I bowled loads in junior high into early high school. We had a good traveling league in the area, some 12 centers involved. Probably about a 150 average. And I bowled at one time or another for each of the three centers in my hometown. (The town now has none.)
I got back into it in my mid-twenties, because the paper had a late-morning Wednesday league at a local center. And again, I averaged around 150.
Then I discovered lift. I was always baffled at how bowlers rolled that late-breaking, dramatic hook. And I was always taught that your release should have no left-right motion to it. Well, I befriended one of the local pros, and he taught me how to roll a fingertip ball, snap with my fingers at release, lift and turn. And I got two balls -- a high-rev reactive resin Storm, and a clear "spare" ball to take the direct route.
I not only got up to a 200-plus average quickly, I loved the "magic" of cranking that Storm to the second board and having it make that left-hand turn in the final 15 feet. And darn, the pin action was unbelievable. The ball just exploded into the pocket.
I spent about five years seriously into it. I found a second daytime league. And having Sundays off, I began going to the area's ranking King of the Hill tournament, the one that had all the "names" in south-central Pennsylvania, the ones who were racking up weekly honors scores that made my co-worker's column. It was a double-elimination, one-on-one deal with 40-50 bowlers, coming down to a two-person final each Sunday night.
(Quick, funny story. The King of the Hill not only brought out the best, it brought out some of the most obsessive. There was this one skinny little guy who was all about style. He wasn't bad, but he thought he was on the edge of the PBA. One Sunday night against him, I was off a little bit, but actually crossed over to the Jersey side for three straight mid-game strikes. He was so chagrined, he called me a motherforker, packed up his balls and left the center in mid-game.)
At the top of my game, I was averaging 220. I flirted with a pair of perfect games. One, I left a ringing 10-pin in the ninth frame. The other, I threw 10 straight, then came up light on the 11th ball and left the 5-pin. I converted that for my all-time high, a 289. And one of my most memorable "athletic" moments came on the Sunday night when I somehow climbed through the best bowlers in that 50-mile radius and reached the finals of the King of the Hill. Once there, I ran into a guy who actually was having some success in PBA regional play. I lost that one 300-269. Matched him strike for strike for eight frames before cracking. People were leaving their post-game beers in the lounge to watch the battle. I was bowling with goosebumps.
Then two things happened. First, bowling in the county tournament one March, I stuck at the foul line and pitched face-first over the line. Not only was it embarrashing as hell, I could have sworn I had broken my kneecap when I landed. That got in my head. What had been a smooth, low slide at delivery, helping me get good lift at release, turned into a choppy half-step at the line. It hurt my game.
And then came the fire, at ABC East Lanes in Harrisburg, about 15 years ago. The place went up in flames one Thursday afternoon. My two trusty balls wound up as a puddle of chemicals somewhere along Eisenhower Boulevard. I couldn't justify the cost of buying new equipment, especially since I was working Sunday nights now and had a teen-age daughter who I wanted to see, at least occasionally. I never really got back into it.
But when it was good, it was really, really good.
