Pool...Recreation for the Recreationally Challenged

If I were to draw up a list of the organized sports that I was reasonably good at, it would look like this:

1.

2.

3.

And this isn't truly accurate.  If it were it wouldn't extend past one, but a list with only entry isn't a list.  Thankfully making lists isn't an organized sport, because that wouldn't be one you'd find on my list either.

But I can play pool.  Pretty well.  I'm no Paul Newman or Tom Cruise, but I can play better than their stunt doubles.  Pool, or "billiards" to the Tom Collins crowd, is a game designed for people like me.  People with hand/eye coordination and a competitive streak that can't play games with the word "ball" in them.  It helps boost our confidence.  It proves that even geeks more prone to Dungeons and Dragons than Monday Night Football can excel at a sport that requires practice, coordination, and strategic thinking.

And pool is one of the few sports where you can actively engage in competition while drinking a beer...or a Tom Collins.  And if you learn to shoot one-handed you can do both simultaneously!  I'd like to see a running back try that.  Or a forward. Or someone double-fisting a Yagerbomb and a baseball bat.  You could be arrested if you tried it in Nascar.

I challenge anyone to name me a better pastime, one that combines the glory of skillful competition, the indoors, climate-control, and adult beverages.

Yeah...I didn't think so.