Jean Balukas - Playing With Men

Playing With Men

As early as the late 1960s, Balukas was performing exhibition matches with some of the top male players of the era, including Willie Mosconi and Irving Crane, who were together considered between 1941 and 1956 the "best in the world, flat out". In 1975, she again played the legendary Willie Mosconi on CBS' "Challenge of the Sexes" in both eight-ball and nine-ball competition. At 62 Mosconi was well past his prime, but a handicap was nevertheless given to the eagle-eyed youngster, allowing her all the breaks and the first shot regardless of whether she had made a ball or not on the break. Mosconi lost at both disciplines. She later would play televised "Battle of the Sexes" matches with Rudolph Wanderone a/k/a Minnesota Fats in 1977, Ray Martin in 1979 and with Steve Mizerak in 1986.

According to a 1987 interview with reporter Roger Starr of The New York Times, she learned much about pool through such activities but "she also learned that, even in fun, pool stars did not like losing in public, especially not to children, and less, even, to girl children. She also discovered that young men, including her brothers, shared the feeling of shame over losing to girls. She recalls, 'Whenever my brother Paul, the youngest of my four brothers, beat me at pool on the table downstairs at home, he would run through the house shouting 'I won, I beat her'. I guess that was one reason I worked all the harder at my game.'"

On August 6, 1978 Balukas became the first woman to qualify to play in the men's division of the World Open Pocket Billiards Championship; a tournament with a 100-year history. This meant that she would be competing in both the women's and men's divisions of the tournament to be held on August 12 of that year at the Biltmore Hotel located at 43rd Street and Madison Avenue in New York City.

Balukas played against the men in a number of competitions, including at least one televised match aired on March 25, 1979, between her and men's champion Ray Martin. The match was billed on the television schedule as part of a "Challenge of the Sexes," alongside similar male-female matchups between golfers Nancy Lopez and Andy North and coed participants in a skateboarding challenge match. During 1980, Balukas again competed in the Men's division, in the World Open Pocket Billiards championship hosted at New York City's Roosevelt Hotel. She was defeated in the second round at the hands of Steve Mizerak with a score of 150–93. Her final standing in the tournament overall was 22nd, with 42 men trailing her in the rankings. She also competed in the women's division of that tournament and was the victor, defeating Billie Billings, also of Brooklyn, with a score of 100–75. According to The New York Times, "Miss Balukas's triumph...was not only expected but routine. She was a defending champion and, in fact, has lost only two games to women in the past eight years."

Balukas was initially entered in both the men's and women's divisions of the 1987 B.C. Classic, a nine-ball competition. After notable controversy (detailed below), she competed only on the men's side. Along the way she trounced Keith McCready 11–3 (at the time the 17th-ranked male player by money list, and who guest-starred as obnoxious hustler "Grady Seasons" in the 1986 film The Color of Money). Balukas finished in a tie for 9th place among many of the best players in the world.