Thursday, April 06, 2006
On Strike
Another month gone. I really don't know how people find the time to update these things several times a day, unless they've given up sleeping.
My baseball fantasy draft was last week, I'm still hoping to write it up in some detail, for now I'll just say that unlike last year I didn't make any grievous mistakes.
Monday night I was being bored into a coma by the NCAA Championship game, so I did some channel surfing and found ESPN Classic airing, of all things, a bowling tournament - specifically, the TV finals of the 1993 Wichita Open. Having once been a pretty serious league bowler, and knowing something unusual or interesting must happen for ESPN to be showing it 13 years after the fact, I continued to watch. Sure enough, the championship match between righthander Dave Ozio and lefty Mike Aulby was fit for a time capsule. Both men came out with the first seven strikes, until Ozio left a soft 7-pin in the 8th frame. With Aulby perfect through nine frames, Ozio struck out for a 279, forcing Alby to throw the first strike in the tenth frame to win. Aulby stepped up and did that two better, striking off the page for a perfect 300 and the title. Thirteen years later, that remains the highest aggregate score ever in a televised match. (Technically, that record is shared by Johnny Petraglia and Bob Learn Jr, tied the afternoon the entire field was unconscious at Erie in 1996).
I haven't bowled in a league for six or seven years, mainly because the competition wasn't particularly fun any more. Watching the tournament from 1993 reminded me of what I used to love about the sport. Both bowlers were throwing consistent, quality shots with pinpoint precision, making subtle adjustments as the lane conditions evolved. It was a little tough to tell what Ozio was using, but I'm almost positive Aulby was still throwing a urethane ball. By today's high technology, ultra-high scoring standards, it was almost quaint.
Much like golf, the equipment used in the sport of bowling has undergone an explosive technological revoltion. It used to take a modicum of skill to hit a long, straight drive off the tee; now you can hand the latest and greatest golfball and driver to an 83 year old double amputee and he'll hit it 280 yards down the middle of the fairway. The same sitation has come to pass in bowling, as pressure on both equipment manufacturers and lane proprietors to increase scoring has effectively removed much of the skill factor from the game. Today's bowling balls are made of highly reactive resin or composite materials, with core weights designed to maximize RPMs and torque no matter how poorly the shot is released.
In September 1993, the year Aulby needed to be perfect to defeat Ozio for his title, I also bowled a sanctioned 300 game. Though reactive resin balls were becoming commonplace in local leagues around that time, like Aulby, my perfect game was achieved using a urethane ball. That year, across every league in my home bowling center from September to May, there were just three 300 games bowled. My dad has bowled in a very competitive "beer league" for nearly 30 years, earlier this year there were four 300 games bowled all in one night, just in his league! The entity that sanctions all league and professional bowling events has actually recognized seven different 900 series - that's three consecutive 300 games, or 36 strikes in a row - and all bowled since 1997.
The last year I bowled in a competitive league, I had three guys throw a 300 against my team. The first was by a pretty good local bowler whose technique consisted of throwing the ball as hard as he could, as far to the right as he could, with as many revolutions as possible. The second was thrown by a guy so drunk he fell over the scorers' table after carrying his last strike. He would also spin the ball as much as he could, with little regard for which direction it was headed as it spun. The night he threw his 300 he had about 15 boards to work with, meaning if his shot went out on the lane anywhere between the first arrow fromthe right and the third arrow he'd end up hitting the 1-3 pocket. The final 300 was achieved by a retired postman in his mid 60s who had carried a 160-ish average forever, and about a month earlier had purchased a brand new state-of-the-art reactive resin ball. His shots would leave his hand and make two or three lazy, random revolutions until the ball was about halfway down the lane, at which point the weighted core would take over and the ball would "flip,"or suddenly rotate axially and settle into a faster and more steady revolution down the lane. Once the rotations picked up, the reactive resin shell would heat up slightly, increasing the friction between the ball and the lane, causing the ball to drive through the pins with almost no deflection.
It was at that point that I knew I was done. Bowling had ceased to be a game requiring any skill, it had been reduced to a game of chance, seeing who would leave the most 9- and 10-pins that night. The professional tour saw the problems coming and radically changed the way they treat the lanes, resulting in a far more challenging shot. There hasn't been a perfect game bowled in a TV final in seven years, after eight of them being rolled between 1993 and 1999. I probably enjoy it more now going out with other couples and bowling for fun, and if I do well it's a nice bonus. And I'll always have the ring the American Bowling Congress awarded me for that one perfect night 13 years ago, back before they dumbed down the game for the masses. ¶ 12:28 AM
My baseball fantasy draft was last week, I'm still hoping to write it up in some detail, for now I'll just say that unlike last year I didn't make any grievous mistakes.
Monday night I was being bored into a coma by the NCAA Championship game, so I did some channel surfing and found ESPN Classic airing, of all things, a bowling tournament - specifically, the TV finals of the 1993 Wichita Open. Having once been a pretty serious league bowler, and knowing something unusual or interesting must happen for ESPN to be showing it 13 years after the fact, I continued to watch. Sure enough, the championship match between righthander Dave Ozio and lefty Mike Aulby was fit for a time capsule. Both men came out with the first seven strikes, until Ozio left a soft 7-pin in the 8th frame. With Aulby perfect through nine frames, Ozio struck out for a 279, forcing Alby to throw the first strike in the tenth frame to win. Aulby stepped up and did that two better, striking off the page for a perfect 300 and the title. Thirteen years later, that remains the highest aggregate score ever in a televised match. (Technically, that record is shared by Johnny Petraglia and Bob Learn Jr, tied the afternoon the entire field was unconscious at Erie in 1996).
I haven't bowled in a league for six or seven years, mainly because the competition wasn't particularly fun any more. Watching the tournament from 1993 reminded me of what I used to love about the sport. Both bowlers were throwing consistent, quality shots with pinpoint precision, making subtle adjustments as the lane conditions evolved. It was a little tough to tell what Ozio was using, but I'm almost positive Aulby was still throwing a urethane ball. By today's high technology, ultra-high scoring standards, it was almost quaint.
Much like golf, the equipment used in the sport of bowling has undergone an explosive technological revoltion. It used to take a modicum of skill to hit a long, straight drive off the tee; now you can hand the latest and greatest golfball and driver to an 83 year old double amputee and he'll hit it 280 yards down the middle of the fairway. The same sitation has come to pass in bowling, as pressure on both equipment manufacturers and lane proprietors to increase scoring has effectively removed much of the skill factor from the game. Today's bowling balls are made of highly reactive resin or composite materials, with core weights designed to maximize RPMs and torque no matter how poorly the shot is released.
In September 1993, the year Aulby needed to be perfect to defeat Ozio for his title, I also bowled a sanctioned 300 game. Though reactive resin balls were becoming commonplace in local leagues around that time, like Aulby, my perfect game was achieved using a urethane ball. That year, across every league in my home bowling center from September to May, there were just three 300 games bowled. My dad has bowled in a very competitive "beer league" for nearly 30 years, earlier this year there were four 300 games bowled all in one night, just in his league! The entity that sanctions all league and professional bowling events has actually recognized seven different 900 series - that's three consecutive 300 games, or 36 strikes in a row - and all bowled since 1997.
The last year I bowled in a competitive league, I had three guys throw a 300 against my team. The first was by a pretty good local bowler whose technique consisted of throwing the ball as hard as he could, as far to the right as he could, with as many revolutions as possible. The second was thrown by a guy so drunk he fell over the scorers' table after carrying his last strike. He would also spin the ball as much as he could, with little regard for which direction it was headed as it spun. The night he threw his 300 he had about 15 boards to work with, meaning if his shot went out on the lane anywhere between the first arrow fromthe right and the third arrow he'd end up hitting the 1-3 pocket. The final 300 was achieved by a retired postman in his mid 60s who had carried a 160-ish average forever, and about a month earlier had purchased a brand new state-of-the-art reactive resin ball. His shots would leave his hand and make two or three lazy, random revolutions until the ball was about halfway down the lane, at which point the weighted core would take over and the ball would "flip,"or suddenly rotate axially and settle into a faster and more steady revolution down the lane. Once the rotations picked up, the reactive resin shell would heat up slightly, increasing the friction between the ball and the lane, causing the ball to drive through the pins with almost no deflection.
It was at that point that I knew I was done. Bowling had ceased to be a game requiring any skill, it had been reduced to a game of chance, seeing who would leave the most 9- and 10-pins that night. The professional tour saw the problems coming and radically changed the way they treat the lanes, resulting in a far more challenging shot. There hasn't been a perfect game bowled in a TV final in seven years, after eight of them being rolled between 1993 and 1999. I probably enjoy it more now going out with other couples and bowling for fun, and if I do well it's a nice bonus. And I'll always have the ring the American Bowling Congress awarded me for that one perfect night 13 years ago, back before they dumbed down the game for the masses. ¶ 12:28 AM
