INTERNET BOWLING PERSONALITY

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, November, 2020

It’s been a tumultuous year for bowling in every aspect, starting with the most fundamental: whether or not bowling centers are open at all. Without bowling centers, there’s no recreational, league, high school, collegiate or professional bowling. If people aren’t bowling, they’re not buying equipment, which to some is even harder to endure than not bowling. Plus, if we’re not paying sanction fees, we’re simultaneously deprived of being able to complain about the cost while also suggesting we pay an extra dollar to be passed directly to Jason Belmonte for some reason.

Still, it’s Thanksgiving month in the United States, Norfolk Island, Brazil, Liberia, the Netherlands and the Philippines, so it’s a good time to reflect on all we have rather than all we don’t. Residents of Canada, Grenada and St. Lucia have been ruminating on gratitude for a full month already, but that’s no reason for them to stop. Even if you’re from a country that doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, you can still be grateful, just as you retain eligibility for the Bowlers Journal All-American Team.

Despite any troubles the sport has had this year, there are still plenty of things to appreciate, especially as many leagues have resumed in some capacity and the PBA has been on TV so much lately, showing us bowling still exists and the best players are still absurdly good at it.

Regarding the PBA telecasts, we all should be thankful for the reminder that constant crowd noise does not hinder the bowlers’ ability to focus, as we saw during PBA League, World Series of Bowling XI and PBA Playoffs competition. Before the world shut down, we packed the bowling centers with as many fans as we could under the easy-to-follow caveat that they were to be inert as statues and silent as Marcel Marceau. Now, we don’t let anyone in the building but instead pump crowd noise onto the lanes. By combining the best parts of these two scenarios—once we’re able to do so—perhaps we’ll have fans in the building making real sports noise during sporting events. As long as the fans don’t stop once they start or start once they stop, they shouldn’t have to worry about being berated by the professional athletes they paid to see.

Pro bowlers are thankful for the fans who, although not allowed in attendance at the events, continue to engage with the pros on social media, whether by liking a photo, asking what ball the pro is throwing or staring at daily bowler-hosted talk shows, (im)patiently waiting for the day they can once again attend A-Squad qualifying.

Likewise, fans are thankful for the bowlers who continue to generate content and interact, at least partially satiating the fans’ desire to watch competitive bowling.

Hematologists are thankful for PBA League competition. In the absence of high-fives, the players spent two hours every night smashing their forearms against their teammates’ forearms, saturating their bodies with deep, painful bruising. The hematologists are grateful for the uptick in business as well as the chance to meet some of their favorite players.

Non-American players are thankful for the athlete waivers that got them into the United States for the recent professional competition. The waivers assure us the players are trustworthy and healthy by virtue of possessing a very specific skill. We remain skeptical of their non-athlete neighbors. This makes sense, because no matter the situation in the world, we should always be wary of someone who doesn’t know how to get his ball to the spot.

As always, youth bowlers are simply thankful for bowling. They don’t yet know that the guaranteed first-place check in an amateur tournament is not guaranteed, nor that changes in humidity will benefit every bowler in the field except themselves, nor that pre-practice practice might be the difference between winning and losing. They just like to bowl. Take them bowling.

Happy Thanksgiving, bowling fans and bowlers.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, October, 2020

Typically, this is the time of year when league season would be several weeks old and excuses for why our averages are so low to start the season would be flying. Some bowlers would be struggling due to not having touched a ball since the end of the previous season. Others would have difficulty because they hadn’t yet gotten accustomed to the new six-ball arsenal they just bought. A similar group would be at a disadvantage because they didn’t have new six-ball arsenals and were doomed to compete with the relics released almost a month ago. Sandbaggers would prattle on about how “it’s just one of those nights” for five straight weeks.

This year, leagues are quite different, if they even exist, so it’s important we find at least a few familiar comforts to keep things semi-normal.

Thankfully, new bowling balls will continue to be released every few days, so anyone suffering from a ball-related calamity can get quick relief. The rusty folks who haven’t rolled a ball in months will start to get their swings back as the season progresses, so they’ll be fine. The sandbaggers, as they do every year, will find their games at just the right time to capture the league championship, so no worries there.

Other similarities, such as a patchless existence (unsubstantiated rumor: USBC purchased this very publication using the money from the bring-back-the-reward-patch fund), will make leagues feel as if nothing has changed.

We will still be able to claim the lanes are walled for our opponents and impossible for ourselves, a familiar certainty we can count on forever. In some leagues, opponents will bowl at separate times or on separate lanes (or both) in order to limit the number of people in the building, giving our accusations more merit while simultaneously becoming more baseless.

Gambling, side pots and other table games will probably stay the same. Once we get through the door and have been reminded we’re supposed to be terrified of each other, we’ll forget we’re terrified of each other and have fun. We might not high-five as much, but that’s a practice long overdue for removal from the game.

High-fiving in general has always been strange even if there’s nothing really wrong with it. But when college bowling decided every single act by any player, whether successful, unsuccessful or completely unrelated and irrelevant, required all members of the team to slap hands, things got out of… hand. The only reason high-fiving is done—at any level, even the pro level, where most of the guys and gals detest it—is because it’s done. By that twisted logic, if we stop doing it, we can continue not doing it because it’s no longer done.

However, if we’re afraid of the transfer of germs, a high-five is actually the safest option among the alternative congratulatory tactics. Consider a fist bump in which people, who wipe their noses with the backs of their fingers, touch other people’s similarly snot-ridden finger backs. Or, ponder the new craze: the elbow bump, a fantastical contrivance in which two people coughing and sneezing into their elbows have found a method to transfer those coughs and sneezes in a more polite way.

While these comforts will help us find familiar enjoyment for at least a few hours a week while we bowl our three games with no hope of receiving a reward patch, we will have to remain flexible enough to adapt and adjust to some of the changes required in order to have a league at all.

Of course, if we were flexible enough to be able to adapt and adjust to changes, our averages wouldn’t be so low. Maybe things will get better when the humidity drops.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, September, 2020

For millennia, people have been searching for the perfect bowling scoring pace. Despite the greatest efforts from the pharaohs to the Hapsburgs to the PBA King of Bowling, the perfect pace still eludes us. Averaging 250 is too high, but averaging 180 is too low. 200 is par? Not anymore, it isn’t. 210 to cash might be about right, unless too many—or too few—lefties make it.

When determining the scoring pace, we can’t go by the leader’s average. No matter whether the lanes are impossibly simple or simply impossible, the leader is often averaging 5-10 pins more than the next best player. Similarly, we can’t go by the red leader’s average, which is frequently 50-60 pins below the cut to match play, but we can’t go by the cut to match play because it’s possible to miss that cut and still get paid. Thus, the scoring pace that matters is the cash line.

Bowlers understand someone is going to lead by a lot and that’s fine. They understand someone is going to trail by a lot and that’s fine. But if they can count on a perfect scoring pace required to get paid, then it’s all up to each player to bowl that number and get paid. The only slight downside to this line of thinking is bowling tournaments are competition and thus always graded on a curve. Sometimes 205 gets a player into match play in 12^th and other times 205 misses the cut by hundreds of total pins.

If the scores are too high, the tournament becomes a carry contest, favoring power players and unfair to the shotmakers. How will the pros gain any respect from the general public when there’s no way to explain how hard it is to be that good?

When the scores are too low, qualifying somehow takes even longer than it usually does. It’s all about grinding and unfair to the power guys. How can the pros gain respect from the general public by rolling 180s when any schlub at home has bowled a 180 game at least once? Obviously, a 180 average on a flat pattern is much harder than a single 180 game by a random schlub, but the schlub doesn’t know that.

Sometimes, the leaderboard is full of lefties. It’s unfair they have no traffic over there and can do whatever they want with no repercussions. A single ball for the whole round? This is unfair to the righties.

Unless the lefties are shut out, that is. How can they ever build any miss room on such a brutal condition when there are so few of them and the righties are all carving a groove on their side and also cutting into the lefty laydown area? This is unfair to the lefties.

So, the perfect scoring pace is one that will allow power players, shotmakers, two-handers, one-handers, righthanders, lefthanders and Jason Belmonte to have an equal chance at all times. But what is that number? And does it matter? We can shut out lefties with a 250 pace or a 190 pace. We can handcuff shotmakers at the same time even though, by name and definition, they should be able to make shots. Lefthanded powerful shotmakers? Doomed. No-thumb one-handed shotmaking righties? Disqualified upon entry.

The only way to make it truly fair is to jam a flat pattern out there with oil that never moves. Doing so would also eliminate the need to adjust, taking away one of the most important and compelling parts of the game, though. This leaves us where we started: searching for the magic cash number.

Unfortunately, technology hasn’t yet caught up to the intricacies of bowling fairness, so even with the world’s top statisticians working on it, the perfect number that should be next to the last-cash player’s name at every event continues to evade us.

However, we can definitively say this: at any given event, the perfect scoring pace is the opposite of whatever the actual scoring pace is.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, August, 2020

In June, we saw the return of the PBA on FOX with two events that not only appealed to the usual bowling audience but also enthralled casual sports fans—those who will watch any sport even if they aren’t necessarily fans of that sport. Now, perhaps, many of them are becoming bowling fans.

For existing bowling fans, the shows were fun because they were different from what we usually see and we got to watch the players showcase their talents in new ways. Plus, we hadn’t seen any live bowling in three months, so we would’ve gladly watched anything with a sanding pad.

For casual sports fans—regular people who don’t yet know the delicate intricacies of changing axis tilt to generate a slightly different ball motion—these events showcased exactly what the general public assumes pro bowlers do all day: strike constantly. A casual sports fan can’t relate to a grind-it-out, clean 190 game, but he can relate to strikes.

In the Strike Derby, competitors were each given two minutes in which to roll as many strikes as possible. Because it’s bowling, of course we had to sit through a qualifying round, but once that was over, interest picked up as the players were seeded into a bracket. Again, given two minutes each, the player with the most strikes advanced.

With no time for pre-shot routines, thumb-tape adjustments or incessant balking, the bowlers—who, one hopes, were still able to trust the process among the rapidity—were thrust into a fast-paced strikefest that was as compelling to the fans as it was exhausting to the players. Two minutes is much longer than an average NHL shift, tennis rally or football play, and most of the players hadn’t been able to bowl at all in months. Also, consider a bowling ball weighs about three times as much as a hockey stick, hockey puck, tennis racket, tennis ball and non-Patriots football combined. This was strenuous.

With the oil getting pushed around with every shot, the lanes got considerably more difficult as the players grew more fatigued. Perhaps it’s important to note the oil pattern was not arduous, but it’s also important to note only moderate-to-high-level bowlers understand the game to that extent. Casual sports fans didn’t care about the oil moving around or whether the conditions were tough; they cared about seeing who would strike the most.

In the Summer Clash, each player bowled a 10^th frame in the first round and the lowest score was eliminated. From there, the remaining field rolled one shot each, low score eliminated, until we were down to one. It wasn’t quite as brisk as the Strike Derby but it was just as immediately understandable to new viewers.

In the Strike Derby, casual sports fans saw exactly what they see in every other sport: a result every few seconds (each attempted strike), every two minutes (a player’s final score) and every four minutes (the winner of the match). In the Clash, every shot from the second round on determined if someone was in or out.

Even better: viewers could comprehend on their own what needed to happen for a player to win. That’s right, the score was decipherable. If the first guy rolled 12 strikes in the Strike Derby, the next guy needed 13 to win. If the low score in the Summer Clash was 8, the rest of the bowlers needed 9 or better to advance. This is a bit more intuitive than a novice trying to figure out what’s going on by looking at a scoreboard full of slashes and exes that claims one guy trails by 8 but has a max score 12 pins higher than his opponent.

When sports fans are given fast-paced action, frequent results and a score they can figure out without straining themselves, sports fans are engrossed.

A first-time viewer didn’t know he was supposed to assume one of the no-thumb bowlers would win the Strike Derby, but that viewer had a lot of fun watching full-thumbed and not-slow-but-certainly-not-fast Kris Prather hoist the trophy. The same viewer had no clue Sean Rash wasn’t winning his 16^th career PBA Tour title in the Summer Clash, but the image of a happy person clutching a trophy is how sporting events end.

Bowling fans got a fun reintroduction to their favorite sport. Sports fans got an approachable, comprehensible inducement into becoming bowling fans. Soon enough, they’ll be clamoring for clean 190s, too.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, July, 2020

The PBA League draft generates intrigue and excitement every year, but especially this year. Not only is the PBA League one of the most recognizable and marketable aspects of the PBA to casual sports fans (that is, those who are not already ardent bowling fans), but the PBA League draft, held on May 17 on FloBowling, was the closest thing to live bowling coverage we’d seen since the PBA World Championship on FOX more than two months prior.

The luxury of being able to simultaneously appeal to the devoted bowling audience and mainstream sports-fan audience is something the PBA is rightly unwilling to pass up.

In general, sports fans like sports drafts, particularly when they already know who the players are. The NFL and NBA drafts are popular in large part because the draft picks feature incredibly famous college students preparing to enter the workforce and fans want to see in which cities those students will earn jobs. With the PBA League, the players are already professionals and thus well known among PBA fans, allowing for hearty debates, tough choices and inevitable snubs.

This year, the natural appeal of the draft even received some coverage from mainstream, non-bowling media in addition to the intense scrutiny and in-depth analysis on all the new bowlers-talking-to-bowlers internet shows.

On the much-heralded Beef & Barnzy Show, the most popular of the bunch, Stu Williams (Beef) and (&) Chris Barnes (Barnzy) hosted 70 or 80 mock drafts leading up to the real thing, probably as a covert act devised by Barnes to create as many scenarios as possible to plan for what his team could do for real, but this is merely speculation.

Finally, after all the hype, discussions, mock drafts and predictions, the real draft happened.

Over the course of two hours, including two commercial breaks that featured no commercials, FloBowling put on a virtual draft, no easy task for a long-distance production with every possible bowler, team manager and host on standby to be inserted into the show.

As expected, the draft was full of the unexpected. Players, fans and analysts were surprised, fascinated and even outraged for some reason at some of the choices.

Amleto Monacelli, manager of the expansion Las Vegas High Rollers, was either lauded or excoriated for his roster with very few public opinions falling between. Monacelli chose François Lavoie with the first overall pick, notably passing on Sean Rash, who went second overall to Marshall Holman’s expansion Brew City Ballers.

Had Rash been selected by Las Vegas, would we have seen an Eric Lindros situation? Had Monacelli accepted a proposed trade from Silver Lake—a tidbit gleaned from manager Mark Baker by bowling pundit Phil Brylow during a panel discussion during the Beef & Barnzy post-draft show—what would that have meant for both expansion teams?

We’re quickly veering into the hypothetical, which is another reason sports fans like sports drafts: second-guessing. Whom should that team have picked? Why didn’t they take this guy when he was still on the board? Who was snubbed?

With two new teams this season, it means 10 fewer snubs. Still, we could’ve added 40 new teams and there would still be snubs.

In any endeavor with limited availability, there will be exclusions. And, just like the high-school basketball team, it’s not enough to say who was snubbed; one must also point out the person who was unfairly chosen over the snub, thereby pseudo-snubbing the unsnubbed.

Beyond the snubs and the pseudo-snubbed unsnubbed, we have the most egregious snubs: the snubs snubbed from the these-guys-were-snubbed lists. We won’t mention them here as that would only create a new list of further snubs.

We will, however, revel in some good news in the world: the PBA returned to television in June and the PBA League will be in Portland this fall to determine which post-draft roster is truly the best.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, June, 2020

“Where are you? What have you been doing? What are you binge watching?”

The first two questions are irrelevant in that the first answer is obvious and the second one is usually “binge watching,” leading to the third query, to which there’s only one correct response: “I’ve been watching 800 daily internet bowling shows in which bowlers talk to bowlers in the morning and then talk to each other again in the afternoon and then talk to each other again before bed in order to set up tomorrow’s conversations.”

The western-hemisphere bowling world has gone from bowling for 14 hours a day while others watch to talking to each other for 14 hours a day while others watch, followed by a brief break to re-oil the fiber-optic cables before bowling’s Australian correspondent checks in.

More than any other professional sport and well beyond tweeted screen shots of co-workers doing virtual happy hours, bowlers are keeping bowling conversations going despite a complete lack of actual bowling. It’s impressive to see, although it’s not shocking as bowlers have always been able to talk about bowling.

Just as bowlers have adapted to advancements in cover stocks and lane conditions, they’re now adapting to advancements in technology to entertain their fans in new ways while simultaneously marketing themselves and increasing their followings. This is smart and good for the entire game.

Long-distance communication has been around since the beginning of civilization. Using fire, smoke, flags, guns, drums and other visual or audial cues, messages relating to military directives, regime announcements or whether a fastball or changeup was coming next were able to be passed, relatively quickly and over long distances, to those who needed to know.

With the invention of the telegraph in the 18^th century and its ascent to prominence in the 19^th, bowlers were no longer limited to pre-determined signals and were able to send the first text messages, dictating exactly what they wanted to say. Instead of having to use flags to flash the old yellow-red-blue signal for someone having bowled a 300 game, people were finally able to send a telegraph: I WOULD HAVE SHOT 300 BUT MY OPPONENT DISTRACTED ME STOP

But the telegraph wasn’t good enough. People didn’t want to text each other; they wanted to talk. Along came Alexander Graham Bell’s patent in 1876. Soon after, bowlers were able to call each other and talk about their bad breaks and frustrations after first relaying their gripes to the operator.

This continued for over a century, although the operators were eventually spared, before humans decided telephones were too intrusive and they hated talking to each other and would rather go back to telegraphs. The advent of the reversion-through-advancement text message allowed bowlers to form group chats in which they could make fun of each other during qualifying blocks. Everything was wonderful.

Then, the world—even qualifying—stopped.

Suddenly deprived of human contact, everyone realized maybe communication isn’t so bad after all, but phone calls were still out of the question. As “Weird Al” Yankovic sings in “First World Problems,” “Somebody just called me up on the phone / what? / don’t they know how to text? OMG.”

Smoke signals aren’t practical with everyone locked in their underground shelters and group texts aren’t as fun without new fodder. The next natural step is to arrange live video colloquies available for anyone in the entire world with an internet connection to watch.

As is proper, bowlers are at the forefront of this movement. Just because they’re not bowling doesn’t mean they can’t have fun with and make fun of each other. And, with the added desire to see and be seen, why not skewer each other publicly so the fans can stay in touch, which should lead to increased fan engagement when the bowlers are able to compete again? And, in true bowling fashion, why not require an entire day, every day, to make it happen?

So, what are you binge watching?

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, May, 2020

It’s that time of year again: league season is over and we need to find ways to stay occupied and fight off the inevitable bowling withdrawal that hangs over the dreary summer months. Except we weren’t prepared for this. Leagues didn’t end when they were supposed to and we don’t know when they’re coming back.

In previous years, we could spend the summer watching the pros on FloBowling, BowlTV, FOX, FS1, CBSSN and YouTube. We can still do that, but for the time being, we’re limited to the classics as they re-air on TV and sit in the archives on the internet.

Summer used to be an ideal time to practice with limited distractions. Now, unless you have lanes in your house, practice is not an option. Some league bowlers like to use the summer to completely forget about bowling until Labor Day, but being forced to forget about bowling accomplishes the opposite: these people want to bowl.

World Series of Bowling XI was interrupted with three titles still to be decided. The USBC Open Championships were pushed back shortly before they were to begin. A week prior to its scheduled start, the USBC Masters was postponed. College bowling came to an end on the cusp of sectionals. Bowling centers around the world were closed until further notice.

This bout of bowling withdrawal is unlike anything we’ve felt before. We’re not merely between seasons. One season didn’t end and who knows when the next one will begin? This is bigger than bowling. We don’t know where we are. We are all Billy Pilgrim.

At the end of all this, everything in the world is going to be different, although it should be noted cashers round will remain just as compelling as it ever was.

College athletes in all sports, particularly seniors, weren’t ready for their collegiate seasons and careers to end. The lack of closure these athletes are getting on their sporting and academic careers is—to use a bowling word—unfair. They’ll be fine, though. As disenchanted as many of them are, they’re humans who will cope with it in time.

Still, college bowling itself will change. When it finally returns, will the athletes be less inclined to high-five each other after every shot? And, without incessant high-fiving, is it really college bowling?

Pro bowlers will be happy to be rid of the perceived need to high-five opponents but may be slightly more weary about cramming 14 people into a room on the road. Players whose pre-shot routines involve licking their hands and rubbing their shoes might want to consider using this time off the lanes to develop new pre-shot routines.

At the amateur and recreational level, think of the poor sandbaggers. They were just a week or two away from finally performing up to their real capabilities when it was all ripped out from under them. Six months of whiffing 4-pins and for what? For nothing. Important note: it’s always for nothing. The only good thing about the abrupt end to league season is the sandbaggers didn’t get their undeserved glory.

Amid all the upcoming changes to the entire sport, at least we can take comfort in knowing some things will remain the same. Staying six feet apart from each other shouldn’t be tough as bowlers have always yielded to somebody 40 lanes down for being too close. Live-stream commentators will continue to self-isolate 14 hours a day in the back corner, only leaving their cubbies for essential purposes like configuring a camera for a rolloff. Bowling bags will remain the size of walk-in closets and ball selection will still be paramount.

Unfortunately, nobody knows when we’ll get back to these familiar comforts. Bowlers bowl. Without bowling, what do we do now?

To bowlers, the course of action is intuitive. All we can do is—yes—trust the process. Even if we have no idea what the process is.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, April, 2020

As we enter April, leaving behind an inexplicable obsession with college basketball (that keeps going into April despite being named after March) and moving into an inexplicable obsession with professional baseball (that begins in March and now only exists so people can enjoy an astronomical level of schadenfreude), we’re reminded of how simple sports are.

Play two halves; most points wins. Play nine innings; most runs wins. Entire field bowls 16 qualifying games over two eight-game blocks with the top 40 plus the next eight players aged 60 or above advancing to a third day of competition, opening with those players qualifying 25^th and below plus the additional eight 60-year-olds wiping their scores and playing five more games of qualifying, with the top eight advancing to the first round of match play, where they’ll be joined by players qualifying 9^th-24^th, again dropping all existing scores, bowling five modified round-robin matches, the last of which is a position round, with the top eight based on cumulative totals plus 30 additional pins for each match victory emerging to compete in the second round of match play where those players qualifying first through eighth await, this time bowling six modified match-play games, the last of which is a position round, and the top five based on cumulative scores including 30 bonus pins per win move into the stepladder finals, the fourth seed bowls a one-game match against the fifth seed for the right to bowl a one-game match against the third seed for the right to bowl a one-game match against the second seed for the right to bowl a one-game match against the first seed for the championship, most pins wins.

Simple and intuitive, but never to be explained again.

That’s right: the Matrix of Fairness is no more. In its four years of existence, the Matrix of Fairness did its job, straddling the line between everyone-has-a-chance and you-still-can’t-beat-Walter Ray. Its beauty lied in its absurdity, its integrity held in place by the immense talent of some of the greatest to ever play the game.

And now, just as its name has permeated the bowling lexicon, we’re dropping its pins. No word yet if a format aged 60 or older will be taking over, but the Matrix of Fairness will be missed.

It’ll be missed for its stunning ability to avoid rolloffs more often than not despite an opportunity for 95 or so of them in a single day. It’ll be fondly remembered for its legitimately compelling position rounds as so many of the players were mathematically involved until the final shot. Many will reminisce about the only two times a player made it all the way from the cashers round to the title (Brian LeClair and Walter Ray Williams Jr.). No one will forget how the short blocks made the best in the world immediately shift into their otherworldly greatness gear, making them unbeatable no matter how many games were being bowled. A true study in athletic excellence could be done on this alone.

Most of all, it will be missed for its fairness.

While the Matrix of Fairness deserves to be mourned, we must look forward to the good things to come: the PBA50 Tour is coming back this month and it still features some of the best to have ever played the game. And, no matter the format, someone will win every event. Not only that, but the PWBA Tour returns this month as do the PBA Playoffs in addition to league championships being earned around the world.

Forget about college basketball and forget about professional baseball. Bowling season gets even stronger this month. And, if all goes well, it’ll do so with the utmost fairness.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, March, 2020

The stories you are about to read are perfectly true as of March 1, 2020.

During match play at the Hall of Fame Classic in January, Darren Tang tied a PBA record by rolling two 300 games in a 7-game block. This is not as impressive as Charlie Standish’s record of three 300s in a 6-game block but, if given one more game, could Tang have tied Dave D’Entremont’s record of three 300s in an 8-game block? The next game Tang bowled at that event was the championship match, where there was a 300 bowled. By Tommy Jones.

Sean Rash is the only bowler to roll two televised 300 games in PBA title events, making him the only player to be officially credited with two 300s. Wes Malott is the only one to roll two televised 300s in non-title events. Ryan Shafer is the only player to claim one of each: a perfect game in a title event and another in an exhibition.

Jones is the only person to roll 1 1/6 300 games, one for a title and the other being two of 12 strikes in PBA League Baker competition. Norm Duke was the anchor on that Dallas Strikers team and also owns an individual televised 300, making Duke the only player to roll 1 1/3 perfect games. Both Duke and Jones were paid 1/5 of the bonus money for their respective 1/3 and 1/6 contributions to the Baker 300. Dom Barrett is the only man to roll a televised 300 game that only required 10 strikes in a non-title event, for which he was paid the full bonus.

For a while, Jason Queen wasn’t credited with a televised 300 at all as he accomplished the feat in the semifinal match at the 1997 USBC Masters, which at the time wasn’t a PBA Tour event (nor was it the USBC Masters; it was the ABC Masters). The following year, the PBA began recognizing the event—Parker Bohn III rolled 300 on TV that year and received immediate credit—but didn’t retroactively award title credit to prior winners until 2008 (assuming the prior winners were PBA members at the time of their victories, and Queen was not).

In the decision of 2008, although Queen was not awarded a PBA title, he was retroactively recognized as the 19^th person to be credited with a televised 300. He was slotted chronologically as the 11^th to do it, but since he wasn’t a PBA member when he actually rolled the 12 strikes, he became the only player in history to roll a televised PBA 300 game as an amateur. Incidentally, Queen was a PBA member in 2008 and won two PBA Midwest Regional titles that year to complement his retroactive perfect game.

The 11 years between Queen’s achievement and recognition led to the commentators of the next eight televised 300 games to be “wrong” in retrospect, telling fans the players were going for the 11^th through 18^th televised perfect games in history, which was true at the time but still causes confusion among YouTube commenters when they see #14 in the title and hear #13 in the video. Steve Hoskins, Bohn, Steve Jaros, Mike Miller, Duke, Mika Koivuniemi, Tony Reyes and Shafer were all bumped back one spot in the timeline. In the 2009 Dydo Japan Cup, Rhino Page rolled the 20^th televised perfect game to get us back into a consistent order while also becoming the only player ever to roll a televised PBA 300 outside the United States… unless you count Chris Barnes, who rolled 300 in the semifinal match of the 2015 DHC PBA Japan Invitational, but that was on Xtra Frame rather than TV. Pay attention to this one; it could be the next to retroactively reorder things.

The 21^st televised 300 game belongs to Jason Belmonte, even though the man who bowled the 22^nd—Barnes—actually rolled his before Belmonte in real time. Barnes shot 300 in the 2012 Shark Open, which was taped the night before Belmonte rolled 300 in the PBA World Championship—with Barnes doing guest commentary and having to laugh off Rob Stone’s brilliant Barnes-needling exclamation, “Finally, I’ve seen a 300 game”—but Barnes’s perfect game didn’t air until almost two months after Belmonte’s and is thus listed as the 22^nd ever rolled.

That same weekend, Belmonte won the Players Championship, which wasn’t counted as a major until four years later, causing Belmonte’s first major to become his sixth major. Or his sixth major to become his first major. But what about his second major that used to be his first major? Semi-related: is Major Major Major Major the greatest character name in literary history?

To summarize: Jack Biondolillo bowled the first televised 300 game in PBA history.