Behind the Eight-Ball

As a kid of seven, Willie Mosconi was wan and trigger-tempered. In South Philadelphia he was famed as a deadly accurate pool shooter. Many an afternoon he shuffled into his father's barber shop and heard his Pa say: "Willie, there's a man in the back room who thinks he's better than you." Willie would grab a cue and go to work--with Pa betting as high as $100 on his boy. Business was brisk, and Willie got better with age.

Last week, prematurely grey at 33, Willie Mosconi stepped nimbly about the curtain-enclosed arena in one corner of Bensinger's smoky pool parlor in Chicago. At stake: the world's pocket billiards (vulgarly pronounced pool) championship. His opponent and archenemy was Irving Crane, the champion, whose 33-year-old face was even sadder than Willie's.

Unlike gentlemanly Willie Hoppe, the carom-billiard king* who appears to be looking at the ceiling while his opponent shoots, Mosconi and Crane eyed each other like two men trying to flag the same cab on a rainy night. Mosconi, shooting almost too rapidly, made runs up to 139. But when he missed he banged the table unbecomingly, sat down, and snapped irritably to spectators who stood in the doorway: "Come in or get out."

After eight days of play, when Willie had beaten Crane, 2,000 points to 916, a fan who tried to console the defeated champion was told: "I don't need your sympathy or advice."

Naughty Word. Mosconi and Crane are unmistakably in earnest about their rivalry. But they both work for the same boss, the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Co., largest U.S. manufacturers of billiard and bowling equipment. Brunswick, which has done a lot to make bowling respectable, is now out to do as much for pool. Brunswick is well aware that many of the nation's 32,000 pool halls are only fronts; they are often gambling and bookie joints, or at best, no place for a lady. B-B-C employees are fined $1 every time they say "pool"; they must say "pocket billiards."

In trying to get out from behind the eight-ball,* B-B-C has made a big decision : to give up on the present generation of pool players. What could be done about such customers as the New Jersey pool-hall proprietor who promotes lunchtime crap shooting on one of BBC's finest billiard table models, makes $80 a day as his cut before the day's regular billiard business begins? B-B-C is concentrating its crusading efforts on 300,000 Boys' Club members and sending experts like Mosconi, Crane and trick-shot specialist Charlie Peterson to college campuses to demonstrate and stir up interest. There are now some 130 college billiard teams (including Cornell, Princeton, Ohio State). The current champion: University of Minnesota. This summer B-B-C will open its first model billiard room in the Midwest. It will have air conditioning, indirect lighting and a swanky soda bar.

Champion Willie Mosconi, who makes about $9,000 a year at his job, hopes to cash in on the renaissance of pocket billiards. He knows the two principal arts: to think four to six shots ahead, and never to leave his opponent an easy shot.

Carom billiards is played on a pocketless table with only three balls. About 60%" of U.S. cue fans play pool, 35% play a variation called snooker, and only 5% billiards.

Meaning "out of luck." Originally a Negro slang phrase, it comes from one kind of rotation pool in which the ebony eight-ball must be pocketed last. The shooter is stymied whenever the eight-ball gets between him and the ball he must play next.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.