Remember the NBC series Quantum Leap that featured the time-travelling Dr. Sam Beckett (played by Scott Bakula), forever body-hopping into history to “put right what once went wrong?” Well, whatever you thought of the show’s five-season run, make sure to steer clear of the 1990 Season 2 billiards TV episode, “Pool Hall Blues – September 4, 1954.” It is both an insult to billiards and a squandered opportunity to provide some real history on the game’s overlooked African-American greats.

The storyline is that Sam leaps into the body of Charlie “Black Magic” Walters, an African-American pool player and one of the greatest pool hustlers in America, who must try to help his granddaughter save her Chicago nightclub before it is seized by Eddie Davis, a criminal loan shark.  Unable to help his granddaughter get a loan, he acquiesces to playing the loan shark in a first-to-seven game of 9-ball, with the nightclub as the winner-takes-all stake.  The full Pool Hall Blues episode is available to purchase on YouTube.

Let’s start with the basics…if you’re going to make a billiards TV episode, get your facts chronically accurate.  It is impossible in 1954 for one of the patrons to liken Charlie to Minnesota Fats, when Walter Nevis didn’t create the fictional character until 1959, the movie The Hustler (with Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats) didn’t come out until 1961, and Rudolf Wanderone, Jr. didn’t adopt the name until sometime after the movie debuted.

Also, there are a frightening number of pool playing errors.  There is a scene when Eddie Davis breaks a 9-ball rack and we watch the 5-ball sink.   He then calls the 3-ball, a script gaffe, both because one doesn’t call shots in 9-ball, and unless he’s caroming the 1-ball into the 3-ball, this would be an illegal shot.  But then it gets preposterous.  Eddie next makes a shot in which he sinks the 5-ball (yep, the same one he already sunk) before the cue caroms into the 9-ball.   Apparently, this 5-ball has more lives than a cat, as it then re-appears on the table seconds later.  Let’s just say I’m aghast Pool Hall Blues won the 1990 Primetime Emmy Award for “Outstanding Cinematography for a Series.”

Mistakes aside, the real insult in this episode is the assumption that the mechanics of billiards – the grip, the stance, the stroke, the bridge – can be mastered overnight.  That’s the necessity since Dr. Beckett can’t shoot pool.  Fortunately, he is ludicrously assisted by Al (played by Dean Stockwell) and his Handheld, a super-computer that can show Dr. Beckett the precise angle to hit every shot.   And there you have it!  Apparently, billiards is nothing more than geometry, and that with a little help from a magic blue guide-line, one can ignore all the other mechanics and become a world-class billiards player in a day.  [SPOILER ALERT!] Even better, when the Handheld goes on the fritz, Dr. Beckett is still able to make a four-cushion rail shot to win the series.

My other disappointment with Pool Hall Blues is the squandered opportunity to educate viewers around African-American billiards players.  First, there is the character Charlie “Black Magic” Walters, who is personified (when Dr. Beckett sees his reflection in the mirror) by the very real Los Angeles pool hustler Robert “Rags” Woods.  Too bad we only see Rags in the mirror and never on the table.  Blown opportunity.

But if Charlie Walters is one of the greatest pool players ever, is he based on a real person?  We’re told he has played the greats and “beat (Willie) Mosconi in Detroit.”   But, to the best of my knowledge, Charlie Walters is both imaginary and not based on a real person.

History has not been kind to African-American billiards players.  Too few are well-known and so there are only a couple of notable candidates to contemplate.  Cisero Murphy is perhaps the most famous, as he was the first black player inducted into the Billiards Congress of America Hall of Fame.  Mosconi, in fact, played Murphy, but he would have been 17 in 1954…a little young for a granddaughter.   Another well-known player was Leonard “Chicago Bugs” Rucker, who was in fact from Chicago, where Pool Hall Blues is set.  But, he also would have been a teenager in 1954, and his game was one-pocket, not 9-ball.  Then there is James Evans, who Minnesota Fats deemed the “greatest Negro pool players who ever lived” in his book The Bank Shot and Other Great Robberies.  While Evans certainly played in the 1950s, there is a lamentable dearth of information available about his life. There are a few others from that era that get occasionally mentioned, but their stories are poorly documented.

So, if Charlie Walters is based on a real player, it’s not clear to me who it was, making it certainly a missed educational opportunity.  But, then again, maybe that person wouldn’t want to be associated with this terrible episode anyway.