This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, December, 2016
League night. The shots are rolling, the beers are flowing and the perceived value of the camaraderie increases with each fresh pitcher. While there are some exceptions, rec-league bowling, for the most part, involves alcohol. Warranted or not, the general public associates beer with bowling, largely because they only bowl a couple times a year and drink while doing so, leading some make the misguided claim that bowling isn’t a sport simply because one can drink while playing it.
For all the arguments the ignorant masses make against bowling, this is potentially the most baseless.
We will not devolve into a discussion as to whether or not anyone should drink while bowling. We will merely explore the fact that many do, and how such an act has nothing to do with whether or not bowling, or anything, is a sport.
Fine, so league bowlers drink. Recreational, once-a-year bowlers drink. Some competitors at alcohol-friendly amateur tournaments drink. That means bowling’s not a sport?
Go to a rec-league softball game. Guess what you’ll find, aside from hilariously short shorts, yellow shirts that used to be white and tattered gloves manufactured in 1964? Beer. And recreational softball is to professional baseball what house-pattern recreational bowling is to professional bowlers on a flat pattern. Does a group of 40-year-old men guzzling beers between at-bats mean softball and/or baseball is not a sport?
Baseball is slow, so maybe you don’t think that’s a sport, either. How about hockey? Based on hearsay and conjecture, professional athletes in all sports generally acknowledge hockey players as the best overall athletes. Thus, it would take the argument of a lifetime to prove hockey wasn’t a sport.
And, while your local ice rink is seeking teams to join what they call adult hockey leagues, we all know what those weekly sessions are really called: beer leagues. Because there is beer everywhere. The playing surface doubles as a chilling agent, and many teams value their players on beer-bringing ability more than hockey skills. A case of beer is far more important than a goal or an assist.
With each sandy sip by a recreational beach-volleyball player, under-the-table drink by a ping-pong player and unabashed guzzle by a kayaker, we’re reminded every single sport can be played while drinking. It can’t be played as well, but it can be played.
There is a distinction here inherent to most sports but not nearly as apparent as it should be in bowling: Recreational leagues are vastly different from professional leagues. Jordan Spieth is not sneaking in a shot before taking a shot at Augusta. Alex Ovechkin is not sloshed at center ice, Russell Wilson is only blitzed by aggressive defenses and whoever the current basketball star is only dribbles on the court with his hands. Likewise, no professional bowler is stumbling into the gutter during professional competition. Not due to inebriation, anyway. If it happens, blame the humidity.
To excel at the highest levels of sports, athletes need to be sober (not counting a surplus of human-growth hormone, of course) while competing. To simply play sports for fun, however, sobriety is not a requirement, and whether or not one can or should drink while doing something is not a factor at all in whether or not that activity is a sport.
Bowling, just like any other sport, has different levels of skill and importance. Bowling, just like any other sport, can be played while drinking, but athletes who care about their performances refrain from drinking while playing.
It’s not a sport if you can drink while playing it? Then there are no sports.