Playing Off the Rail

by McCumber, David

• ISBN13: 9780380729234
• ISBN10: 0380729237
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-01-18
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

At the age of 17, David McCumber was stricken with "road fever" that irresistible call to the itinerant life of a professional gambler. Twenty-two years later, he got the chance to follow that dream-not as a player but as the "stakehorse" (financial backer) for Tony Annigoni, a non-smoking, macrobiotic-eating "Renaissance Pool Hustler," student of Eastern religion, and master of the pure green-felt poetry of the dead stroke." With $27,000 in David's pocket they took off together on an astonishing four-month odyssey across America-traveling from seedy, hole-in-the-wall billiard parlors to high-class snooker rooms to high-tension pro tourneys, from Seattle to Miami and back again-exploring a shady twilight subculture and uniquely American mythos, in search of serious money, local glory...and the perfect hustle.

Table of Contents

Breaking the Rack	3	(23)
The Coast Starlight	26	(34)
Seattle	60	(52)
Six-by-Twelve	112	(19)
The Pool-Table Suite	131	(17)
The Human Fly	148	(16)
The Chelsea Rip	164	(30)
The City of Brotherly Love	194	(5)
Chinn Music	199	(9)
In from the Cold	208	(22)
The Dew Factor	230	(20)
Southbound	250	(9)
Hard Times	259	(25)
Nit, Nevada	284	(26)
Return to Platisville	310	(7)
Liability	317	(14)
The Midnight Rodeo	331	(29)
The Man with the Golden Gun	360	(7)
Acknowledgments	367