Friday, May 16, 2003 3:10 PM
BY CHRIS WOODYARD
As mysteries go, it hardly ranks with such enduring issues as the whereabouts of weapons of mass destruction or the ultimate fate of the Belmont Learning Center.
But in Press Club circles, it’s a ques- tion that occasionally piques curiosity: why is the monthly newsletter called “The 8 Ball?”
Sure, it has a cocktail-cool ring to it. But to anyone who has grown up smoth- ered in such newspaper lingo as ledes, heds, subheds, grafs, tick-tocks, thumb- suckers and the hallowed “inverted pyra- mid,” the term “eight ball” leaves most baffled.
The answer to this bit of club lore is buried deep inside the battered, leather- bound scrapbook of the early years of the budding Los Angeles Press Club.
The occasion was the club’s most famous day, which came only a year after its founding. There, on the jump page of the Los Angeles Examiner’s June 15, 1948 account of President Harry Truman’ s visit to the city, is a photo of the cheery Missourian hefting a little eight ball atop a statuette.
“President Truman yesterday was pre- sented with a replica of the Los Angeles Press Club’s eight ball—traditionally used at the speakers’ table when guests talk off the record,” reads the accompanying story.
“With a hearty laugh, the President accepted the token from Press Club Chairman Walter Ames,” the story said. Truman then commented of himself, “The president’s behind the eight ball a good deal of the time, but I manage to get out of it.”
During the first few years of its exis- tence, the Press Club had many of these off-the-record encounters. The club retains photos of a few of them — usually a ban- quet table of men in suits with a speaker seated behind the bowling-ball-sized eight ball. That way, the speaker is, as the expression goes, behind the
eight ball.
An Internet site, The Phrase Finder, offers a more universal explana-
tion for “being behind the eight ball.” It is “a dangerous position from which it is unlikely one can escape.” Of course, that definition might not be too reassuring to a public official hoping to keep comments off he record, but it apparently worked for all those years.
The Internet also reveals other ways the term has been used:
It’s a book. “Behind the Eight Ball: A Recovery Guide for the Families of Gamblers.”
It’s a movie. The Ritz Brothers — Al, Jimmy and Harry — starred in “Behind the 8 Ball” in 1942.
It’s a song. Heavy Eric croons “She’s Got My Heart Behind the 8 Ball.” It’s the lead cut on an album that includes titles like “The Yippy Yahoe” and “3,000 Mile Heartache.”
By the way, that giant eight ball that once protected guest
speakers is still rolling around the club’s headquarters. Symbolizing how times have changed, its utility nowadays is limited to being a doorstop or massive paperweight — no longer a reassurance to press-shy speakers that they are commenting off the record.
In the end, it will probably go the way of another fast-fading newspaper tradition:
