk lamp, a small TV, and cabinets filled with the sundry supplies required to keep a pool hall going.

On a pillar by each table hung a dark wood box containing four small shelves, each just big enough to hold cigarettes and lighters and small snacks. High above one end of each table hung a string of beads on a heavy wire for scoring. In straight pool games, you kept score on the beads, and you counted and moved them with a pool cue. Stools for spectators stood against the walls of the cellar, and against the far wall were vending machines. One machine was an old Coke dispenser with a large flat paddle in the front that, for a dime, would rotate the circle of soda bottles until a full one appeared at the opening, a small 8-ounce Coca-Cola in a heavy glass bottle, served ice cold. Wooden cases for the empty bottles stood stacked against the wall.

The tables were regulation tournament tables, the playing surface was slate covered with green felt and measured 4 ½ feet wide by 9 feet long, and the cushions, or side rails, were covered in green felt as well. Each table had six pockets (one in each corner and one in the middle of each long rail). I saw various pocket billiard games contested at the Dugout including straight pool, nine ball, six ball, one pocket, pill pool, and eight ball. A full rack consisted of 15 object balls, seven balls of different solid colors numbered 1 through 7, seven balls with different colored stripes numbered 9 through 15, and the black 8 ball. The shooter used a white cue ball to knock the colored and striped object balls into a pocket.
 
I started learning about pool by playing 14.1 continuous billiards, also called straight pool. This game starts with a full rack of fifteen balls, arranged by a wooden triangle that shapes the balls prior to the start of play. In our straight pool games, the first person to pocket 125 balls was the winner. Other than a small wager, the bet was usually for ‘Time’, the rental charge for the table. The basic strategy was to pocket fourteen balls, and then leave the fifteenth ball on the table as a break ball. A player then places the fourteen pocketed balls in the wooden rack with the space over the spot left empty. Good players will leave the cue ball and break ball in 'good position', which means when the shooter pockets the break ball, the cue ball caroms into the rack of 14 balls, spreading them out for the shooter (hence the term ‘continuous billiards’). Professionals can win a game by pocketing 125 balls in succession without allowing the opponent a chance to score. 
 
I practiced often, and watched other players with a keen eye. I studied how the good shooters approached the game when they played each other, how they played position, and the style and pace every individual brought to the table. Over time, the quality of my game improved, and within two years, I was a top player in my age group. I was also moving up in class to challenge some of the older players in small cash games. Becoming a better player was a process, and I enjoyed it. Old Frank ‘The Bank’ DeVoto took me under his wing and taught me about bank shots, how to properly use English (putting spin on the cue ball), and how to ‘throw’ balls that were touching.
 
In those years, Larry Lisciotti often played at the Dugout, and when he did, I watched with rapt attention. He was a slim man with a great sense of humor, and he enjoyed a good laugh with his friends. He had intelligent eyes, and a wonderful smile with lips that turned up at the end, lending him a type of Cheshire cat grin. When money was involved and Larry played in a big game, those eyes became focused and fierce, like a cat on the prowl. I will never forget his eyes, and the intensity that shone out from behind them. He would study a logjam of grouped balls searching for a hidden combination with great concentration, changing his viewpoint as he looked intently for the hidden gem, and he often found one. He had a smooth and beautiful stroke, and a sledgehammer break when required. He was a gambler and a pool hustler, and even though he was young, the stories about his exploits traveling around the country playing pool were becoming the stuff of legend. His close friends called him ‘Lice’, and they said it softly and with respect.
 
On occasion, other players would come into Manchester to play Larry. If they played at the Dugout, the stools would be set out three-deep around the best table for the crowd to sit on. There was another pool hall in town during that period as well, and it was a modern facility located in a large well-lit basement under a restaurant over on Middle Turnpike. This was an upscale pool hall that was much bigger than the Dugout; it had twice as many tables. The owner sponsored large ‘open’ tournaments that drew fine players from all over New England and beyond. We would travel across town to watch those tournaments, or to watch Larry when he was facing some challenger in a heads-up match. I loved watching top players compete with each other in such a close and intimate setting, and I developed a deep appreciation for the intensely personal and combative nature of those contests.
 
When I was fourteen or fifteen I discovered nine ball, and the world of pool, and gambling on pool, changed for me in an instant. The nine ball game only uses the balls numbered 1 through 9, and they are set up on the table using a diamond-shaped rack with the 9 ball placed in the center of the other balls. The object was to sink the 9 ball, and you had to shoot at the other balls in their numerical order first. You could use a multi-ball combination to win, which means you could hit the 1 ball into the 9 ball and win if the 9 ball fell into a pocket. Instead of renting a table on ‘Time’, Don set up the balls in the small diamond rack, and charged a fee of fifteen cents a game. When many tables were busy with nine ball games, you would hear someone yelling ‘Rack!” almost constantly.
 
Nine ball was a real gambling game and, compared to straight pool, nine ball was like playing speed chess instead of 2 ½-hour tournament matches. Let’s go: dollar, deuce, four or five, take your pick. Rack ‘em up, here we go, fast and loose, cheddar cheese, ram it and jam it, stand back! Nine on the break, “Rack!”
 
I continued to play and practice as often as I could, and the improvement in my game was noticeable. Over the years, I became a feared nine ball opponent, especially at the Dugout, and the stakes grew in size as well. I even acquired my own name at the Dugout, the “Niz”. The word “Niz”, long a slang word for the 9 ball, now became my nickname. Larry Lisciotti would watch us play (he was too talented to play in our games), and if I made a 9 on the break, or made one later with a nice combination, he would smile that Cheshire cat smile of his and say, “Niz”, drawing the name out in a long snake-like hiss of a syllable. Soon, others began to use the name as well, and I had arrived as a pool player.
 
During this period I, too, joined the coterie of friends who called Larry by the name “Lice”, and when I did, I said it with the same respect and affection as everyone else.
 
Times they were a-changing, though, and the Dugout, along with the country, changed during the late sixties. Drugs, and the violence that seemed to follow them, were becoming more prevalent throughout society and the country, and this scourge was affecting some of my friends. As the war in Asia grew, more people were visiting the dark confines of the Dugout in uniform. I, too, would join this line of soldiers soon after my graduation from high school.
 
In the month before I entered the Army, I had my longest run at straight pool, forty-five balls. However, I knew intrinsically I was not a good player; all I had was enough talent and intelligence to shine in a small local pool hall like the Dugout. After joining the Army in 1969, I completed six months of training and followed that with a year spent overseas. For almost two years, I found myself separated from the game of pool. After my foreign tour of duty was over I rotated back to the States for the remainder of my enlistment, but I never returned to the game. I despised the small coin-operated tables that dispensed pool balls in bars or Army clubs around the country, and I hated the game usually played on those tables, eight ball. For a while, I missed the game of nine ball and the action that went with it, but new possibilities presented themselves and I turned my attention towards other pursuits. Nevertheless, every now and then when the conditions were right, I could rise to the occasion and catch some local pool playing bar stud unaware. I could still do that.
 
The last time I set foot in the Dugout was early spring in 1971. I was in Manchester with several Army friends on a short vacation from our unit at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. While my friends had coffee, I came down the familiar set of cement steps one more time and entered the dark room of the pool hall. I stood inside the door as my eyes adjusted to the darkness; it felt warm, comfortable, familiar. Several tables had games in progress but I did not recognize any players. I walked into the office and Don gave me a friendly welcome. We chatted for a few minutes about how the pool hall was doing, and about old times and friends. Then I shook his hand and left. I never saw Don again.
 
After the Army, I lived in Connecticut for a dozen years before moving to New Hampshire. Redevelopment came to Manchester, and the town razed the old building that housed the Dugout. During those years, I crossed Larry's path only occasionally, but when I saw him, he always greeted me warmly. Friends would keep me abreast of Larry's exploits, and relate tales of his life out on the road.
 
Those were good years for Larry. In 1976, he won the World Open Pocket Billiard Championship, and gained recognition as the world's best 14.1 continuous (straight) pool player. The following year the September issue of Hustler Magazine profiled his life in an article written by Jay Levin titled ‘Larry Lisciotti, Pool Hustler’. In 1980, Larry chalked up another major victory when he won the Professional Pool Players Association Nine Ball Championship.

After living in New Hampshire, I moved to California in 1990, and heard little more about Larry Lisciotti or his exploits. I did remain connected to those times however, as even today, I have seven or eight friends scattered around the country who, when we talk, still call me by the old Dugout name of “Niz”.
 
In 2004, my brother mailed me a small obituary he had clipped from a newspaper back east in Connecticut; it was an obituary for Larry Lisciotti. A flood of memories and images of the old hometown, and the friends I knew at the Dugout, came cascading back into my mind. Yet one other thing struck me about that small piece, something hidden among the words: whoever wrote that obituary had an appreciation for Larry as a player and as a man, perhaps even loved him.
 
Various pictures of Larry, and stories of his accomplishments, exist on the internet. One of my favorite images is the famous ‘Roadrunners’ photograph, which was taken in 1975 in Los Angeles during the Los Angeles Straight Pool Championship. In that picture, Jim Tempe, Danny Dilbert, Larry Lisciotti, and Mike Sigel pose in front of a white Rolls-Royce. It is a beautiful photograph of a magical moment, a moment now immortalized for future generations of players. Another great image available on the internet is a picture of Larry's cue, a beautiful specimen with two ivory inserts near the butt; one insert contains his signature, the other contains, "~ 1976 ~  14.1 WORLD CHAMPION". You can also find a picture of a young Larry wearing a double breasted coat and sporting big hair and even a bigger tie. The prominent feature on this picture of Larry is his smile, that Cheshire cat grin.
 
I can close my eyes and see Larry now, and watch that Cheshire cat smile morphing into the eyes of a feral cat on the hunt. He was young and handsome in the Dugout days, and so very talented. There was such a mixture of power and possibility in the raw beauty of the way he played the game back then, how he held a cue, how he looked at the table, in the fluidity and grace of his movements.
 
There are also the hidden words I see shining through the obituary, and they are the words I want to use to describe Larry Lisciotti. He was a pool player and people loved him; he was more than a pool player.
 
He was beautiful.

 
March 9, 2008
Los Angeles, California