10
– OCTOBER 2013
Idle Bowling Thoughts
By Chuck Pezzano
Schedule
Oct 12-13 AMF Pinole Lanes
Oct 15-20 Las Vegas Nationals
Oct 26-27 Clayton Valley Bowl
Nov 2-3 Danville Bowl
Nov 9-10 AMF Southshore
Nov 16-17 AMF Mission Lanes
Nov 23-24 Clayton Valley Bowl
(925) 945-1204
bay.abtbowling.com
Nov.28&30,
Dec.1,2013
AMF Pinole Lanes
Thanksgiving
Tournament
1st Place
$1,500.00
Plus Progressive
Pot
This guy swaggers up to me and says, “Bowling is a stupid game.” “Oh yeah?”
Said I. “Oh yeah.” Said he. “Why?” Said I. “I’ll tell you why.” Said he. And with all
the “nice stuff” out of the way of his mouth was off and running.
“Two bowlers are working on a strike. The first rolls a gutter ball or gets two or
three of his next ball. The other bowler throws what looks like a perfect ball, but the
10 pin doesn’t go down. If they both make their spares, the score is exactly the
same even though the first bowler’s performance can hardly compare with the ef-
fort of the second.”
I told him, “You are all wrong. Things aren’t what they seem to be. It all evens out
in the end. If a bowler keeps rolling bad balls on strikes he’ll leave tough spares
and may miss many of them. And if you keep the ball in the pocket, you’ll get more
than your share of strikes. It is similar to the baseball player who hits line drives
right at an opposing player. Sooner or later, they’re going to fall for his hits.”
I though this slowed him down a bit but he came right back, saying, “And you bowl-
ing writers, always talking about how many pins a bowler knocks down and you
never get that right.”
This attack raised my ire and in defense of all overworked and underpaid bowling
writers in this world (all three of them) I meanly asked, “And what exactly do you
mean by that?”
He quickly countered my question with his own. “How many pins does a bowler
actually knock down when he rolls a 300 game?” I quickly figured 12 strikes times
10 pins equals 120 and told him so.
He smiled. “So the most pins you can actually knock down in a game is 120. Yet,
one bowler can knock down 120 pins by recording nine spares and a triple in the
first frame, and all he can shoot is a 202 at best.”
He was pretty wound up at this point and kept on going. “When a bowler finishes
with a 650 series you writers often say that he knocked down 650 sticks, and has a
total pin fall of 650 or some other phrase that adds up to the same thing implying
that the bowler knocked down 650 pins. He never did. He may have knocked down
only 270 pins and scored a 650 series. So why don’t you bowling people just wise
up and say the bowler scored 300 points or 650 points instead of stating that he/
she knocked down 300 or 650?”
He pushed on, “Who devised this system of scoring bowling? Has anyone in the
sport of bowling ever analyzed what I am saying and considered making changes?”
My adversary was finally getting to me, and whether he had a valid point or not, he
was stabbing at me pretty well. I weakly defended our sports position on scoring,
explaining that it was such a basic standard and that changes in scoring could and
probably would create havoc and it had stood the test of time just fine until he
opened up. I had little defense in regard to a pin fall and reluctantly agreed that we
should say points instead of pins.
I finally had to resort to my “get off the hook” phrase. Whenever a sportswriter
friend of mine receives a nasty or critical letter he jots off a note to the sender say-
ing, “Maybe you are right.” That is exactly why I told this bowling critic.
He went away happy yet left me in a bit of a quandary. The thing that really got me
was the simple fact that I hadn’t thought of some of his criticism long before he
brought it up.
It would have made one heck of a column!
PBA Regional
Roundup
PBA WEST/NORTHWEST RPI SET
FOR OCT. 18-20 IN RENO
● The combined PBA West/
Northwest Regional Players Invita-
tional, the sixth and final regional
championship tournament, will be
held Oct. 18-20 at the National
Bowling Stadium in Reno. The RPI,
sponsored by the Sands Regency
and presented by Roto Grip, will be
webcast live, from start to finish,
Saturday and Sunday on PBA’s Xtra
Frame online bowling channel. To
subscribe to Xtra Frame, visit
pba.com and click on the Xtra
Frame logo for more information. At
stake is a $6,000 first prize, a paid
entry into the PBA World Series of
Bowling V and a berth in the inaugu-
ral PBA RPI Finals which will be
televised on ESPN.
The five RPI champions who have
already earned berths in the World
Series and RPI Finals are
Tom
Daugherty
, Wesley Chapel, Fla.
(South Region);
Brian LeClair
, Al-
bany, N.Y. (East Region);
Brian
Kretzer
, Dayton, Ohio (Central Re-
gion);
Dave Beres
, Waukesha, Wis.
(Midwest Region), and
Chris Bar-
nes
, Double Oak, Texas (Southwest
Region).
