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Minnesota Fats, the flamboyant, self-proclaimed "world's greatest pool player," who became a popular icon after Jackie Gleason portrayed him in the 1961 film "The Hustler," died Wednesday of congestive heart failure in Nashville.
Fats, who never let facts get in the way of a good story, was elusive about his age. Some friends said he was born Jan. 19, 1900, but the 1966 biography "The Bank Shot and Other Great Robberies" listed his date of birth as Jan. 19, 1913.
"Now he's finally in heaven shooting it out again with Mosconi," Fats' wife, Theresa Bell Wanderone, said Thursday.
Willie Mosconi, who died at 80 in 1991, was a legendary player whose name was synonymous with pool. But Fats dismissed Mosconi as "Mouseconi."
"He couldn't beat a drum," Fats once said. "I've played him 100 times, and I've beat him 100 times."
Fats, whose real name was Rudolf Walter Wanderone Jr., did not claim that he never lost a pool game. He always said he never lost one with money on the table.
Although he had once ballooned past 300 pounds and kept going, by the 1980s, he was no longer fat. He was never more in his element than when he was regaling admirers with outrageous tales of his exploits at pool.
"I outdrew the pope in Rome by 200,000 people--and that ain't even good pool country," he once quipped in his New York accent.
When a youngster in...