Irving Crane, 88; Pool Champ Brought Dignity to the Table

In a game that has spawned colorful nicknames such as Minnesota Fats and Machine Gun Butera, Irving Crane was known in the world of tournament billiards as the Deacon.

Tall and lean, with hair parted in the middle, he dressed conservatively, from his expensive suits to his wing-tip shoes. He didn’t smile much, particularly at the table, where his focus was intense. He neither smoked nor drank and was considered by those who knew him to be competitively and ethically irreproachable.

“Irving Crane is as circumspect as the archbishop of Canterbury,” Los Angeles Times sports columnist Jim Murray wrote in 1971. “You could see where he would make Henry Fonda look furtive.”

Or as Rudolph Wanderone, better known as Minnesota Fats, once said: “Irv Crane would have been the only guy to notice the horse under Lady Godiva.”

Crane, the winner of six world championships and one international championship, died Nov. 17 in Rochester, N.Y. He was 88. He had been in a nursing home for four days after suffering a mild heart attack while in the hospital for an abdominal problem. The exact cause of death is unknown, but family members believe it was heart failure.

Over four decades, Crane was one of the top names in professional pool.

He won world titles in 1942, 1946, 1955, 1968, 1970 and 1972. That is in addition to the Ballantine International Championship in 1965, the U.S. Open 14.1 Championship in 1966 and a dozen other major titles.

“He was very businesslike and brought a level of professionalism and sportsmanship to the game,” said Mike Panozzo, publisher of Billiards Digest, which ranked Crane No. 8 in the magazine’s top 50 list of the best pool players of the century.

Crane, Panozzo said, “was a great tactical player.”

The former pool prodigy played straight pool, a game in which players try to sink as many balls in a row as they can, typically 150 in a tournament.

Crane made history in 1939, at the age of 26. After beating his opponent by running 150 balls in an exhibition match in Layton, Utah, the crowd clamored for him to continue. Before setting his cue down again, he had run a record 309 balls--and achieved that at a time when the tables were larger and the pockets were smaller than they are today.

For several months during World War II, Crane gave exhibitions at military bases across the country.

In 1957, after deciding he couldn’t make a living just by playing tournament pool, he began supplementing his income by selling cars at a Cadillac dealership in Rochester, a job he held for 17 years.

“It was great for the dealership,” said Crane’s daughter, Sandra DiLucia. “The pool playing drew attention that they normally wouldn’t have.”

At the annual auto show in Rochester, she said, the dealership would set up a pool table next to its Cadillac display and her father would run balls and answer questions.

“If I had to make a choice between selling cars and playing pool, I’d choose pool,” Crane said in a 1969 Sports Illustrated interview. “The only time I’ve ever been really happy is when I was at a pool table.”

Born in Livonia, N.Y., on Nov. 13, 1913, Crane was 11 when he picked up his first pool cue, which came with a toy pool table his older brother received for Christmas.

Crane became so good that his father bought him a regulation pool table, which replaced the dining room table. At dinner time, the family put a custom-made lid over the pool table so they could eat.

While other children played pool for 20 minutes or half an hour before wanting to do something else, Crane once recalled, “I could play all day and never get enough.”

Crane, who never had formal lessons, became so good that by the time he was 14 he ran 89 straight call shots at a local pool hall.

He attended Hobart College in Geneva, N.Y., and planned to become a lawyer, but he dropped out after two years to pursue his dream of becoming a professional pool player.

Although Crane quit playing professionally in the 1980s, his daughter said, he gave exhibitions for charitable causes. One of the items offered at fund-raising auctions for the local PBS affiliate was a pool exhibition by Crane at the donor’s home.

And he continued playing for fun until about five years ago.

“But he didn’t enjoy it as much,” his daughter said. “As far as he was concerned, competition was where the action was. He was always in his element when he was competing.”

Over the years, Crane preferred to be called “a professional pocket billiards exhibitionist.” But on tour, many simply called him the Deacon.

“We often wondered why that came out,” said Althea, Crane’s wife of 64 years, who accompanied him to tournaments and exhibitions.

“I guess the idea was he always had a very dignified decorum,” she said, “and also the fact he would never have stepped up to a billiard table to play an exhibition without his coat and tie. He felt it lent some dignity to the game, and it did.

“A lot of people, if it was a hot day and there was no air conditioning, they’d take off their coat to play. But not Irving Crane.”

In addition to his wife and daughter, Crane is survived by his son, Irving Jr., of Fairport, N.Y.; three grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.