Billy Rooks was a fixture in Detroit baseball circles in the first decade of the 20th Century. He owned the Utopia Café at the corner of Clifford and Bagley, a hangout for many Tigers and out of town players.
In 1905, he told Frank Cooke of The Detroit News that anyone who thought Rube Waddell was dumb or “green” was mistaken,” (H)e’s the wisest ‘green’ man you ever saw.”
Rube
Rooks told Cooke that Waddell came into the bar when the Athletics were in Detroit in August, and said:
“’Bill, let me take $2.’ I was just starting in and wasn’t very long on change right then, so I told him I couldn’t afford it, but he kept coaxing and I kissed the two goodbye.
“An hour later back came the Rube and he asked for $3 more. I told him I wouldn’t do it, and he finally took off that watch charm which he got for playing with the 1902 pennant winners and throwing it on the bar, said, ‘I guess that’s worth the five all right.’”
Rooks said by the end of the night, Waddell had hit him up for another $5:
“(M)aking $10 that he was into me, but the charm was worth enough to make up for it.”
The following day, Rooks said Athletics manager Connie Mack noticed the charm was missing from Waddell’s watch:
“’I lost it at the park,’ said Waddell. ‘As I was going through the gate I felt something pull and when I looked it was gone. We all tried to find it, but somebody must have stuck it in their pocket.’
“Connie told Rube to hurry over to a newspaper office and have a notice put in with a reward of $10 for the charm, which he did, and then he came up to my place and said, ‘Bill, you send your bartender down to Connie Mack in the morning and tell him he found the charm at the park. He’ll give you your $10 back, and I’ll have the charm and we’ll all quit even.
“I sent the boy down and Connie gave him the $10, and I was glad to get it.”
Rube
A year later, at the end of the 1906 season, Waddell told The News he took a job tending bar for Rooks:
“Rube has signed to tend bar for Billy Rooks at the Utopia Café, and left a large share of his baggage (after the Athletics final road game in Detroit on September 28) to insure his appearance as suds slinger immediately after the American League season
“If Rube keeps his promise, there will be plenty of quasi-baseball news during the winter.
“’Billy and I are old pards,’ said the Rube in discussing his promise…His place here seems to be baseball headquarters, and I think I will find it congenial.”
The paper said Waddell had originally intended to spend the off season in Cleveland, but:
“Utopia is near a fire station, and Billy has promised Rube a fire alarm right back of the bar.”
Baseball History Daily 
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