Running the Table: The Legend of Kid Delicious, the Greatest American Pool Hustler
Biography Mental Health True Crime Sports Memoir Road Narrative Underdog Story Billiards & Pool
Running the Table: The Legend of Kid Delicious, the Greatest American Pool Hustler is the compulsively readable 2007 biography that follows Danny “Kid Delicious” Basavich—a 300-pound New Jersey kid who flees depression, discovers he can run 11 racks straight, and ends up high-stakes hustling his way across America’s dingiest pool halls. L. Jon Wertheim, Sports Illustrated senior writer, traces the rise, fall, and resurrection of the most feared road player since Minnesota Fats, packing the narrative with break-neck nine-ball matches, back-room brawls, and the secret language of cue-stick gamblers. Readers ride shotgun in smoky bars where a single missed bank shot can cost ten grand and every stranger with a case might be carrying a custom Balabushka worth more than a car.
What makes this hardcover first edition especially collectible is its pristine, smoke-free condition—tight binding, crisp dust jacket, no inscriptions, shelfwear, or dog-eared pages—perfect for gift-giving or display. Wertheim’s cinematic prose crackles with kinetic shot-by-shot suspense, yet he also delivers a moving portrait of mental-health struggles, friendship, and the price of obsession, elevating the book far beyond sports literature into universal human drama. Pool enthusiasts treasure the authentic table diagrams and insider lingo, while general readers devour it as a real-life “rocky” story that Publishers Weekly called “the best sports book of the year.”
Owning this copy means holding a piece of Americana: the last great tale of pre-streaming-era hustlers who lived on gas-station food, motel neon, and the clack of ivory balls at 3 a.m. Whether you’re a league player seeking strategy cues, a biographical nonfiction fan, or simply hunting a gripping underdog story, Running the Table delivers the satisfying click of narrative perfection every time you open the cover.
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