This is the 100th edition* of The One Board, and it is an exceptional thrill that it comes with an asterisk. Having to qualify what should be a simple claim proves The One Board is as essential to bowling’s lore as which order the televised 300 games were bowled in or which televised 300 games count as televised 300 games or which absurd world allows the USBC to refer to a full week of endless qualifying in order to determine the most deserving person to guarantee second-place money as a “short-duration event.”
It’s an honor to be here.
To have a stat loaded with contingencies like this must replicate the feeling of winning one’s first title on American soil, no matter how many titles have been won on other nations’ soils or whether or not the winner on American soil is even an American who might care about the soil. We’d suggest we consult any of the Americans on the BJI All-American Team, but why would there by any Americans on a team named after Americans?
Maybe this distinction is more like picking up the 7-10 split on a livestream, which means it never happened, as only four people in history have ever converted the 7-10 split on television (not counting the other people who did it in non-title events, of course) and thus only four people in history have ever converted the 7-10 split.
Whatever the case, and in all humility, writing 100 of these things is quite a feat. One hundred columns is approximately 60,000 words, which just so happens to be the generally accepted minimum length for a novel manuscript to be considered for publication, so we definitely made the right choice to put our 60,000 words here over the course of 8.25 years than anywhere else that might’ve led to cases of unsold books in bookstores everywhere. Maybe such a hypothetical novel would’ve even been placed next to the newsstand, where, despite the column appearing in a print publication 97 times, never once came near a newsstand shelf.
One hundred columns is proof that the lovable absurdity of bowling is never-ending and will give people great fodder for multi-level enjoyment until the robots take over and, in addition to eradicating humanity, finally develop the perfect format and prize fund that generates no complaints, except for one from E.A.R.L., who suggests there needs to be another cashers round, which then leads to E.A.R.L. being promptly sent to the scrap yard.
One hundred columns is nice in this base-10 system we use in this world, but in bowling, 300 is better. Perfect, even. Originally, the 300th edition of The One Board was to be printed (yes, it will still be a print magazine) in December of 2041 between an accessories ad and a Where Are They Now? feature on the future-current best bowler in the world, but having already moved ahead one month in our 8.25-year run, we’re now on pace to move ahead two more months prior to welcoming 2042 and thus, the 300th edition can be expected, on whatever the internet’s replacement is, in September of 2041. Perfect.
Unless… is this retirement? If so, and if we’ve learned anything from bowling history, we’re about to go on a great run.
*The One Board is a monthly column that began in Bowlers Journal International in January of 2016. The 100th column would’ve appeared in the April, 2024 issue of Bowlers Journal, but after 96 months of print media, we stepped back in technology in January of 2024 and took to the internet. Then Bowlers Journal surprisingly printed a January column anyway, meaning we had two columns in January including our annual year-start countup posted on this website. Thus, this column, March, 2024 on the internet, is the 100th monthly bowling column in the 99th month of its existence. Trust the process.