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 19th person to be credited with a televised 300. He was slotted chronologically as the 11th 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 11th through 18th 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 20th 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 21st televised 300 game belongs to Jason Belmonte, even though the man who bowled the 22nd—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 22nd 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.