Ralph Greenleaf, Willie Mosconi & "The Rocket"

If you've been following along lately, you might know that we've begun a online poll intended to get to the heart of the age-old Greenleaf-Mosconi question. That is: which player really was better, Ralph Greenleaf or Willie Mosconi?

Historian Charlie Ursitti recently picked Mosconi. To support this position, Charlie points to Willie's winnning percentage in world championship competition. "The numbers don't lie," he says. To get another view I gave a call over the weekend to author J.D. Dolan. A resident of Michigan, Dolan is one of the nation's foremost experts on Greenleaf. The author's expertise comes as a result of the decade he has spent researching Greenleaf's life as part of his work for a future novel.

And Dolan, perhaps not surprisingly, says Greenleaf was the better player. The author says Greenleaf played fast, and with confidence -- not unlike Ronnie O'Sullivan, the famous English snooker champion. "Have a look at some of Ronnie O'Sullivan's videos on YouTube. His fast and perfect games are just the way people described Greenleaf's," said Dolan.

And so, upon J.D.'s recommendation, I am presenting here an incredibly fast snooker run by "The Rocket."

As an aside, I have found that YouTube is quite annoying in that it prohibits videos of longer than 10 minutes in duration. But O'Sullivan runs these balls so fast that he requires no more than eight minutes.

OK, now tell me again why the cue sports aren't permitted in the Olympics?

-- R.A. Dyer