Billiards Player. Better knowns as "U.J.," he was a colorful, road-hardened, pool hustler of the 1930s and '40s who found fame in the 1980s on CBS' 60 Minutes and later on ESPN's Legends of Pocket Billiards. He was born Utley Jim Puckett on April 17, 1910, in Prattsville, Arkansas, and survived an impoverished childhood after his father, a logging train engineer, died in a 1916 accident. According to U.J., "After that, while we still lived in Arkansas, we were hungry a lot of the time, I moved to Fort Worth later on with my mother and went to the Third Ward School on East Front Street." While at Third Ward School, U.J. discovered he had a talent for basketball as well as a competitive spirit. It took a while for him to realize that a pool cue was going to be key to his future. He learned to play pool at the Panther Boys Club, but never knew how good he really was until he went to Pittsburgh and beat a really good player by the name of Detroit Sam. After the match in Pittsburgh U.J. became a serious student of the game. He read a book by billiard champion Willie Mosconi and said it improved his game by 40%. U.J. was ready for the big time. During his career he beat just about every great player in the game including Mosconi, Luther Lassiter, and Minnesota Fats. For years, U.J. crisscrossed the country, incognito in a worn Texaco shirt, stopping off at every pool hall he passed trying to win enough money to eat between big tournaments. In 1981, he became famous after the airing of a CBS 60 Minutes segment that was filmed partly at Cliff's Lounge on Fort Worth's East Lancaster Strip and partly at the home of one of UJ's friends in Austin. The late Harry Reasoner of 60 Minutes became one of his good friends. In an interview Reasoner said, "I loved the guy from the first moment we met." Shortly after that, U.J. was asked to join ESPN's Legends of Pocket Billiards, a bracketed competition that featured such names as Lassiter, Mosconi, Minnesota Fats, Cowboy Jimmy Moore, Irving Crain and Joe "the Meatman" Balsis. U.J.'s philosophy was simple and straight forward. "In life, I just wanted one thing, If I could live good and not have a job and not violate the law, then I was a success." That is the way he lived and that is why he is one-of-a –kind.