Author: internetbowlingpersonality

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, December, 2023

Recently, legendary librarian and researcher May Kyorspares discovered a copy of Emily Postingshot’s Etiquette and Bowling Dining. Originally published in 1895 in conjunction with the launch of the American Bowling Congress, Etiquette and Bowling Dining was the foremost authority on the subject for decades until all copies were thought to have gradually disintegrated or found their way to estate sales or dumpsters or the bottom of Lake Tahoe. Postingshot passed away in 1943 without a will, a survivor or a single copy of her breakthrough publication among her few possessions.

Since Postingshot’s guide was published in 1895, it doesn’t address some of the issues of present-day bowling, nor could it have foreseen plastic killing the rubber game before urethane killed the plastic game before reactive resin killed the urethane game before urethane killed the reactive-resin game, as the rubber bowling balls that killed the wooden game weren’t invented until 1905.

Eating and bowling have long been intertwined, with recreational bowlers using league night not just as a place to compete but also to have dinner and enjoy some fellowship. The food available at bowling centers has advanced considerably since 1895, but the desire to simultaneously eat and bowl remains strong.

Many of Postingshot’s rules still apply in principle but could use an update for today’s game. Kyorspares plans to auction the book for an estimated $48M, but has shared some of the rules in advance to inspire potential buyers. Kyorspares refused to give us permission to reprint some of the rules here, but that’s okay because the book is now in the public domain and we can print whatever we want as long as it has nothing to do with ball hardness. We’ll start with Postingshot’s original guidelines and then attempt to modernize them to keep up with bowling’s advances.

Always eat with your non-bowling hand. This is obvious. Righties are to use their left hands to eat and lefties are to use their rights. This keeps pizza grease out of the bowling ball. The guide doesn’t address two-handers, but it’s safe to assume two-handers should either use their support hands to eat, thoroughly wiping the residual grease all over their pants as part of the pre-shot routine, or jam their faces into the food like a contestant in a stereotypical pie-eating contest. Cutlery, as in 1895, is still not advised.

Never eat on the approach. While tempting to walk to the line with a hot dog in hand, too much can go wrong. The slightest bit of mustard on the approach can impact the next player’s slide, leading to potential injury. Even the tiniest bun crumb could absorb just enough moisture from the air to lower the humidity enough to force players to change their slide soles (a solution that was not available in 1895). This is more than a guideline and is an actual rule in just about every bowling center in the world.

Always order your food before competition begins or, in an emergency, immediately after your frame. Loading up on food before competition is preferable, but if you develop a sudden desperate need for molten cheese, placing your order as soon as your frame ends gives you the maximum amount of time to get to the counter, beg for sustenance and return to your lanes before your next turn. In 1985, pace of play was important and keeping your lanemates waiting was grounds for banishment from the league. Today, pace of play is excruciating and we need to fix it. Perhaps perfecting the timing of ordering our loaded tots will generate the momentum needed to speed up the game.

Never leave discarded food, plates or wrappers behind. When Postingshot wrote her guide, this was a laughable point because of course people took care of their own garbage. Today, it must be acknowledged. Sure, a hard-working employee will take care of your disrespectful laziness if necessary, but don’t make it necessary. Leaving your smeared barbecue sauce and crumpled plates behind is disgusting. Throw them away.

Per Kyorspares’ auction listing, these are just four of the 900 guidelines in the perfect series making up the book. If you’d like a shot at the other 896, Kyorspares says she’ll be releasing further details on the auction at Whenever She Gets Around To It p.m. ET.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, November, 2023

In 1988, professional wrestler Curt Hennig, known as Mr. Perfect, performed in a series of vignettes to show fans he was absolutely perfect. In perhaps his most famous bit, he bowled a perfect game. It was the perfect way to show how perfect Mr. Perfect was, but a quarter century later, it’s even more: the perfect example of how bowling is filmed, viewed and understood outside the bowling industry.

As we know, there is a huge difference between a runaway Brooklyn and a high-flush explosion, even if they count exactly the same on the scoreboard, but outside the bowling industry, one strike is the same as any other. Did the pins fall? Great. Use it.

Mr. Perfect’s first perfect shot shows the sinewy one-handed righty in a dry shirt and nice bowling slacks making a passable four-step approach to the line, rolling the ball straight at the head pin, connecting with the 1-3 and knocking everything down, the 5 pin going last. The perfect first impression. We can instantly see he’s not a Bowler, but he’s also not an incompetent slouch. If he were in a group of friends that bowls once a year, he’d be the star.

This may have legitimately been Mr. Perfect’s first shot of the video shoot. If so, he and the crew were likely ecstatic, thinking it was going to require much less time to get 12 perfect shots on camera than they’d originally anticipated.

As of the second frame, however, Mr. Perfect’s shirt is completely drenched in sweat, indicating a lot of unusable non-strikes had been thrown after that first one. Still, Mr. Perfect’s second frame again hits the 1-3 although he is far more upright and even hops at the line, appearing to have been at this for a while. The perspiring behemoth turns around with a cocky flourish as the ball obliterates the pins, making us want to see the outtakes of his many cocky flourishes that were presumably accompanied by picking off corner pins.

His third strike is a Brooklyn with the 9 falling late, but he appears to be regaining his balance. He also goes Brooklyn in the fourth, this time with the 5-10 being tripped late. This is an important frame because, to anybody reading this column, that’s an extremely lucky shot for which a bowler should forever be ashamed. For a non-bowling video crew, that’s some slick-looking pinfall that needs to be maximized. And it will be.

The fifth frame is his third straight Brooklyn, but we must respect the integrity of the piece in that it’s evident Mr. Perfect is actually rolling all these shots. There is no stunt bowler being spliced together with Mr. Perfect’s perfect reactions.

In the sixth, he returns to the 1-3 side of the rack to crack open a six pack. By the seventh, he’s feeling it, again confidently turning away from the pins and hammering his hands in triumph as the pins go flying behind him.

This is where Mr. Perfect truly gets arrogant. His next four strikes, which get him to the front 11, are quick cuts of the pinfall followed by quick cuts of strikes being added to the score sheet. This was vlog-style editing before there were vlogs. All four are exact copies of his fourth frame in which he tripped the 5-10. Mr. Perfect is either more perfect than we thought, which is impossible, or the video crew got sick of waiting for the man to roll 12 strikes and said, “We can throw in that fun pinfall from earlier four more times.”

The final shot has to be new footage to prove this was real. The footage is so new that Mr. Perfect’s shirt is drier than it was in the second frame. The ball nearly goes through the face but technically hits the “correct” side of the headpin, with eight pins falling immediately and the dramatic-for-TV-sloppy-for-bowling late crumbling of the 7 and then 4 pin complete Mr. Perfect’s perfect game as he saunters back from the line with his incomparable swagger.

Twelve strikes featuring eight unique shots of pinfall from a man whose shirt’s sweat saturation fluctuates throughout might make a bowling fan skeptical of whether or not Mr. Perfect actually bowled a perfect game. But it was perfect. In mass media, all strikes are equal. Chronology doesn’t matter. Lucky pinfall is actually compelling pinfall. It told the story it wanted to tell.

Most important: it was 12 strikes in a row, proving the late Mr. Perfect was who he said he was: perfect.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, October, 2023

In our previous installment of why bowling is better than all other sports (Bowlers Journal International, September, 2021), we addressed unpredictability, long days, short weeks and everyone being better than everyone while no one is better than anyone. In this, installment 2/ (this is a social-media thread reference and not a two-spare bowling frame), we further explore why no other sport in the world can approach, pun intended, bowling.

Frequent Format Explanations

During every round of professional (or semi-professional or amateur or semi-amateur or sub-amateur) bowling, we as fans are treated to repeated reminders of the tournament format. This group of players is bowling this many games before another group of players bowls the same number of games before a cut to the top certain number of players leads to another round of qualifying or match play or bracket play or whatever it may be and then another cut, if applicable, leading to the stepladder finals or head-to-head finals or other type of championship match. Over the course of a five-hour qualifying round, we get to hear the format at least 38 times.

Can you remember the last time you watched a baseball or basketball or hockey game in which you were reminded of the format? No. It doesn’t happen. Those sports assume we know what’s going on and don’t tell us, which is insulting. Bowling wins again.

Frequent Format Changes

The format reminders are important because one never knows from “week” to “week” or league to league what the format is. This gives us variety and a chance to see championships decided in different ways. Sure, the same players win anyway (EJ Tackett’s five wins in 2023 covered four different tournament formats, Anthony Simonsen’s three wins covered three different tournament formats and Packy Hanrahan’s two wins covered two different tournament formats), but it’s fun never to know what’s next. Much more interesting than the sheer boredom and monotony of knowing every hockey game is going to consist of three 20-minute periods.

Unmatched Athleticism

Bowling asks its athletes to be at absolute peak performance for five to 12 hours a day, depending on how many squads are out there. Professional basketball players need to perform at their best for maybe three hours, which includes halftime and substitutions and timeouts. Hockey players also need to perform for up to three hours, but in 30-second shifts and with two 17-minute intermissions built in. Bowlers get physical rests between shots while their lanemates bowl, but if they’re in a single-squad, two-blocks-a-day tournament (we may need another format reminder to be sure), that’s at least 10 hours of having to stay mentally sharp 100% of the time and physically sharp during every shot. No other athletes are asked to do this because no other athletes can do this. Bowling, again, is superior.

Nice Pants

Although a relatively common complaint among some, bowlers at the professional level wear decent pants. Baseball players: weird tights, occasionally with stripes. Basketball players: shorts. Hockey players: padded shorts with odd socks over the shins. Bowlers simply put on a decent pair of slacks and go compete.

Wholesome Content

In team sports, trust is important. Coaches have to trust their players and vice versa, the player passing the playing module needs to trust the player receiving the playing module, teammates need to know they’ll support each other in all situations and the teams that do this best generally succeed. Still, this trust is never unconditional and there are always exceptions.

Bowling, despite being an individual sport, is the best example among all of humanity for knowing how to trust. No matter the outcome, a bowler will never lose his or her trust in The Process. It’s wholesome, moral and a great example for not just athletes in other sports but also all human beings to follow. There’s too much cynicism in the world. Emulate a bowler: trust The Process.

Bowling is Best

Unlike the single-minded prima donnas in other sports, bowlers are athletes in nice pants who can compete at the highest level for 12 straight hours in an ever-changing tournament format and have the emotional capacity for unconditional trust. Bowling far transcends every other sport.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, September, 2023

Finally, September is here. The PBA50 and PWBA Tour seasons are over and the PBA Tour season is mostly over, with only the Lucky Larsen Masters and PBA League events to go, so at long last we can ignore all the professionals and do what we do best: focus on our own games as recreational leagues are once again getting underway.

In our recreational leagues, we don’t have to worry about rankings and who should or shouldn’t be eligible for anything. We get to pick our friends as teammates, who only rank in the senses that they are rank amateurs and they emit rank odors after a maximum of three practice shots.

Obviously, there are many bowlers who compete in leagues and tournaments on multiple oil patterns throughout the summer, and those people are more than ready for fall. However, the vast majority of league bowlers begin their weekly pursuits of greatness on house shots in September after a few months off. For the latter group, it starts with cleaning out and restocking the bowling bag. This is easy because the latest bowling ball combines cover A with core B, so simply purchasing the new ball allows us to remove ball A and ball B from the bag, a two-for-one swap that opens up a slot for another new ball, which conveniently combines cover B with core A.

It’s a three-ball roller, so we should probably fill the last slot with a plastic—no, let’s keep this old favorite of ours just in case. I’m sure we won’t be shooting many spares and if we have to, we’ll definitely have no problem throwing reactive resin at them. Plus, this ball helped us win the league four years ago and it’ll give us confidence to know it’s there.

We probably don’t need new shoes. These still look good. Plus, they’re comfortable. We know how they slide and comfort on the approach is huge. These things are sleek, too. Covering them with booties would be a travesty, partly because we want to show off the shoes but mostly because we outgrew booties at approximately six months of age.

Accessories. We definitely need our towel. Or should we try a shammy this year? Let’s pack both. We’ll need 60 spare finger inserts, 30 for each finger, just in case we lose both on every shot. Wait, though: we’ll probably bowl 900, which will be 36 shots. We’d better pack 36 of each finger insert to be safe. Let’s gamble on the thumb. We have one we can move from ball to ball, but if that breaks for some reason, maybe it’s a sign to embrace the two-handed game.

What else? The pros have dopp kits full of powders, glues, tapes, scissors, knives, etc. We’re not sure what any of that is for but let’s order a few dozen to cover us through the season.

A bunch of small bills for smalltime gambling, a few decks of playing cards, a little notebook we could conceivably use to make notes on our games but won’t, another towel and another shammy for good measure and that should be about it.

Are we forgetting anything? Oh, maybe we should practice. Touch a bowling ball for the first time since April. We could probably get to the lanes next Thursday… well, no, we’ll be fine. We’ll use the first nine weeks of the season as practice. That should be enough. The league is just for fun and it’s not sandbagging if we’re trying. Besides, nine weeks of practice among real competition should have us sharp enough to enter the USBC Masters next year as one of the favorites to win. And, as Masters champ, they’ll have to give us free bowling balls. Right?

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, August, 2023

In almost every sport, the answer to “What’s the score?” is easy. You turn on the hockey game in the middle of the first period and the first thing you do is look at the score bug. What’s the score? 3-2. You’re at a funeral and a friend notices you looking at your phone, knowing you’re checking on the baseball game. What’s the score? 3-2. You’re at a restaurant with as many as 78 TVs in your face (if you’re lucky, as few as 73) and all the TVs are showing teams and sports you don’t even care about, but you can’t help yourself. What’s the score? 3-2 on every TV, except the soccer game, which is 0-0.

It doesn’t work so easily in bowling.

What’s the score? Well, that guy is pacing 230 but the other guy is already in the 240s and their max scores are tied at 260.

For bowlers, that conversation is fine. Compelling, even. But imagine being a regular human being who only bowls a few times a year at the most. For those people, scoring has been automatic their entire lives, they’ve never learned to keep score and, although the automatic scorers can be understood when there are nothing but open frames, they become a confounding mess once a slash or X joins the line.

In the pro game, slashes and exes appear in nearly every frame. In the once-a-year-for-fun game, the scoreboards are nearly inverted, with strikes and spares being so rare they result in highly viewed social media posts like “Schlub Gets Spare,” featuring some guy in white shorts picking up the 3-6 by barely grazing the 3, which then barely grazes the 6. A great moment in that person’s life and there is nothing wrong with someone bowling to have fun and taking pleasure in such an accomplishment.

But now what? It’s his sixth frame, and to that point, his open frames were easy to add. Five plus seven plus four plus zero plus six equals 22. But the spare leaves his sixth-frame score blank. What happened? Has he been disqualified? Why does he still have a 22? Maybe spares are bad? To make matters more confusing, he will invariably roll a gutter ball in the seventh frame, meaning the box in the sixth will plant a 32 there. “Oh,” he’ll think incorrectly, “spares are worth exactly 10.”

Generally, we at The One Board ask knowledgeable bowlers to consider the mindsets and thought processes of those who are less experienced in the game in an effort to encourage those people to become interested in learning the finer details of the game from a helpful veteran rather than run screaming from a know-it-all goon who has no tolerance for a beginner.

Not this time. This time, we are calling for every possible educational outlet to introduce bowling scoring into the curriculum. Elementary schools, after-school activities, church groups, mentorship programs, the checkout line at the grocery store. People need to learn how to keep score. There was a time in which kids would learn to keep score during gym class. College courses in bowling required students to learn to score before they ever hit the lanes. Now, these opportunities are far too rare. Automatic scoring is great for many reasons, but people need to know how to interpret what they’re looking at. When a once-a-year bowler spares and his score changes a frame later by adding 10-20 pins, that person is confused. We’re not asking for everyone to be experts able to track a cut line in a field of 64 in real time, but we should all be able to add 10 to the value of our next shot.

Novices: genuinely seek assistance. Veterans: give judgment-free assistance. This is paramount to our game and, at the risk of approaching hyperbole, society as a whole. And let’s hope the score is not 3-2.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, July, 2023

During the semifinal match of the PBA Super Slam Cup in May, EJ Tackett bowled a perfect game. It was the 40^th time a 300 game was bowled on a PBA telecast, but it would’ve counted as the 35^th… except it didn’t count. The count was off on counting a feat that didn’t count. Yes, Tackett bowled 300 but no, it doesn’t count on the historical list of televised perfect games because it wasn’t done in a title event.

What? For any casual fans of bowling or math reading this, the numbers above make absolutely no sense and have turned you off to both bowling and math.

The solution: let’s stop numbering 300s. “EJ Tackett bowled 300” sounds a lot more impressive than “EJ Tackett bowled the 35^th televised 300” and not just because the latter comes with built-in asterisks as is bowling’s way.

It no longer matters how many have been bowled. Let fans enjoy the memories of what they’ve seen and the excitement of what they will see.

We’ve Seen Enough

When Jack Biondolillo was the first to achieve perfection, it made sense to bask in the rarity. Johnny Guenther two years later was worth noting as the second and Jim Stefanich five years after that was arguably worth noting as the third.

But even as early as the fourth—Pete McCordic in 1987—numbering the games didn’t mean as much. McCordic’s 300 was more impressive because it had been 13 years since the last one and because of McCordic himself than because it was the fourth ever rolled. What do you remember about Bob Benoit’s 300? Bob Learn Jr.’s? Probably not where they fell numerically. By the time Jason Queen bowled 300 in 1997 (and wasn’t given credit until 2008, making him the 19^th to be credited with a perfect game but slotted chronologically as 11^th), we were way past needing to number these things.

Consider again a casual fan, whose mind exploded reading that Jason Queen parenthetical, and this distinction of a perfect game “on television.” Of course it’s on television. That’s where bowling happens. Casual fans—the vast majority of the television audience—don’t know professional bowling happens anywhere other than on TV. These fans certainly don’t care whether it was a title event or not and if they are impressed watching someone bowl 300 and are then told it doesn’t count, what are they to think? Probably, “What else is on?”

That—distinguishing between a title event and an exhibition—brings us to the other reason we all benefit by stopping the count:

The Other Perfect Games Were Real

Tackett rolled 12 strikes in a row in one game. That happened. There’s video evidence. It also happened for Wes Malott twice. And for Ryan Shafer. And the Dallas Strikers. And Dom Barrett, although for clarity and to add an asterisk while trying to remove asterisks, Barrett only had to roll 10 strikes under the auspices of the World Bowling scoring system, but he still scored 300.

These games have long been relegated to yeah-they-happened-but-they-don’t-count status. But if we stop numbering the 300 games that do count, we can welcome these six back into the all-inclusive group of perfect games bowled on television, righting an ancient wrong. Everything counts if we stop counting.

We should do it soon, because by the time this issue hits mailboxes, it’s likely we’ll have seen the “actual” 35^th perfect game at the PBA Tour Finals, an event that’s given us at least one 300 each of the past three years.

If we stop numbering perfect games, each successive performance will mean more in the moment, adding prestige by simply letting a 300 game be the achievement it is rather than some item on (or not on) a list. All previous pseudo-acknowledged performances can be seamlessly recognized as having happened without upsetting the chronology. And not to worry: accepting the existence of Tackett’s 300 will not in the least tarnish Tommy Jones bowling 300 to win his 20^th title a day after being inducted into the Hall of Fame. Legendary performances will always stand out for what they are, not for where they land numerically.

Sure, we can keep the lists for historical reference. These were bowled in title events, these were bowled in other events, this one only required 10 strikes, but it’s time to stop focusing on all the caveats. Did someone bowl 300? That’s all that, yes, counts.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, June, 2023

Noah turned eight years old last month. Like so many soon-to-be eight-year-olds, Noah had a birthday party at his local bowling center. There is truly no better venue or activity for a child’s birthday party; it’s a public place so Noah’s parents don’t have to allow any additional slimy children in their house, it’s an activity all kids enjoy, a sweet cake tastes even sweeter when it’s in the shape of a bowling pin and, best of all, Noah will get to take home an actual bowling pin that he’ll cherish until he’s 24 and he needs to burn it for warmth after his lowlife significant other throws him out of their apartment for chopping a 6-10 during their Thursday mixed league.

Noah invited all his friends to celebrate and every one of them except Liam showed up. Liam refused to attend a party hosted by a two-hander, let alone a two-hander who uses the “wrong” brand of bowling ball. Liam has integrity and only throws—and associates with—one-handers who use the best equipment in the world, which is not to be confused with the other set of the best equipment in the world Liam will be using a month from now.

Of the nine kids who attended the party, six were two-handed righties, two were one-handed (one lefty) and one, Mason, refused to participate because the gutter guards were up. No legitimate score can be thrown when gutter balls are impossible. Plus, with the short oil pattern Noah requested, the kids were going to have to get close to the gutter and the rails could’ve interfered with their shotmaking. Mason didn’t want to risk such humiliation.

Instead of being humiliated, Mason used his time to humiliate the four kids who had to rent shoes and pick a house ball off the rack. In defense of Mason’s bullying, those kids really were making a mockery of the sport by not intuitively understanding the intricacies of ball motion and approach awareness, thinking some old ball with a conventional drilling and ill-fitting shoes would help them achieve honor scores. Embarrassingly amateurish behavior by those third graders.

After the first game of the two-game party block (Mason also criticized the lack of a third game that could’ve allowed for additional honor scores), Noah’s parents had the kids take a break from the lanes so they could devour some pizza using their non-bowling hands. At first, the kids loved this, but eventually they started to get nervous that their arms and legs were getting stiff with all the waiting between games, so they asked for additional practice before game two. Noah’s parents refused, citing time constraints. The kids, in an uproar and completely unconcerned with time, approached the manager and demanded practice. The manager and the parents met for a few minutes and eventually compromised, giving the kids three minutes of practice on a non-party pair before game two began. This cost Noah’s parents an extra $20 but it was well worth it to placate the participants and prevent the pizza portion of the party from plundering the party of its proper prestige.

Needing a double in the 10^th frame of the second game to win his own birthday party, Noah confidently stepped up, went through his pre-shot routine, approached the line, released the ball and got three off the left to lose to his younger sister who posted a career-best two-game set of 193.

After taking a moment to himself in the locker room, during which he hurled his equipment and shoes and empty boxes in all directions, Noah returned to the party as if nothing had happened, excited to open his presents, all of which were rolls of thumb tape. Except for the one roll by a brand that was not product-registered with the party planners, this was exactly what Noah wanted.

Happy birthday, Noah.