Sport: Boston Shark

George Franklin Slosson, recovering at 90 from a spell of pneumonia and nervous prostration, has been a little off his billiard game lately. His high runs have been down around 60. In a week or so he expects to be shooting runs of 100 again.

Winner of his sixth and last world championship 38 years ago, Slosson leaves his home for Boston’s 20th Century billiard parlor every noon. He wears a long-sleeved sweater and limits himself to 200 points a day. As soon as he feels he is back in shape, he plans to move to Manhattan and take up teaching again.

Slosson, a thin little man, sharply blue-eyed, appropriately billiard-bald, plays with a cue he bought for 50¢ in Louisville in 1874. He figures it has been re-tipped at least 500 times and had perhaps 40 leather covers on its butt. With it he won the straight-rail world championship from Maurice Daly in 1877, the Champions Game title from Maurice Vigneaux in 1882, the cushion-caroms title in 1884, the 14.2 balkline championship in 1887, the 18.1 balkline title from Jacob (“Wizard”) Schaefer in 1888, the 18.2 balkline title from Willie Hoppe in 1906.

Slosson attributes his success to: 1) abstention from liquor and tobacco; 2) training; 3) a natural gift for the game. A grandnephew of James Fenimore Cooper, he played billiards with some of the literary figures of his youth. Last week he recalled them the way a seaman recalls far ports of the earth. Henry Ward Beecher he remembered as a “just ordinary” player. Robert G. Ingersoll and Charles A. Dana were fair amateurs. Mark Twain was “a good fair amateur.” Slosson also gave billiard lessons to famed soprano Adelina Patti.