Ye Olde Magick Blogge

Yes, Jack Bateman was the originator of the routine. I don’t know if he used plastic cups and pom poms like the Royal Magic set or if he used regular cups and balls, but I do know he had a large load ending.

Later, Gene Gordon acquired the rights to it. In Gene’s hands, it was the perfect pitch item to sell over the magic counter. Somewhere along the way, the large loads were dropped. The poem ends with stacking everything together and putting the cups away, but it also ends completely reset. Another feature is that there was no sleight of hand throughout the entire thing; it was just stacking and unstacking cups and finding the balls jumped around. I can’t imagine many better pitch routines.

I suspect, but have no way of knowing, that Gene’s marketed version of the handling may be somewhat different from Jack Bateman’s. Using large loads would have required sleight of hand, so since Bateman obviously wasn’t averse to that, he may have used it throughout the routine as well. It’s possible, but not certain, that what Gene Gordon bought was the presentation. The routine uses five pom pom balls; I don’t know if Bateman used five or not.

Anyway, I became familiar with the routine through seeing Michael Skinner do it. I never worked on it, though, until I was working full time in the bar, and I thought that would be a good routine to do early in the evening for the families (which it was). All the bar routines, though, had to have a good climax, so I put a large load sequence onto it (not knowing about Bateman’s handling) and extended the poem to fit.

Bill saw me do the routine and really liked it, particularly when he saw how the people responded to it. He later asked if he could put it on the DVDs and, with permission from Phil Willmarth as well (who had bought the rights from Gene Gordon), he was set. It’s worth noting that Bill uses the flash production to produce the golf balls at the end. I always produced the balls in sequence, much like Skinner did on the tonight show.