Mark Wilson - Part 1 (The Early Years)

Welcome to another edition of Legends of the Cue, and Allison Fisher, we've got our cohost with us to start us off telling his life story.
Wow, I'm so excited for this episode because this is a legendary man, in my opinion. He's been a former Moscone Cup captain.
He's been a Moscone player back in the day, a lifelong student of the sport, a teacher, and an amazing man who I really respect and look up to. Welcome, everyone, is Mark Wilson.
Thank you, Ally. You read that just the way I wrote it, so that was good.
You can pay me back to Mark.
A complete joy to be here. I've been looking forward to this. Naturally, I love Mike Gonzalez, our host, and always adored Allison Fisher ever since I first met her.
And so, yeah, that's my story.
Good.
We're delighted to have you here and to learn a lot about you here. So, let's get going with you, Mark. How did it all start?
Your early memories in Moline, Illinois.
I was born in Moline and, you know, just a working class family. Loved sports all through grade school, junior high, high school. Very active in baseball especially.
And then was on my way to college when Pool captured me. And so, I planned on a law degree, three years of Latin. Oh my goodness, the hardest class I ever took.
But the only class that I really learned anything in and consequently has expanded my vocabulary. So, people say, oh, he just tries to use three dollar words all the time.
No, it just rolls off my tongue because Latin is not a fun class to take because it's not spoken. It's written and it's translated. And so, constantly you're doing declensions and conjugations.
Oh my goodness, it was so intricate. And then the teachers are always the meanest teachers ever. They hate their life and they hate the students.
And there was a real smart girl. Here's how regimented they were. We had to sit in alphabetical order.
And poor little Lori Wilkinson. She sat right in front of Wilson and she was super smart. So I was blessed because, you know, Lori would have her paperwork and sometimes I could check on it.
And so, anyway, she'd be crying about half the classes. I'm thinking, oh my God, if Lori's crying, I'm doomed. But nevertheless, so that was my start.
Baseball was my first love, still love it. And then, you know, towards the end of my high school days, I was going to college to play baseball, but no longer basketball and football were a big part of it. I thought pool.
And I looked at the table and I thought, you know what, this cannot be that hard. I'll just master this in three weeks. I mean, it's not going to take me any time at all.
Later this year, I'll probably be a par golfer too. But anyway, here we are. A few years later now and I still haven't mastered it and still don't know how hard it is.
That's incredible.
But I mean, so you were a sportsman and a natural athlete, sounds like, from playing baseball. And who's your favorite team?
You know, that's why I live in St. Louis. It's the St.
Louis Cardinals lifelong. But that really started because as a boy, I had a transistor radio under my pillow that mom didn't know about. And at night in bed, I would listen to the broadcasts.
And KMOX in St. Louis came in the clearest from that distance. And so then it was Harry Carey and Jack Buck broadcasting.
And they were very young. Most people here wouldn't even know how good they actually were. But they could paint a picture with words that was more vivid than if you were at the game yourself.
And then I would dream every year about coming to a game. And then usually if my grades were good, mom would let me go to one game per year. And that was an epic occurrence.
Wow.
How were your parents on you? I mean, what were they like?
Well, I was blessed. As it turned out, we don't all get the same parents. My mom was kind, loving, artistic, clean, you know, and six on structure.
And dad was, he was a kind and loving father, but he was also fairly stern. So if the teacher said I misbehaved, there will be no my side of the story to tell. And then he was raised on a farm in the 40s.
So you were part of the labor force. You weren't a kid. So he demanded a lot of us.
And we kind of thought of him as General Patton, despite the fact that he was a kind and loving father, but you will be cooperating with what dad tells you. And so, but as it turned out, thank goodness that I had a really good dad.
Well, I think discipline is important, isn't it, in kids? Because that instilled love, really. A lot of love comes out of that.
Yeah.
And dads were like that, too, in the 50s and 60s.
I mean, you and I are the same age, Mark. Same basic Midwestern upbringing. So we probably saw a lot of the same family values, and fathers were different than they are today.
I think that's safe to say.
Yeah, you know, in preparation for this, I was just thinking about when was my first contact with pool? And nobody in my family is a pool player at all. Not even interested remotely.
And so, but I remember dad took myself and my brother Steve to the bowling alley, and we tried bowling. And so, okay, you know, man, it was kind of fun. It was okay, but to have pool tables there, to just absolutely capture our imagination.
So I guess the first game of pool I ever played was with my dad, who played that game and probably never played any game before or since. I mean, he's just, he just let us play.
And then, then somehow my friends had it, and there was, there was a little pool room that opened up near the high school, and we walked by it, and all the people were in there having fun, and it always looked attractive, but we weren't old enough to
go in. So that was, it was probably more of a mystique of a thing.
Yeah. You had a couple of brothers too, didn't you? Did they play pool?
Never.
Steve and Tim. Yeah. They, they do now just because of me, but they never had any real interest in it.
Yeah.
I'll ask this of both of you. We find this commonality on the golf side. You know, Allie mentioned we do this golf history podcast.
We've interviewed 107 of golfs' grades to date, and we always do the same thing. We talk about their early life, how they came to find their sport.
The one commonality across most of the men and the women is that they were all multi-sport athletes as kids growing up. And I don't know if that would be true in the pool world or not in terms of developing that hand I required for pool.
It was for me, definitely. I played lots of sport. I did hockey, netball, basketball.
And for much of my youth, I used to kick a football against a wall for hours on end and play football with the boys. Soccer for you guys, just to be clear. But yeah, I loved it.
I loved the ball sports. Definitely had the hand and eye coordination from all of that.
Do you think we'll hear that a lot as we talk to some of your peers?
I don't. I think most of them skipped school and smoked cigarettes, and they were looking for a way to not take a regular job, which has contributed to the downfall of American Pool. They just didn't have the structured background that Allie had.
And to her point, and this is a little bit off what we're talking about, but she came to Lindwood University where I was a coach one time, and we'd given a lesson all day, and we each took a cup of coffee, we went out to the football field, and there
Lacrosse.
Lacrosse, yeah, lacrosse team.
And we were just standing on the fence, and they were in the middle of the field. And 50 yards out, they spotted Allison from her ESPN appearances. And they all came running over, and they said, come on, join us, join us.
And she went out there, and I'll be damned if she couldn't catch the ball and throw the ball with that wicked, I mean, it was, it was unbelievable. And how good she was. And then I tried it a couple of times, and it wasn't that easy.
So, I mean, you can see whatever sports Allison takes up is she's going to be good at it.
Yeah. Yeah. Just the way it is.
Well, Mark, you sort of hinted at the state of the game, at least, you know, one person's perception of the state of the game.
I think as we, as we go through this podcast series, while we'll focused on telling people's life stories, we can't help but talk about the state of the game, both in the past, the trajectory it's on, where do we think it's heading.
And I think you both would agree that part of the reason we're doing this podcast is we want to bring out and tell the good in the game.
And if in one small way, the three of us can influence its trajectory and its direction, we'd hope that some of this history and telling these stories will push it off into a better way.
I think that's really part of my life's work at this juncture, too, is when I began, I remember my mom, I go, mom, I'm doing pool now. And she supported every sport before that. And then her inclination was, where do we go wrong?
Markie was such a good boy, you know, but she didn't appreciate the sport. And then my father wasn't enamored either. And then even my own high school friends did not respect it.
And I saw a beauty that was beyond anything they could conceive of. And so I just promised myself then, I'm never going to contribute negatively to the sport in any way, because it's already been damaged so much.
So if that's going to be the way I'm going to go, then I'm going to do a different sport that could sustain some damage. We really can't. So that was kind of my initial impact.
Yeah, you've never ceased to amaze me with your positivity, Mark, in anything that you do.
Respect for the game. You make all your students respectful and makes them better people for it. It's just been so impressive over the years.
You've really meant a lot to me as a person and a player and a supporter, a coach, in every way. Everyone you come across, I think they feel the same way about you.
Well, it's a pure love thing. Part of the thing that happened with me was that when I was young, my best friend, I used to call him Al Einstein, Al, because he's super bright. He didn't get pooled at all.
He go, why don't you go to the pool room? I go, Paul, come with me. I'm telling you, it's freaking great.
He says, all right. So he came. Then I took him to the US Open Straight Pool in Chicago and he saw how prestigious this event was, Mezraq one.
It was just incredible. We were both super motivated. So now we're going to the pool room every night after work and trying.
We're absolutely the worst players ever. But nevertheless, we're trying because we saw this beauty and he captured it. So then he goes, this is how he is.
He goes to the library and studies it intimately. He comes back and he goes, hey Mark, the only thing I see what you're seeing, I see it and I got a cue. But even if you got good, there's nothing at the top.
And I said, Paul, I'm not doing it for money. You know, I mean, I'm doing it because I just love the challenge of this and I can't believe I'm this bad at this sport. I've never been this bad at any sport I've ever tried.
I just don't understand it. Usually I would always be just slightly above average because I'm a tall lanky kid that can run and jump. And then with a little bit of coaching, I got even better.
So I was always above average, except in pool, sub-horrible, sub-horrible. No, it's incredible. I don't know how I could be this bad.
And it was just astounding to me and disappointing too. And probably that led to some of the part of it that really captured me. Like I just cannot imagine I'm this bad.
But you've got to tell the story about Jerry, what he said to you.
I love this story.
Pretty much everybody's heard it. But it's one of these things where I happened into his pool room. This would be 1973, the summer time.
And Jerry would be?
Jerry Briesath, my mentor and kind of the father of modern pool instruction.
But we were both young. I was 18 and he was in his 30s. And he was a tall, slender guy.
He has these great big eyes. And I went into the pool room, not knowing it's a pool room, because the pool room I started off in was so horrific. But I thought it was okay, because they had nine foot tables.
And it was all the, you know, when the policemen come in, and there's the kid that shoplifted over there, and here's the other juvenile, the link went to skip school. And then I'm in there like the ugly duckling.
You know, I absolutely don't belong in this group because I'm an athlete that doesn't smoke.
And so, but I went out to play, and somehow in my head, I assumed that these must be the best players in the world in here, because they're so much better than me. But as it turned out, they're actually horrible players. But I thought they were good.
And so, because they're way better than me. Well, then it ends up, I end up in Madison, Wisconsin, go to Jerry's Pool Room, and the kid in there, he says, oh, did you want to rent a table?
Well, I've never seen a pool room to this day that's nicer than Jerry's Pool Room. And this was pre-alcohol.
So it was just had to be 22 gold crowns, perfect clean, immaculate, balls gleam, big 500 gallon fish tank in the middle of the room, plants along the wall, very serene. And it was called Cunique Billiards. I'd never even seen a sign like that.
And so anyway, I was encouraged to buy a lesson. So I thought about it for a bit and I had the money. So I thought, you know what?
People are going to say I'm an idiot, but I'm going to try it. And if it's as bad as I fear, I can afford this. I'll just never tell anybody what I did with this money, because this would be really stupid.
And so I chanced it and Jerry says, okay, he says, let me see you hit this cue ball down there in the far corner pocket. And my heart, oh, I'll never forget it. My heart was thumping.
I wanted to impress him. I wanted him to have to say I'm good. I shot it and it went in, but I poked it not knowing that that was wrong.
And it went in and I was so relieved. And now he's forced to say, oh, you're good. And he goes, oh, I see what you got there.
I see what's going on. How long did you tell me you've been playing Mark? And I said, Jerry, I played every single day for three months.
I only missed one day. And he said, okay, well, here's what I think. And I kind of like leaned in because I want to hear every word.
And he goes, I want you to take two weeks off. And when you come back, I want you to consider quitting altogether. And then he may have even uttered something about crocheting or crossword puzzles.
Could be my, you know, just kind of like that. But it stung and it hurt so bad. I'll never forget how I had to take a moment to even collect myself.
I surely did not hear those words. But it was really his way of getting my attention that what I thought I had learned was not valid.
And when I went there, I thought, being that I played three months and pool in Wisconsin, that's filled with hillbillies to begin with. Who in the hell could beat me? And so that was my, how naive I was.
So, you know, I just thought, and then anyway, it was, it was a long slog from sub horrible.
How do you come back from that really? From being told that?
I think, I think one of the best things was that my dad was kind of a stern guy. And so my ego was kind of beat out of me. He'll by that time, and it was kind of like shut up and listen, son, you know, and that type of thing.
So I thought, well, maybe, you know, let this go. That was embarrassing, but let's see what he has to say. And then it was sort of revolutionary in terms of his concept of you only control the cue, you don't control the balls.
Where previous to that, I had always been told, make the ball and win the game, don't miss the ball, lose the game. And had no inkling of what the delivery of the cue should be.
And he kind of rearranged that, although it did take me some time, and I mean significant time, to get my thinking to buy in, even though I conceptually understand his words, but I still wanted to make the ball and win the game.
So that's probably, and I think it's still a conflict with other people even approaching the sport now, is that they get that same type of information and then don't respect the technique as much as just want the result.
Yeah, and Jerry has been a great instructor and mentor, hasn't he, for players all over the world.
At any skill level, and he's one of these inventive guys that he looks at something, it doesn't matter what it is, it doesn't have to be pool.
He's just got a knack for like, if you were, I can remember vividly, some guy had a cigarette lighter and it was kind of a new thing.
And so Jerry was examining the cigarette lighter, and he disassembled it in front of the guy, not knowing what he's doing, and then saw how it worked, and put it back together and made it work better.
And that really described, no, that's just how Jerry is. Whatever it might be, if you handed him a firearm, he'd take it apart and he would examine it, and get it lubricated properly and make it slide better.
He's just one of those inventive, imaginative guys. But it's a little bit of an oddity, too, that most people, they just look at it and say, well, I guess it's a cigarette lighter, no big deal. Here's a pool stroke.
And he's really just, he's pioneered so many different thoughts about it that I still learn from him today, and he's 88 years old, and I've studied him the duration of my adult life.
Yeah, we hope to get the opportunity to tell Jerry's life story on the podcast.
You know, Mark, as you talk about turning toward Pool as a young man and foregoing college, probably fair to say your parents were not enthusiastic supporters of that idea, but your friends weren't necessarily that crazy about it either, were they?
Not at all. No, I did, I completed a year and a half of college. On my way to law school, that had always been the plan.
I don't know that my heart was in it deeply, but it made sense and that's what they always told me. So I guess that's what I'm going to do. And hence, I always built my life towards that.
And then Pool captured my imagination. So I decided that I would just take one year off from college and just play pool, so I could really see if I could make any progress at all. And it did look horrific, it was grotesque.
And the people, my friends in the pool room would say, what are you doing? And they would always turn their head like, what are you thinking? And I'd say, I know, I know, but I just want to try it.
I just want to try it. I just, and so then I kind of clawed along there and made a little bit of progress.
But yeah, my friends, especially my high school friends, they were, they go, come on, come on, we're going out tonight, get some beer, get some girls, ready? And I go, oh boy, I know, it's psychological, I know they're gonna rebel.
But I said, well, I'm going to the pool room because I got this lesson off of Jerry and I'm not any good, but I want to work on it. I think I can be. And they go, come on, come on, you used to be fun.
What are you doing? Let's go. And I go, oh, you know, this is the only way I could shut them up.
We never get girls or I would go. And so we just ended up drinking cheap beer and I don't care. You know what I mean?
So I'm going to the pool room. But that was really where I lost my high school friends after high school was that I went this way and they were thinking about, you know, we'll get some beer. You know, it just ends up cheap beer and drunk and stupid.
And I wasn't fascinated by that. I'd never been an alcohol guy.
Well, you were attracted to the game, but where did you think you were going with it?
No, that was never the point. No, I didn't have any idea. Although I did, after I went to the US.
Open Strait Pool and saw Mizraq and Danny DiLiberto and Jack Calvita and Lassiter and Balsus and all these greats, I mean, I'll never forget, I rode the elevator down. The Willie Munson Pro from Milwaukee had just lost a match.
And I so wanted to say something, but I didn't want to bother him. And then, but these were like giants in the sport to me. I couldn't even imagine they would ever utter one word to me.
And we were going down the elevator and I'm just standing there real quiet. And I was thinking about it. He looks at me and he shakes his head and goes, mm mm mm, just wasn't Willie's day.
And then later on we became best friends, you know, but he was just such a great talent and the down to earth guy. And it was very endearing because I was just wishing even he uttered one phrase, like, hey, push button four or something.
I would have did that.
So you knew, you knew of these players. What made you go to watch the US Open? Were you competing at the time?
Well, not really.
No, I'd heard. I'm always one of these guys. I believe in like mystery and fantasy and imagination and kind of a positive, like, and I just like, I don't give anything to see what that looked like.
I can't even imagine. But I guess they play probably those clouds and they're standing on clouds and hitting balls or something.
You know, I mean, I just had this like, but it was, it was absolutely amazing at the Sheridan on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. It was a big ballroom and it had a mezzanine. And we go up there and you can look down.
It was just four tables, great big scoreboards, tuxedos. And then these guys would be running a massive amount of balls beyond anything I could conceive. And the referee would call each ball and Mr.
Miserac playing the four ball on a 73 ball run, unfinished, or if you got to 50, it would be stop the game and everybody in the audience would have to applaud, mandatory round of applause at 50 and 100.
And it was just fascinating to me to see these titans of the sport who I never really thought much about, didn't know what it looked like, just was curious as could be.
Did you realize you were in a sort of special era? If you look back on your life, did you realize that that was a special era at the time?
Sadly, no. I assumed it was only going to get better and I didn't realize it was. I knew it was great.
I could see it was great. But you always think, you know, as time moves forward, things get bigger and more pronounced. See, we didn't have the things that distract you.
There was not a casino in every town and there was not 150 channels of satellite TV. So you would read a lot and then you'd create a mental image.
But then you'd go there and it'd be more grand than you possibly imagined because you'd never witnessed anything. I think this was that. It really captured my imagination of, wow, this is incredible.
I know I could never play anything like that. This was the big leagues for sure. It was a prestigious tournament.
It was limited to 32 players and you had to go around the country to win a qualifier, and so unless you previously won it.
So the people that were invited was Lassiter, Irving Crane, Dallas West later one, and I don't think him, but greats, Ray Martin and on and on.
Then young guys like Siegel and Rempey and Lou Batera would travel the entire country trying to win one of these qualifiers that was just as tough as could be.
You'd have famous players and they would fly in to play, and I would attend those qualifiers and it'd be every bit the equivalent of any American Pro Tournament today in terms of the difficulty. These are life masters and only one guy got to qualify.
And so it was fiercely fought. And so then when you got there to those top 32 at that tournament, oh, it was just incredible. Every match could have been the final match, had it drawn differently.
And so it was just fascinating. I just couldn't miss a moment of it when we went there.
So how old were you when you attended that event?
18, just 18. Early on in my pool life, I wasn't any good. My high run was probably 7.
And no, really.
When did you progress from sort of sub-horrible to horrible using your lingo?
Well, it's absolutely accurate. You know, I mean, I'm not embellishing it. Probably a year and a half in, I started to see a little something.
And that was after many lessons, not one lesson. That was many lessons. I guess, you know, the fact of the matter is, as I've aged, now I understand, to do anything great in life, you have to have two attributes, okay?
Number one, you have to have tremendous enthusiasm. And secondly, you also have tremendous ignorance. Because if you knew what you're embarking on, how hard it is, no, really.
And so, God bless me with plenty of both. I got enthusiasm and I'm dumb, you know what I mean? So hey, make it happen here.
Just keep going. And that was God. I do have fortitude.
I'll have to credit myself. I don't even believe what I would do myself. And that's why it's hard to share with people.
They think if I just whisper the secret in their ear, they could be good. It's not that. It has to be a lifestyle.
You have to do it like Allison did, where she immersed herself in this. And she's not a pool player nine to five. It's 24, seven, 365.
Or you're just not going to get it. And that's, I think with any sport, it's like that at the highest level. You have to, it has to be your lifestyle.
Yeah.
So the division for you at the time, it certainly wasn't pointed toward financial reward. It was all about getting better, the quest to get really, really good, and ultimately the trophy, not the money.
The challenge of the sport and the beauty of it. Just to even hold it at bay for a little bit, because I was so bereft of any talent for it. So I just fascinated me, and then nobody else enjoyed it.
I always thought, I'm going to be way ahead of everybody else when people discover how great this is. I've already been working on this. Anyway, it just became my complete passion, my overriding passion.
I can see in this that you turned professional in 1975 at the age of 19.
Is that correct?
Well, that's a pretty loose definition of professional.
I was wondering if at 18 you were struggling to run seven balls.
I'm wondering what the professional part at 19.
Right. Well.
Self-declared.
It wasn't, no, I would say it like this.
And how did you turn professional back then? What did it mean?
Well, there wasn't a tour. There was only a couple of tournaments a year. And one was in Dayton, Ohio, and the other one was the US Open in Strait Pool in Chicago.
And so I wasn't qualified for either one of those things. But it was everything then was gambling, you know, travel on the road gambling, you know, and I wasn't good enough for that.
I couldn't even win the $2 game in the pool room locally with the worst player in there. But it was just the challenge of it. And so what happened was, when I was 19, I'd moved to Madison, Wisconsin, and I'm working construction.
And I decided to take a year off from college. And so now I've saved up $2,000. And I'm just going to quit my job and devote myself completely to pool for one year.
And then I'm going back to law school like I'm supposed to.
That's what you told your mom and dad.
No, I was planning on it myself. I just wanted to see. But I just wanted to see if I could make any inroads whatsoever.
But I absolutely do not want to sentence myself to a life of a sport that I could never be any good at. And right now, it did not look very promising. So I did.
I saved up $2,000 and I rented a student's apartment. It was in the top of a house, three blocks from Cunique Billiards. And I would walk there and walk back.
And every waking moment, Jerry would literally kick me out at night. And he would come by and he would pick balls off my tables because he called last call, 10 minutes, finish up your drinks, games are over, we're closing at one.
And then it would be five minutes, five minutes. And then he would come down. I'd be the last guy there hitting balls.
And he would, I'd say, Jerry, look at my backswing. Isn't this what you said? I'm doing it right.
Isn't this it? And he would literally start picking balls off my table. No, Mark, we're closed now.
You have to go home. You have to go. And I would be waiting for him outside the door the next day.
And he, because he worked at Open the Clothes Off, and he would get there a little bit late, but I'd been there 15 minutes early. Oh, I was so mad. I was so mad that he was, I'm like, what is it?
11, round 11? What the hell are we doing here? You know, and one guy goes, he goes, I know I used to drive by, you'd be standing outside with your cue.
I go, oh yeah, I remember that. And he goes, you even had your cue together. And I go, oh, I don't think, oh no, it is possible.
You know what I mean? I would say, I can't recall that exactly, but when I walked in, it was not social hour. I would say, hey Jerry, how's it going?
Table eight. And I would do it all. I never broke stride.
And I would go over there and play. And then I can remember, I had to miser my money out. It was pool time, was $1.80 an hour.
And I tried to hold it down to $20 a day, pool time. And so if, say Mike Gonzalez stopped in for lunch, I say, Mike, what's up? Hey, how you going?
Oh, you got an hour. Oh, you ordered a sandwich. Hey, how about if we play for an hour?
And he said, okay. And I said, how about for who pays the table? And if he agreed to this, if I could win that, now I can afford to stay later that night.
So it really wasn't about Mike, to be honest with you. It was more about me getting an extra hour in. And that would be, I remember there was a place that it was a little pizzeria, not too far away.
And so lunch was one slice of pizza. It cost $2.20. And then dinner, there was a place called Mickey's Dairy Bar, and they made home cooked meals.
And that was about like $3.50. And that was the extent of my expense, anywhere other than the 100 month apartment, no phone, no TV, nothing, austere, student's apartment and pool time.
That's the extent I'm not spending one penny on anything, but those two things.
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