Run the Table

Rotund Danny Basavitch was often bed-ridden by depression, relieved only by diving into the ''green felt ocean'' of the pool table. His innate skills morphed him into Kid Delicious, the last of the great pool sharks. Run the Table, L. Jon Wertheim's road tale of how Delicious devoured wallets throughout the lower 48 states, serves as an elegy for pool hustling. Chatterboxes use the Internet to rob a hustler's necessary anonymity while the poker boom has led many gamblers to trade cues for cards. Wertheim, a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, vividly depicts every exit ramp pool hall as a shrine of underground legends with colorful nicknames. But his portrait is too thin to bring Delicious to life. B-