ANNIVERSARY

Six years ago this week aging Boy Wonder Willie Hoppe, sport's longest-reigning champion, kept his world's three-cushion billiard title in a playoff against Mexico's Joe Chamaco in Chicago. Until his official retirement two years later, in 1952, Hoppe held one or more major billiard titles for each year, beginning with his first championship in 1906 at the age of 18. Now 68, the grand old man of billiards came out of retirement this week to challenge Otto Reiselt in a three-day exhibition in Philadelphia.

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