Gregg Doyel

gregg.doyel@indystar.com

ELIZABETH, Ind. — He’s wearing a gray hoodie under an oversized black leather jacket, the kind you might open to flash somebody. His gray jeans are stained. He does not look well.

He’s talking to himself, but before I tell you what he’s saying, let me tell you where he is. He’s standing inside the Horseshoe Casino, on the Indiana side of the Ohio River. It’s near Louisville. That’s generally where he is. Specifically? He’s outside the door to the Tournament Room. Inside the door is the 18th annual Derby City Classic, one of the biggest events in professional billiards, conducted in late January on 30 tables at the casino.

The man I’m watching, he’s been talking to himself for a while now. The Derby City Classic attracts a kaleidoscope of spectators and vendors and winners and losers, and somehow it attracted this man. I walk near him, pretend to browse the rack of shirts being sold by Hustlin USA Clothing Company, and listen.

“Why’d he bank that?” the man says to nobody. “Go straight to the rail and triple it back.”

What does it mean? No idea. It’s billiards talk, is my guess, and I’m not fluent. A few minutes later I see him again near the pool cues for sale, lined up just out of reach, the cues hanging vertically like so many shotguns. The man has his own cue, the kind that unscrews into two pieces. He’s holding one piece. No telling where the other piece is — inside his jacket? — but this is what he says as I walk past:

“Why’d he bank that? Go straight to the rail and triple it back.”

I spend the next few hours inside the Tournament Room, then in what they call the Green Room, where the real action is. Here, one floor above the Derby City Classic, hustlers circle 7-foot tables in a dimly lit room, seeking easy marks. One of them thinks he’s found a pigeon. Me. That’s a story I’ll tell you in a minute.

* * *

Hall of Famer Earl Strickland is sitting in a chair, watching his baby-faced opponent run the table in 9-ball, and Strickland isn’t watching quietly.

“You know, I haven’t pocketed a ball in 40 minutes,” Strickland tells the spectators behind him, and literally they are behind him. A waist-high railing separates the tables from the fans, and Strickland is leaning his chair against that railing. There are at least 20 games of 9-ball happening here, but the biggest crowd is around Table 19. Because that’s Strickland’s table. He’s a great player, yes, but the attraction is his running commentary.

“He’s getting every roll,” Strickland says about his opponent, Tyler Styer, an apple-cheeked kid who looks about 18.

Styer sinks the 6, then the 7, then the 8. Strickland is cursing under his breath — or he thinks it’s under his breath; he’s wearing noise-reduction headphones, so maybe he has no idea how loudly he’s cursing — and Styer sinks the 9-ball to tie the match at seven games apiece. First player to nine games wins the match.

“(Expletive) unbelievable,” Strickland says to nobody, which means everybody, and now he pops up to theatrically study the balls after Styer removes the rack. Satisfied with the rack — well, not really — Strickland sits down in a huff and mutters some more.

“If I get a shot,” he says, “we’ll see what’s what.”

On the break Styer sinks two balls, then starts running the table again. Slowly. Too slowly for Strickland, who turns to the crowd — he turns to me, actually — and says, “It takes this guy forever to play a shot.”

I’m sitting with two fans. I ask them both, “Is he always this much of a …”

Tom Lopez of Lakes Charles, La., doesn’t wait for me to finish.

“Yeah,” he says.

The other guy, his buddy from St. Louis, asks me a serious question.

“You don’t know who that is?” asks John Schneider. “I’d like you to meet Earl Strickland. He’s in the Hall of Fame.”

On the other side of the railing Styer is missing a tough shot at the 7, and Strickland is snarling incredulously.

“How (expletive) hard was that?” he says, meaning: It wasn’t hard at all. Strickland sinks the 7, 8 and 9 to go ahead eight games to seven, then runs the table to win the ninth and decisive game. He and Styer part ways without a handshake. Outside the Tournament Room, Strickland declines my interview request.

“I don’t have anything to say,” Strickland says, then giggles loudly, awkwardly. “I’m too derogatory.”

Styer walks past. I find him outside, cooling off.

“He doesn’t bother me,” Styer says of Strickland, then tells me his story. He’s 21; he’s from Milwaukee; and he has a full-time job “in the glass business.” He’d like to make enough as a billiards player to pay his bills, but for now he works “in the glass business” and gives lessons for Pro One aiming systems — he has its logo on his shirt — and competes when he can. His cue case is wrapped in gray duct tape.

As we finish talking, I ask him again about having to play someone as nasty as Earl Strickland. Now Tyler Styer tells me the truth.

“It was tough,” he says. “It’s tough.”

* * *

The best players are in the Tournament Room, but the best action is upstairs, inside a door guarded by a bored-looking security official, next to a sign that warns:

NO BETTING

NO GAMBLING

NO SMOKING

Inside the door is what the casino calls the Bossier City Room, but what the billiards crowd calls the Green Room, even if the walls are painted beige. There are seven tables here, each under a dull fluorescent light, with pros and nobodies playing money games as gamblers sit and watch and make their own action.

At one table a low-level pro who calls himself Mr. T is playing a muscular young local the gamblers refer to as the Kid. I sit next to a man of about 70 who tells me he’s from New York City, then cackles and says, “It’s good when you ain’t scared, and you know how to gamble.” He gives me his nickname: Sixteen Million Dollar Baby. He leans over and speaks above the Tupac Shakur song coming from a speaker somewhere, "All Eyez on Me."

“Tell you what,” he says. “I get $10 if this guy makes three balls on the break. You get $10 if he scratches.”

No, I tell him — I am scared, and I don’t gamble. Mr. T sinks three balls on the break. Sixteen Million Dollar Baby leans over again.

“OK, tell you what we’ll do,” he says. “’I’ve got (Mr. T). You have the Kid. My guy has to win. Your guy just has to knock in three balls. You in?”

I’m not, I say. What’s your real name?

Sixteen Million Dollar Baby gets up. There are other pigeons to hunt, and they won’t give him the third degree. He finds another table, sits next to another spectator, and leans over. I hear the first three words as I walk out the door.

“Tell you what …”

* * *

No way does the guy at Table 16 belong here.

I’m back inside the Tournament Room, and the player at Table 16 isn’t wearing a glove on his bridge hand, unlike almost every other player here. His right hand is bluish from chalk and his teal shirt has no corporate logo, unless you count the Izod on his chest, near a stain that could be red wine. He has wispy, scattered whiskers above his lip, what you might call a porn 'stache. His belly is a paunch. His eyes are friendly. He’s a pigeon, looks to me.

He runs the table. Then again, and again, and again. He spends more time racking the balls than he does lining up shots. When he finishes beating a pro named Randy Hanson, who owns Big Dog Billiards in Des Moines,Iowa, I follow Hanson out the door and ask him if it’s true what spectators were saying near Table 16 — that his opponent is the best player in the world.

“Oh, probably in history,” Hanson tells me. “His name is Efren Reyes. See those banners up there? That’s him.”

Above the tables are banners of past Derby City Classic winners. I count five pictures of Reyes. His career winnings are reportedly close to $10 million. No glove. Stained Izod. Go figure.

“Nicest guy here,” Hanson says. “I was hoping to play him, just not this early. I was hoping to play him in the finals.”

The finals are the next day, and the Derby City 9-ball tournament will be won by 32-year-old Shane Van Boening of Rapid City, S.D. We don’t know that on Friday. All we have on this day are 20 matches going on simultaneously downstairs.

And we have the man in the gray hoodie and the black leather jacket. He’s standing near the Tournament Room door again, unwilling to go inside. But when Randy Hanson and I walk past, we hear the man talking to himself.

Hanson tells me the man is talking about a game called three-cushion billiards. He hears the lingo of pool. I hear the lingo of a disturbed man, hanging out in a casino among the professionals and the fans, the hustlers and the easy marks. You can almost smell the desperation. I definitely hear this as I leave Horseshoe Casino.

Why’d he bank that? Go straight to the rail and ….

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter: @GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.