Stubs

My name is Horace Newby. Mostly an itinerant handyman; when I get a chance I write. I like to think of myself as a storyteller. This is a story about Amos Wilhelm Hartman. Everyone called him Stubs. Before we go back to Stubs, let me tell you the little I know about pool. Playing pool and the gambling that goes with it goes back centuries. If it were a more respectable today it might be called a profession. Once it was the world where such men as Willy Hoppe and Ralph Greenleaf stood beside the likes of Jack Dempsey and Babe Ruth-where Willie Mosconi putting on a pool exhibition on Saturday night in Chicago would draw more interest by sports reporters than the Chicago Bears on Sunday. Men like Hoppe and Greenleaf caught the nation's attention but there was a dark side to the game. With betting between players, skilled hustlers appeared, searching for unwary victims and with it came violence. It was a world Stubs entered into and embraced.