Word: hustler
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...champion courts recognition; the hustler flees it. Only one sport is so obscure yet so popular that an ace can play both roles simultaneously. The game is Ping Pong; the hustling ace is Marty Reisman. Even in the '50s, when Reisman held the U.S. singles and doubles titles, he was unknown to more than a handful of table tennis freaks. To supplement his income, he played exhibition matches between halves of the Globetrotters' basketball games and conned wealthy amateurs into believing that they could beat him if he gave away 19 points and sat in a chair...
...humor all right, but it comes from a different part of town-the streets of the Latino section of Manhattan's Upper West Side, where a fat kid named Freddie Prinze lived for most of his 20 short years. Nowadays Freddie works another barrio. As the wisecracking Chicano hustler in the decrepit East Los Angeles garage in NBC's smash new series Chico and the Man, Prinze is the hottest new property on prime-time...
After finding a suitable area--mostly two-family jobs where people might be conned by a smooth talking hustler into buying a $500 set of encyclopedias sight unseen--Bill turned out not to be much of a hustler. In fact, he was a pathetic salesman. He wasn't exactly of the confidence-instilling variety and most assuredly was not the type I would want to let into my house on a dark, freezing cold night to shoot some bull about "education changing since we were kids, what with the new math, computers, and the like." He frightened one lady...
Hughie, now being presented at the First Chicago Center in Chicago, is virtually a monologue, spoken like a Runyonesque incantation by Erie Smith (Ben Gazzara), a small-time hustler and horseplayer. Erie ("I was dragged up in Erie, P-A-some punk burg") returns early one morning in 1928 to his fleabag hotel, after a five-day binge. With a snappy-brim hat, stubble on his chin, a nearly empty pint in his pocket and a cigarette wheeze that makes his fits of laughter sound like emphysema, Erie has the jauntiness of a doomed sucker...
...smart hustler also has the knack for stepping aside to avoid blocking the prospective customer's vision while totally obscuring the thermos-carrying fan's view. And it always pays to know a few averages or who will be pitching tomorrow night. A good baseball conversation usually leads to a sale...