Ralph Greenleaf (November 3, 1899 in

Monmouth, Illinois Monmouth is a city in and the county seat of Warren County, Illinois, United States. The population was 8,902 at the 2020 census, down from 9,444 in 2010. It is the home of Monmouth College and contains Monmouth Park, Harmon Park, North Park, W ...

– March 15, 1950 in

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

) was an American professional

pool Pool may refer to: Water pool * Swimming pool, usually an artificial structure containing a large body of water intended for swimming * Reflecting pool, a shallow pool designed to reflect a structure and its surroundings * Tide pool, a rocky pool ...

and

carom billiards Carom billiards, sometimes called carambole billiards, is the overarching title of a family of cue sports generally played on cloth-covered, billiard tables. In its simplest form, the object of the game is to score or "counts" by ' one's ...

player. He was a 19 time World Pocket Billiards Champion, who dominated the sport during his heyday. His obituary in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' said of Greenleaf, in March 1950: "What

Babe Ruth George Herman "Babe" Ruth Jr. (February 6, 1895 – August 16, 1948) was an American professional baseball player whose career in Major League Baseball (MLB) spanned 22 seasons, from 1914 through 1935. Nicknamed "the Bambino" and "the Su ...

did for baseball, Dempsey did for fighting, Tilden did for tennis...Greenleaf did for pocket billiards." The championships of his era were contested in the game of 14.1 continuous ("straight pool"), but varied in format from contest to contest and were not annual events. Championships were challenge matches between two players often played over several days to relatively high numbers (1,500 for example). He was one of the first three members inducted into the

Billiard Congress of America The Billiard Congress of America (BCA) is the governing body for cue sports in the United States and Canada, and the regional member organization of the World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA).` Puerto Rico, though a US territory, and Mexico, thoug ...

's Hall of Fame, in 1966.BCA Hall of Fame
, ''BCA-POOL.com''. Retrieved June 17, 2007. He was ranked number 3 on the ''Billiards Digest 50 Greatest Players of the Century''.

Biography

Greenleaf married

vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic compositio ...

actress Amelia Ruth Parker, a

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known by the stage names "Princess Nai Tai Tai" and "The Oriental Nightingale", with whom he toured, performing trick shot demonstrations when not competing. In a pool championship match, Greenleaf was a fierce competitor, winning his first world title in 1919, as well as others, off and on, through 1937. His only unbeatable enemy was considered the bottle, though even his worst bouts rarely seemed to interfere with his performance. In 1942, he came in third place, behind

Willie Hoppe William Frederick Hoppe (October 11, 1887 – February 1, 1959) (surname rhymes with "poppy"), was an internationally renowned American professional carom billiards champion, who was posthumously inducted into the Billiard Congress of America ...

and Welker Cochran in the World Three-Cushion Championship. During this era, the press used euphemisms like "playboy" for sports idols and other public figures who, like Greenleaf, suffered from severe alcoholism. In 1935, the media reported that Greenleaf "fell off the wagon" when he vanished just before a crucial tournament in New York and woke up in Oklahoma under arrest as a vagrant. In order for him to be released, he had to prove to the constable his identity by walking across the street to a pool hall located in front of the jailhouse in Okmulgee by running 87 balls consecutively. Another distinction of this era in the 1930s is that pool games were traditionally played on

billiards table A billiard table or billiards table is a bounded table on which cue sports are played. In the modern era, all billiards tables (whether for carom billiards, pool, pyramid or snooker) provide a flat surface usually made of quarried slate, that i ...

s that were 5 feet by 10 feet, as opposed to today's professional standards which have tables that are 4.5 ft × 9 ft, and the (often clay or ivory) balls were bigger than today's synthetic plastic and resin pool balls. Greenleaf had a hobby that he took seriously which was raising turkeys and chickens at his farm on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, in which he made a profit. His last championship title was in 1937 when he defeated Irving Crane by a score of 125 to minus one. He died suddenly at the age of 50 from acute internal hemorrhage in the waiting room of a hospital in Philadelphia. He had been ill for several days, but had refused to seek medical treatment by going to a hospital because of an upcoming match he was to have played in New York, scheduled several days after he passed."In Memory of Ralph Greenleaf", by Pauline Masteron
Volume 2, Number 3, 1991, page 28
, ''Snap Magazine''. Retrieved August 4, 2007

World Straight Pool Championship titles

* 1919 (December) vs. Bennie Allen * 1920 (November) vs. Arthur Woods * 1921 (October) vs. Arthur Woods * 1921 (December) vs. Arthur Woods * 1922 (February) vs. Thomas Hueston * 1922 (May) vs. Walter Franklin * 1922 (October) vs. Bennie Allen * 1922 (December) vs. Arthur Church * 1923 (January) vs. Thomas Hueston * 1924 (April) vs. Bennie Allen * 1926 (November) vs. Erwin Rudolph * 1928 (May) vs. Andrew Jean * 1929 (December) vs. Erwin Rudolph * 1931 (December) vs. George Kelly * 1932 (December) vs. Jimmy Caras * 1933 (May) vs. Andrew Ponzi * 1937 (April) vs. Andrew Ponzi * 1937 (November) vs. Irving Crane * 1937 (December) vs. Irving Crane

References

External links

From Riches to Rags: The Untold Story of Ralph Greenleaf
{{DEFAULTSORT:Greenleaf, Ralph American pool players American carom billiards players Trick shot artists 1899 births 1950 deaths People from Monmouth, Illinois World champions in pool Deaths from bleeding