*The book writing continues. Here’s anther excerpt of the latest book:
March 27, 2002
After our thumbs successfully land us into Las Vegas on Thursday, we head straight to the foosball tournament at the Riviera casino. Adrian isn’t into foosball, but he does like sports in general. Adrian is intrigued as much as I am on what a major professional foosball event looks like. What is this experience going to be like?
$65,000 is the total prize money for the tournament. This is actually not much money considering the millions of dollars the top athletes of the professional sports world make such as Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods.
The player that wins a major foosball event, such as the Hall of Fame (HOF) Classic in Vegas, is only going to take home a few thousand dollars. Every top foosball pro has earned less than the yearly poverty line since the 1980’s.
In the 1970’s, professional foosball players were making bank and cruising the country. High schoolers were winning cars. Multi-millions of dollars worth of prize money from table companies sponsoring tournaments grabbed a lot of attention from the youth of the day. Foosball was at it’s pinnacle in terms of fan interest and player-money at the end of the 1970’s.
In 2002, pro-foosball players show up for their passion of the game. You better have a second income source as a pro-foosball player.
I’m trying to explore the foosball scene from a drifter stand point. I am well aware of how much money is not int foosball. I just hitch hiked a desert to go spend my last dollars to enter a tournament that I haven’t practiced for. My odds of making any positive financial gain on this trip are not very good.
Adrian and I wander around the large convention hall that the tournament is hosted in at the Riviera. We watch multiple matches while I try to scan the crowd for people that I might have met in the foosball scene in the Midwest.
Adrian needs to get going to meet his people after a bit. We shake hands, congratulate each other on our successful hitch hiking adventure, and wish each other luck in Las Vegas. He will be flying back to Wisconsin in a couple of days. I still need to figure out how to get back to Phoenix to team up with Dr. Love in our trucking adventure.
