Ex-pool rivals end feud after one donates kidney to save other’s life: ‘Kidney buddies for life’

He was a good friend to have in his pocket.

A Pennsylvania man who once blasted his pool rival in a bitter Facebook post handed his competitor the ultimate apology by giving him the “Cadillac of kidneys” a decade later.

Russ Redhead discovered James Harris Jr. desperately needed a kidney while competing at a pool tournament and eventually donated the organ to his former foe on Feb. 8 at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.

“James needed me to hold his hand,” Redhead, 42, said with a laugh as he recalled the moment before they were rolled into surgery. “So, I reached out and said, ‘It’s going to be OK, buddy.'”

“The whole time, [he was] cracking jokes and having a good time, and I’m in there scared to death,” Harris, 54, told The Post Wednesday.

While they both say they’re “BFFs” now, 10 years ago, no one would have thought they’d end up in the same operating room — willingly.

Back then, they were battling it out for an all-expenses trip to a Las Vegas pool tournament. When Harris pulled ahead, Redhead fired off a disgruntled Facebook post accusing the rival of having an unfair advantage.

“I’ve never seen this guy before … he started running balls on me and I’m like: ‘Oh, OK, I can’t underestimate this guy,'” Redhead recalled.

He eventually took the post down, and eight months after the Vegas tournament, Redhead and Harris saw each other at a local game in Maryland, where the former “apologized for the whole outburst,” Harris said.

The two started getting more friendly when they’d see each other at Maryland tournaments, as Redhead often played in the state because it was about an hour and a half from his home in Lancaster, Pa.

At another pool tournament in November 2022, Redhead ran into Harris’ wife, Denise Epps-Harris, who informed him that the one-time adversary sorely needed a kidney.

After Harris had fallen ill with COVID-19 in December 2020, doctors found a blood clot, and told him his kidneys were hardly functioning. This prompted the first of eight surgeries Harris would eventually go through.

He had a dialysis catheter placed in his chest and needed to attend treatment three days a week, forcing him to quit his job as a truck driver.

“I was like: ‘Wow, he hides it really well. I would have had no clue that he was going through all that.” Redhead said.

“He still shot pool great. So I mean, it definitely wasn’t affecting the pool game that much.”

As Epps-Harris was relaying what was required from a living donor – such as age, physical and mental health, and having no history of liver, lung, or kidney disease, among others – the former Marine knew he could do it.

That’s when the process of becoming “kidney buddies for life” began.

“I was asking her, and as she was going down the list, I was thinking in my head, I was just checking them off. I’m like, ‘OK … OK … I can do that.'”

When he told Epps-Harris that he wanted to donate his kidney to his former rival, she was shocked and started to cry.

“I was ecstatic, I was a little nervous because I knew this was going to be a long road,” she told The Post.

For over a year, Epps-Harris and Redhead would communicate while he went through extensive testing — which included checks on his heart and lungs and blood work — to see if he was a match.

All the while, Harris was in the dark — a choice he deliberately made so as not to get his hopes up, he said.

Harris continued his dialysis treatments three days a week and was still on the transplant list while he waited.

He was ecstatic when he found out the news, but there were bumps in the road leading up to Feb. 8 — quite literally. On the way to the hospital, they got a flat tire and had to have Harris’ stepdad drive them in a tow truck to the medical facility.

Outside the nervousness, everything went smoothly and doctors told the pair that Redhead’s organ had been the “Cadillac of kidneys,” and they were both up and walking that day.

“He was moving pretty good, and I moving like at a 78-year-old grandpa,” Harris joked.

Two days later, Redhead went home, and a day later, so did Harris.

Harris immediately tried to play a game of pool in his basement — the same place where Redhead told him he’d “play you for a kidney” in a game before the surgery. Though he was unable to play that game, he was all cued up a few days later.

Harris is scheduled to enter his first tournament since his transplant in Glen Burnie, Md., his hometown, on April 20.

He and his wife also plan on visiting Lebanon, Pa. in the fall when Redhead opens his pool hall.

As for their friendship, Redhead says: “I wouldn’t say that we’re best friends, but I think we’re BFFs now.”

“Russ is not only a BFF, Russ is now our brother and our family,” Epps-Harris added. “He’s our family.”