Playing the Game

…But Not Tonight

It was Wednesday, 10 October 2012, league pool night across the South Shore.  Bold O’Donoghue has several pool teams and all of them boast they have the best shooters.  

All of them have ego’s and they are sticklers on rules when it comes to getting the best advantages for themselves or their team.

Some rules and their enforcement in the game of eight ball are generally gentleman agreements settled between shooters, but for Bold O’Donoghue it’s a team decision.

Bold O’ Donoghue is a pool team that drinks on occasion of their winning games.  Game On is a drinking team that shoots pool on most occasions.  Of course in the first set of five games Game On won ‘one’ game.  During the night, the team scratched out enough wins to stay in contention.  Going into double sets, three games where each game is two points for a total of six points, Game On was down by five points or at least five games.

Bold had their usual cadre of shooters but Keith got sick and dizzy and was unable to stand up.  So they shot with four players in the last two games of the last five game set and in doubles.  Carol Lee when not shooting or monitoring her team took care of Bold’s sick shooter and members of the Game On team took turns going out to check on him at the benched area in the back outside the bar.

John, who is on Bold O’ Donoghues premier shooting squad has boasted that they have the ‘best assembly of shooters on the South Shore’.  That boast has some credibility in that they have won several league championships.  When we went into doubles Carol Lee’s mind was in several different places and she was upset when some of her shooters (Earl and Steve J.) started shooting before she could finish filling out the shooting roster for the set.

It didn’t help Carol Lee or John since they see each other, shooting against your honey doesn’t necessarily bode well for a relationship.  But it was in doubles that Game On caught up and beat Bold O’Donoghue by one point, winning  both the games, and the match. 

It was quite clear the teams were caught off guard.  Bold caught off guard by loosing, Game On caught off guard by winning while not quite intoxicated.

John was not at all happy.  Game On’s pool team had been easy pickings for years due to their attitude toward shooting and the injured, tired, old and damaged shooters on the roster (Carol Lee, Earl, Steve J., Kevin, Mike and me).  

But this year, for some reason, no one on the Game On pool team is hurt so bad they can’t see, can’t bend, walk without a cane or sit without a cushion.  So most of us can actually shoot pool…some pretty well.

John, who didn’t feel like celebrating with us on our win reminded us how lucky we were to win against his team, even though they argued every single inch of the way when luck had nothing to do with their losses.  Yeah, Game On won against, as John would argue, the best shooters in the league.  After John left the bar behind, we noticed that Carol Lee didn’t ride with him.

Jimmy  threw two rounds of shots toasting the team and said “you guys beat the best in the league”.  I responded to that statement with a quote from Super Bowl Coach Brian Billick, I said to my team, raising my shot glass, “Bold may have assembled the best pool team in the league and have the best shooters in the league…but not tonight!”  As the cheers went up at  Game On Earl wiped a tear from Carol Lee’s eye and smiled like a Pirate.

RJ