Category: The One Board

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, June, 2020

“Where are you? What have you been doing? What are you binge watching?”

The first two questions are irrelevant in that the first answer is obvious and the second one is usually “binge watching,” leading to the third query, to which there’s only one correct response: “I’ve been watching 800 daily internet bowling shows in which bowlers talk to bowlers in the morning and then talk to each other again in the afternoon and then talk to each other again before bed in order to set up tomorrow’s conversations.”

The western-hemisphere bowling world has gone from bowling for 14 hours a day while others watch to talking to each other for 14 hours a day while others watch, followed by a brief break to re-oil the fiber-optic cables before bowling’s Australian correspondent checks in.

More than any other professional sport and well beyond tweeted screen shots of co-workers doing virtual happy hours, bowlers are keeping bowling conversations going despite a complete lack of actual bowling. It’s impressive to see, although it’s not shocking as bowlers have always been able to talk about bowling.

Just as bowlers have adapted to advancements in cover stocks and lane conditions, they’re now adapting to advancements in technology to entertain their fans in new ways while simultaneously marketing themselves and increasing their followings. This is smart and good for the entire game.

Long-distance communication has been around since the beginning of civilization. Using fire, smoke, flags, guns, drums and other visual or audial cues, messages relating to military directives, regime announcements or whether a fastball or changeup was coming next were able to be passed, relatively quickly and over long distances, to those who needed to know.

With the invention of the telegraph in the 18^th century and its ascent to prominence in the 19^th, bowlers were no longer limited to pre-determined signals and were able to send the first text messages, dictating exactly what they wanted to say. Instead of having to use flags to flash the old yellow-red-blue signal for someone having bowled a 300 game, people were finally able to send a telegraph: I WOULD HAVE SHOT 300 BUT MY OPPONENT DISTRACTED ME STOP

But the telegraph wasn’t good enough. People didn’t want to text each other; they wanted to talk. Along came Alexander Graham Bell’s patent in 1876. Soon after, bowlers were able to call each other and talk about their bad breaks and frustrations after first relaying their gripes to the operator.

This continued for over a century, although the operators were eventually spared, before humans decided telephones were too intrusive and they hated talking to each other and would rather go back to telegraphs. The advent of the reversion-through-advancement text message allowed bowlers to form group chats in which they could make fun of each other during qualifying blocks. Everything was wonderful.

Then, the world—even qualifying—stopped.

Suddenly deprived of human contact, everyone realized maybe communication isn’t so bad after all, but phone calls were still out of the question. As “Weird Al” Yankovic sings in “First World Problems,” “Somebody just called me up on the phone / what? / don’t they know how to text? OMG.”

Smoke signals aren’t practical with everyone locked in their underground shelters and group texts aren’t as fun without new fodder. The next natural step is to arrange live video colloquies available for anyone in the entire world with an internet connection to watch.

As is proper, bowlers are at the forefront of this movement. Just because they’re not bowling doesn’t mean they can’t have fun with and make fun of each other. And, with the added desire to see and be seen, why not skewer each other publicly so the fans can stay in touch, which should lead to increased fan engagement when the bowlers are able to compete again? And, in true bowling fashion, why not require an entire day, every day, to make it happen?

So, what are you binge watching?

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, May, 2020

It’s that time of year again: league season is over and we need to find ways to stay occupied and fight off the inevitable bowling withdrawal that hangs over the dreary summer months. Except we weren’t prepared for this. Leagues didn’t end when they were supposed to and we don’t know when they’re coming back.

In previous years, we could spend the summer watching the pros on FloBowling, BowlTV, FOX, FS1, CBSSN and YouTube. We can still do that, but for the time being, we’re limited to the classics as they re-air on TV and sit in the archives on the internet.

Summer used to be an ideal time to practice with limited distractions. Now, unless you have lanes in your house, practice is not an option. Some league bowlers like to use the summer to completely forget about bowling until Labor Day, but being forced to forget about bowling accomplishes the opposite: these people want to bowl.

World Series of Bowling XI was interrupted with three titles still to be decided. The USBC Open Championships were pushed back shortly before they were to begin. A week prior to its scheduled start, the USBC Masters was postponed. College bowling came to an end on the cusp of sectionals. Bowling centers around the world were closed until further notice.

This bout of bowling withdrawal is unlike anything we’ve felt before. We’re not merely between seasons. One season didn’t end and who knows when the next one will begin? This is bigger than bowling. We don’t know where we are. We are all Billy Pilgrim.

At the end of all this, everything in the world is going to be different, although it should be noted cashers round will remain just as compelling as it ever was.

College athletes in all sports, particularly seniors, weren’t ready for their collegiate seasons and careers to end. The lack of closure these athletes are getting on their sporting and academic careers is—to use a bowling word—unfair. They’ll be fine, though. As disenchanted as many of them are, they’re humans who will cope with it in time.

Still, college bowling itself will change. When it finally returns, will the athletes be less inclined to high-five each other after every shot? And, without incessant high-fiving, is it really college bowling?

Pro bowlers will be happy to be rid of the perceived need to high-five opponents but may be slightly more weary about cramming 14 people into a room on the road. Players whose pre-shot routines involve licking their hands and rubbing their shoes might want to consider using this time off the lanes to develop new pre-shot routines.

At the amateur and recreational level, think of the poor sandbaggers. They were just a week or two away from finally performing up to their real capabilities when it was all ripped out from under them. Six months of whiffing 4-pins and for what? For nothing. Important note: it’s always for nothing. The only good thing about the abrupt end to league season is the sandbaggers didn’t get their undeserved glory.

Amid all the upcoming changes to the entire sport, at least we can take comfort in knowing some things will remain the same. Staying six feet apart from each other shouldn’t be tough as bowlers have always yielded to somebody 40 lanes down for being too close. Live-stream commentators will continue to self-isolate 14 hours a day in the back corner, only leaving their cubbies for essential purposes like configuring a camera for a rolloff. Bowling bags will remain the size of walk-in closets and ball selection will still be paramount.

Unfortunately, nobody knows when we’ll get back to these familiar comforts. Bowlers bowl. Without bowling, what do we do now?

To bowlers, the course of action is intuitive. All we can do is—yes—trust the process. Even if we have no idea what the process is.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, April, 2020

As we enter April, leaving behind an inexplicable obsession with college basketball (that keeps going into April despite being named after March) and moving into an inexplicable obsession with professional baseball (that begins in March and now only exists so people can enjoy an astronomical level of schadenfreude), we’re reminded of how simple sports are.

Play two halves; most points wins. Play nine innings; most runs wins. Entire field bowls 16 qualifying games over two eight-game blocks with the top 40 plus the next eight players aged 60 or above advancing to a third day of competition, opening with those players qualifying 25^th and below plus the additional eight 60-year-olds wiping their scores and playing five more games of qualifying, with the top eight advancing to the first round of match play, where they’ll be joined by players qualifying 9^th-24^th, again dropping all existing scores, bowling five modified round-robin matches, the last of which is a position round, with the top eight based on cumulative totals plus 30 additional pins for each match victory emerging to compete in the second round of match play where those players qualifying first through eighth await, this time bowling six modified match-play games, the last of which is a position round, and the top five based on cumulative scores including 30 bonus pins per win move into the stepladder finals, the fourth seed bowls a one-game match against the fifth seed for the right to bowl a one-game match against the third seed for the right to bowl a one-game match against the second seed for the right to bowl a one-game match against the first seed for the championship, most pins wins.

Simple and intuitive, but never to be explained again.

That’s right: the Matrix of Fairness is no more. In its four years of existence, the Matrix of Fairness did its job, straddling the line between everyone-has-a-chance and you-still-can’t-beat-Walter Ray. Its beauty lied in its absurdity, its integrity held in place by the immense talent of some of the greatest to ever play the game.

And now, just as its name has permeated the bowling lexicon, we’re dropping its pins. No word yet if a format aged 60 or older will be taking over, but the Matrix of Fairness will be missed.

It’ll be missed for its stunning ability to avoid rolloffs more often than not despite an opportunity for 95 or so of them in a single day. It’ll be fondly remembered for its legitimately compelling position rounds as so many of the players were mathematically involved until the final shot. Many will reminisce about the only two times a player made it all the way from the cashers round to the title (Brian LeClair and Walter Ray Williams Jr.). No one will forget how the short blocks made the best in the world immediately shift into their otherworldly greatness gear, making them unbeatable no matter how many games were being bowled. A true study in athletic excellence could be done on this alone.

Most of all, it will be missed for its fairness.

While the Matrix of Fairness deserves to be mourned, we must look forward to the good things to come: the PBA50 Tour is coming back this month and it still features some of the best to have ever played the game. And, no matter the format, someone will win every event. Not only that, but the PWBA Tour returns this month as do the PBA Playoffs in addition to league championships being earned around the world.

Forget about college basketball and forget about professional baseball. Bowling season gets even stronger this month. And, if all goes well, it’ll do so with the utmost fairness.

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

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, February, 2020

There are a lot of things worth boasting about in the sport of bowling: a deft adjustment, the perfect combination of speed and angles, an unflappable performance under pressure, the fact that if you’d only not whiffed 43 single pins and left 13 ringing 10s in a row, you definitely would’ve made the cut.

Some things, though, aren’t worthy of bragging. At the top of that list: getting the score right.

Because bowling scoring is so fluid, it takes a lot of brainpower to be able to determine what the cut score is going to be, especially during position round with multiple players and 30 bonus pins per match involved. Thus, it seems like it might be a prideful moment to know the score. If so, that pride should remain internal. “I got the score right” should never be uttered.

Of course we should get the score right. It’s a sport. Sports have scores. Just because bowling’s scoring system isn’t inherently understood by laymen doesn’t mean we need to point that out to everyone.

As the players get into the seventh frame of the final game of match play, murmuring throughout the bowling center is full of more conditions than a U.S. Open oil-pattern schedule. “If he strikes here, but that guy spares, then the other guy doubles while the fourth guy fouls, then all the fifth guy needs to do is strike out and he makes it, which will also put the third guy into the special-event points cut but still not inside the special-event money cut, which would go to the sixth guy… if he doesn’t split and the seventh guy loses to the eighth guy.”

Anyone who can do all that math at that precise moment is impressive, but it’s all moot when the first guy opens, at which point a whole new set of conditions enter the conversation.

Is there any other sport in which knowing the score is something to brag about? Perhaps sports like figure skating or gymnastics might qualify, but anything with a judged score is subjective. Unless you’re an actual judge, you’re merely guessing at what the scores might be.

Bowling is objective so there should be no guessing involved: a strike is 10 plus the next two shots, a spare is 10 plus the next shot and an open frame is the actual value of the pinfall in that frame, all added together over the course of 10 frames, including one or two fill balls if necessary, plus 30 bonus pins if we’re playing that way, then contrasted against the rest of the field who are all bowling simultaneously before being manually recorded and cross-checked against the computer. Could anything be simpler?

It is important to know the score. The players need to know what it will take to make the cut and the fans need to know which shots are important during those exciting final moments.

But when we brag about knowing the score, all we’re doing is calling attention to the fact that most human beings have no idea what’s going on until someone announces the top five.

Because of the indecipherable pandemonium, the chaos of position round is uniquely wonderful to bowling. Nobody at a basketball game is saying, “The Pistons are down by two points, but if they make a three-pointer here, they’ll be ahead by one.” Everybody already knows that. Then, when the game ends, fans are either happy their team won or unhappy their team lost, but no one is crowing about having known the score.

In bowling, although most can determine the score of each player’s game, making sense of the cut-line bedlam is accessible only to an elite few. Those few have reputations and commensurate audiences waiting to hear who made the cut. It’s an impressive ability, but it’s not for bragging. It’s a sport; everyone should know the score.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, January, 2020

Welcome to The One Board’s fourth annual year-start countup, freeing us from the incessant year-end recaps and moving into the year ahead with anticipation and zeal. As always, all 20 reasons to be excited for the upcoming year involve bowling.

1. A coach tries to revolutionize bowling by convincing bowlers only to focus on the outcome, ignoring the process. He is immediately exiled.
2. Somebody shoots his first 299 in league. Rather than give the guy the one pin he didn’t knock down, the proprietor gives him the 119 he did knock down. He has trouble explaining to his friends why 119 equals 299 and even more trouble explaining to his wife why 119 bowling pins need to go on the mantel. She compromises by allowing the pins to go in the fireplace rather than on it.
3. After a controversial finish in the PBA Oklahoma Open championship match in which a pinsetter hit (or didn’t hit) a desperately needed 10-pin, the PBA institutes video review—starting the following week—to eliminate all future controversy.
4. The race to 20 titles between Chris Barnes and Tommy Jones ends anti-climactically when they team up to win the Roth/Holman Doubles Championship on February 29.
5. To break the tie, the newly introduced video review is used to determine whether Barnes or Jones physically touch the trophy first. The only thing officials can definitively rule is that the call goes against the Detroit Lions.
6. The race is on to 21.
7. Live telecasts run over their allotted time every week due to video review. Most reviews deal not with opponents challenging each other on fouls or pinfall, but rather the players challenging fans on the grounds of distractions.
8. The important thing is to get it right.
9. For the 62^nd consecutive year, an immeasurable number of people are referred to as great guys.
10. In April, François Lavoie wins his third U.S. Open. Two more U.S. Opens are added—one in June and the other in September to coincide with quarterly tax deadlines—and Lavoie wins both of those too.
11. Major League Baseball prints huge banners for each team to hang at the entrance to their stadiums: “Welcome, baseball players.”
12. During PBA League competition, a player challenges the fans, claiming a non-distraction became a distraction when the usually rowdy crowd got silent for a moment. After video review, the player is awarded a strike and the fans are issued vuvuzelas.
13. In a groundbreaking ruling, bowlers are allowed to remember every title they’ve ever won, even if they were wearing a different logo at the time.
14. The most popular documentary on Netflix, “Matrix of Fairness,” ends its six-episode run unsatisfactorily, leading to outrage from viewers. The filmmakers couldn’t figure out the Matrix of Fairness and gave up trying. Viewers under 60 are left confused and wanting more. Viewers 60 and over are issued checks for $1,000.
15. Shannon O’Keefe, not slowing down at all from her amazing 2019 season, wins the first 10 PWBA Tour events. Regardless, going into the 11^th event, we start all our sentences with, “If (insert player doing well) can win this one, then the next one, then the last two, we might have a race for Player of the Year.”
16. Jason Belmonte wins the fourth U.S. Open of the year to finally complete the Super Slam. Completely fulfilled with his career, he retires, which makes his fans sad until he amends his decision to semi-retirement, vowing to continue bowling the majors, which means we’ll still see him 33 times in 2021.
17. The best Halloween costume of the year goes to Lanny, a third-grader who dresses as a bowling ball. His father, dressed as Jim Callahan, makes Lanny change costumes every five houses.
18. In November, the PBA rules against the existence of February 29, saying it complicates matters, thereby erasing the 20^th title for both Jones and Barnes. We’re instructed to pretend the event never happened.
19. Barnes and Jones file an appeal, but the officials can’t find the tapes and instead award another U.S. Open title to Lavoie, giving him a record six in his career.
20. FOX ratings, FloBowling and BowlTV subscriptions reach all-time highs. People are watching bowling. Hours and hours of bowling.

Happy 2020, bowling fans. We wish you happiness, prosperity and more games in the new year.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, December, 2019

As a bowling community, we need to agree on what cashers (or casher’s or cashers’) round is. The most thorough accounting of cashers round to date was Dante’s Purgatorio, but that was written seven centuries ago. We need to come to an understanding of modern cashers round. What is it? Why is it exclusive to bowling? Why do we all spell it differently?

Strictly in a bowling context, we know cashers round is the last chance for players who would’ve otherwise missed the cut to make the cut as well as an excuse to add another eight games to a tournament. As we all know, the one thing every tournament needs is more games in increments of eight, but if we’re going to commit to jamming a cashers round into every event, can we at least agree on how this thing is spelled?

“Cashers” isn’t even a word outside of bowling, as anyone who’s ever tried to type it knows. After autocorrect gets done with it, cashiers round, cashew round and occasionally catchers round permeate text messages and emails among bowlers. Often, the first sign of a person’s full entrenchment in the world of bowling is when the autocorrect-enabled devices finally give up and leave “cashers” alone.

Hidden among the minor annoyance of autocorrect not knowing what cashers round means is the beauty that because cashers isn’t a real word, we have full authority to determine how it’s spelled. The problem, so far, is we’re all spelling it differently.

Depending on the level of the event, the medium of the writing and the grasp of knowledge of the already-confusing topic of apostrophes, we have three competing names for this additional round of bowling.

Casher’s round is unequivocally wrong, so we can eliminate it right away. When written this way, the rules of apostrophes imply there is one casher (which, again, is not even a thing) and this is his round. While it’s true there may be one casher who advances out of this round who wouldn’t have otherwise advanced, there are still several cashers overall. Thus, please, let’s strike “casher’s round” from our vernacular.

Cashers’ round makes a better case as it includes all cashers in the possession of the round, but why are the cashers suddenly owning a round? Nobody possessed qualifying round three or full-field qualifying, but suddenly this smaller group owns cashers’ round? The only things the cashers possess more than the didn’t-make-the-cut bowlers are cash and ever-enlarging thumb wounds.

This leaves us with cashers round, our best option. Similar to the PBA Players Championship, there’s no need to muddle things with apostrophes. It’s the championship of the players, it’s the round of the cashers, but it’s not necessarily the cashers round at the Players Championship (the 2020 tournament formats have not been released yet).

This brings up a radical solution to eliminate this whole discussion: cut cashers round altogether from every event. Pay the players who made it inside the cash line for their efforts and send them on their way to get ready for the next tournament. They might even be able to enjoy the luxury of a nice dinner on a terrace somewhere. If we did this, though, the fans clamoring to attend cashers round at 8 a.m. on Monday might be disappointed, but they both seem like nice people and will probably forgive us in due time.

Such a scurrilous suggestion is an as-yet unapproachable subject, so we can discard it. In the meantime, we can at least do the same thing to the apostrophes that we’re doing to the players: cut them.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, November, 2019

Since 1958, professional bowling has boasted the accessibility of its athletes as one of its greatest assets. In no other professional sport can a fan attend an event and expect—not just hope, but truly expect—to meet his or her idols. Bowling fans know with certainty they can get any autograph they want, take photos with legends and even cull bowling tips from the absolute best.

The bowlers always happily oblige. In many cases, fans feel like they’re gaining new friends rather than simply having a quick celebrity encounter. The astounding accessibility of pro bowlers has to be a positive, right?

Maybe not.

In his book, David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell investigates things perceived as advantages that eventually become disadvantages.

Gladwell says more money means more happiness to a certain amount, at which point contentment plateaus and then begins to decrease. Also, when school class size shrinks from 30 to 18, the students do better, but once the class dwindles to 12 or fewer, the students actually do worse. Essentially, he’s saying too much of a good thing can lead to a bad result.

Sadly, there’s one glaring omission from Gladwell’s research: the accessibility of professional bowlers. Right here in our own sport, we have too much of a good thing.

It’s unquestionably good that you can walk into a PBA event and get an autograph from Jason Belmonte, have your picture taken with Jason Sterner and ask Jason Couch why there are so many Jasons. With very few exceptions, every bowler you approach is going to be friendly and give you a reason to come back and root for him. Pro-ams and practice days are amazing opportunities for fans and players to interact.

However, the culture of accessibility has become so strong that it’s hard to distinguish appropriate times (pro-ams) from inappropriate times (the 10^th frame of a possible 300 game) to interact with players.

Unlike other sports, pro bowlers are never separated from fans. As a fan, you park your car next to EJ Tackett. You find yourself in line ahead of Bill O’Neill at the snack bar. You visit the facilities next to Sean Rash.

You won’t find LeBron James at the snack bar. You’re not allowed in Mookie Betts’s parking lot (unless he’s bowling). If you’re caught visiting the facilities in an NHL locker room, you’re going to jail.

These things detract from the mystique of the professional athlete and lower the prestige of professional bowling. It’s less awe-striking for a fan to meet a player in these situations and a player doesn’t want to be met while he’s preparing for or in the middle of competition (and certainly not while he’s visiting the facilities).

Granted, most sports have arenas and stadiums specifically built for professionals with private areas for the players. Since bowlers compete inside real, functioning businesses, the logistics of separating players from fans is difficult. More than the actual physical separation, though, is the perception of prestige.

When a player is feeding dollar bills into the vending machine, he doesn’t quite exude the aura of celebrity. When a player fries out in the locker room, fans should not be able to witness it.

Unlimited accessibility doesn’t only hurt the bowlers; it hurts the fans, too.

Consider this hypothetical situation based on countless real situations: a professional finishes a bad block and wants nothing more than to retreat to the locker room and loathe himself. He can’t get there without fans asking for photos and autographs. He’s not in the most pleasant state of mind and, while he’d normally indulge the requests, now isn’t the time. The fans sense—maybe even receive—his attitude and now they have a bad impression of him. The immense accessibility creates a bad experience for the player and the fans.

The accessibility of the pros is and should remain one of bowling’s best assets, but perhaps we should scale it back a bit. A little less access makes fan encounters even more special, both for the fans and the players.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, October, 2019

Anyone who has ever held a video camera (or cell phone, which is strangely named after the least-used feature of the device) in a bowling center has been accused of being a jinx. Anyone who has ever had the front nine, 10 or 11 strikes before failing has accused someone with a camera of being a jinx.

The cameraman jinx accusations are most rampant at the top levels of the sport—the PBA and PWBA—in which human beings are employed to capture footage of the best players in the world performing at their best.

Bowling fans and even casual sports fans like to see the 10^th frame of a perfect game. Video people like to capture good content, particularly since their job is to create good content fans want to see. Hence, a person with a camera hits record as a player steps up in the 10^th, three strikes from perfection. Everyone involved wants to see those three strikes.

The video person, fully knowledgeable of the potentially looming jinx-related allegations, tries to be covert as he approaches the player, even if every step yields another kindhearted joke from a fan about how this poor schlub is going to ruin a perfect game.

The player strikes on the first shot in the 10^th. He walks back to the ball return, glancing up ever so briefly but long enough to catch a glimpse of the cameraman. The player’s eyes immediately dart away, but he knows the camera is there. Worse, the cameraman now knows the bowler knows he’s there. On the 11^th shot, the player rolls his best attempt of the day but leaves a devastating stone 8. Next: blame the now divagating cameraman, who is already being showered with boos by the surrounding fans (many of whom, by the way, were also recording the final frame on their video cameras that can make phone calls).

Formerly, my argument against the asinine cameraman jinx was simple: there are no jinxes. It’s just that it’s harder to roll 10 strikes in a row than nine, 11 than 10 and 12 than 11.

Now, though, I know better. It is a jinx. However, it’s not a cameraman jinx; it’s a bowler jinx. It happens when the bowler glances—even for a microsecond—into the camera lens.

The innocent cameraman is trying to give bowling fans some excitement. He wants nothing more than to capture a perfect game by one of the best players in existence, then share that perfect game with bowling fans all over the world, spreading joy and cheer to those who couldn’t be there in person as well as a chance to relive the moment for those who were there.

Then, just as the cameraman is about to complete his masterpiece, the bowler stumbles over himself, throws a terrible shot and leaves a 3-6-10 for a 297, completely ruining the cameraman’s day because, as we all know, 297 is the worst score a bowler can post after rolling the first 11 strikes. 299 at least comes with excitement and hope until the bitter end of the shot. 298 is pretty boring as no one wants to look at an 8-count in any situation. 296 is usually a hilariously bad shot that took all the drama out of the result by the time the ball reached the arrows. 295 and below is simply hysterical as well as notable for its rarity. But 297 is atrocious, and now this poor cameraman has footage of it, all because the bowler jinxed him and refused to roll that last strike.

If the bowler hadn’t been there, surely the cameraman would’ve been able to capture the 300.

Bowlers: please stop jinxing cameramen. All they want to do is see you roll 300. Don’t glance at their cameras. Trust the process, take it one shot at a time and, for the love of thumb-tape adjustments, please strike 12 times in a row.

This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, September, 2019

It’s time all schools finally incorporate the great sport of bowling into the classroom. Introductory physics classes address things like force (which equals mass times acceleration), momentum (mass times velocity) and friction (a more complicated but equally invigorating formula), but students are never given real-life examples and thus don’t retain the information as well as they otherwise could.

Currently, students are being asked things like: how long will it take this non-descript, two-dimensional square, traveling at 3 meters per second along another indecipherable surface with a coefficient of friction of .5, to come to a complete stop?

Who cares?

Nobody can relate to that. Schools need to start using real-world examples. Instead of two-dimensional squares, let’s use three-dimensional spheres. Instead of indecipherable surfaces with consistent friction, let’s use 60 feet of high-pressure laminate, otherwise known as HPL. Oh, and let’s pile some oil—of varying volumes—on top of those 60 feet, changing the coefficient of friction throughout the entire distance. And, instead of the sphere traveling at a consistent speed, let’s make sure it is at its maximum speed right at the beginning, but then decelerates (or negatively accelerates, if you prefer) as it moves over the 60-foot surface with ever-changing friction. Plus, instead of a boring linear-traveling sphere, let’s roll it out to the right at first and watch it turn back to the left as it moves along the surface.

At some point, maybe 34 feet down the HPL, let’s remove the oil altogether, except for a few stray strands that were left behind from the previous class’s example that involved urethane spheres. Getting rid of the oil will suddenly create much more friction while the sphere continues to decelerate.

Still not real enough, we’ll probably need to make this sphere rotate, so let’s assume a 65-degree axis (to keep things simple), around which the ball will rotate 350 times per minute, because for some reason we’re going to measure it by the minute when it really only takes a few seconds to make it all 60 feet.

Thinking further, why limit it to 60 feet? Let’s add another few feet with no defined rule for how long it exactly needs to be, then litter that additional portion (let’s call it a deck) with 10 oddly shaped objects, nine of which are arranged in an equilateral triangle and one of which is in the middle of that triangle, forming several smaller-but-still-equilateral triangles with its neighbors.

Now, we’re finally ready to teach physics. Instead of a tiresome question about a square on a line at a constant speed with constant friction, we come to this question:

How long will it take a 15-pound sphere to travel 60 + x feet, where x equals an undefined distance, while decelerating and being resisted by varying coefficients of friction, spinning 350 times per minute over its own 65-degree axis, then smashing into 10 objects storing potential energy and traveling through and deflecting off those objects based on their respective forces and momentums?

Finally, some relatable content.

Of course, there’s a flaw in the question itself. We shouldn’t be asking how long it will take for the sphere to travel an undefined distance. Rather, we should be asking how many of those objects are going to be knocked down. And, if less than 10, what do we need to change in order to make it 10? The speed of the sphere? The direction? The acceleration at the point of impact? The axis tilt? The revolutions per minute? Don’t even consider changing the HPL or the location of the oil—those are not variables (except when they are).

Students: don’t forget to show your work. The best possible score on your physics test is 300.