So Is Bowling A Sport or Not? Discuss.

I’ve heard it said that bowling cannot be considered a real sport. Why? Because any activity in which beer can be drunk during play should never count as a real sport. Okay, I’ll buy that.

I haven’t heard that bowling could be considered comedy either, but when I bowled last week it was pretty funny considering there was a pratfall from yours truly and everything. Unintentional, of course. But if I’d been watching myself, I probably would’ve laughed.

Yep, I took a header when my heretofore reliable (and cute) hot pink-and-black bowling shoes were placed upon my feet in the warm bowling alley after having been left all week in the freezing garage. Condensation is more than a weather-related term. Who knew?

I was shocked when I suddenly landed in a heap on the floor after my first throw. But I was even more shocked when, after hauling myself back upright, I looked up and saw that I’d somehow managed to knock down nine of the pins. I figured on the way down I might have lost control of the ball and flung it across the next several lanes. Good thing I didn’t. It’s also a good thing it didn’t pop-up like in softball and come back down and conk me on the head while I was crumpled up on the floor of Lane 5.

I guess I didn’t know bowling could be a contact sport. (Oh wait…that’s right. We’re not calling it a “sport.”)

At any rate, the folks in the neighboring lanes who saw me take the fall were very kind and solicitous and didn’t even snicker once. Well, not in front of me, anyway. Once they ascertained that I was ambulatory, they gave me a sympathetic nod as if to say, “Better you than me, lady!” and then went back to concentrating on their own games.

After that embarrassing debacle, I realized I still had to throw my second ball. With any delay of game, my second throw is usually a gutter ball. But I surprised myself even further when, after tentatively tip-toeing up to the line, I threw the ball…and picked up the spare!

And then, of course, I slunk off back to my seat to nurse my stinging hand and smarting knee.

The only saving grace was the fact that the other members of my own bowling team missed my free fall since they were too busy drinking beer and shuffling cards for poker. I wouldn’t have heard the end of it all night long. They’d have been talking about something totally unrelated like the weather or something and then would have said, “…yeah, it’s kind of like when Jane fell on her face up there on Lane 5!” And then they would have laughed and laughed.

Or maybe they wouldn’t have. It depends on how much they believe in karma and that nasty little thing called “payback.”

Besides, our team needs to stick together since we’re in last place. (How did that happen?) And the sad thing is, we’re bowling pretty well. We’re just bowling against opponents who are bowling even better.

Personally, I haven’t had such good bowling scores as I have had these past few weeks. I mean, after taking a dive on that first frame, I would have thought my “bowling concentration” would have been affected and I might have had a bad game. Not so. I bowled 151 that first game. My average is 134 and I somehow also bowled higher than my average the next two games.

Of course, this inevitably means that I should expect a week sometime in the not-too-distant future where I can’t manage a spare or a strike to save my tuchus. This will be a relief, actually. I am normally a 115 average bowler. My cute bowling shoes couldn’t possibly have made so much of a difference that I’m bowling 19 pins above my normal average. Or…could they? You can never discount the cuteness factor in bowling.

And, that too, my friends, is why bowling cannot be considered a “sport.” In real sports, shoes and clothing (and helmets and pads, etc.) are functional. When you get to wear hot pink-and-black bowling shoes that match your hot pink-and-black bowling shirt with the cute pink panther patch on the pocket, you should automatically disqualify bowling as a sport.

Well, in my opinion, anyway. I’m sure professional bowlers would beg to differ. But then, I’ve never seen a professional bowler wearing cute hot pink-and-black bowling shoes.

Meanwhile, I’ll be bowling again on Sunday. Let’s hope there are no repeat performances on the pratfalls. From me, anyway. Oh, and I will happily consider any strikes and/or spares as a bonus.

The Return of the Pin Panthers

So the other night we started our 2011 bowling season on the Columbus Ski Club bowling league and we wore our official “Pin Panther” embroidered hot pink and black bowling shirts. Plus, I got some new hot pink and black bowling shoes to match my shirt, so now I think I’m all stylin’ in the bowling alley.

I’m sure the guys on the team we bowled against, wearing their plain ol’ t-shirts and regular ol’ bowling shoes, were quaking in fear because our team looked all professional and stuff. But after our first gutter ball, I think they relaxed a little.

Except I did bowl a little too well for the first night of bowling where our averages and handicaps are established. Must’ve been the pre-bowling beer and wings or somethin’. Or maybe it was just the beer.

But, yeah, the first night of bowling on a league using handicaps is not a good night to start bowling above your average.

I can’t remember my scores to the exact pin (must’ve been the beer or somethin’), but they were something like 114, 130-something and 140-something.

Usually my average is only somewhere around 115.

What’s going to happen now is that I’ll spend the next several weeks trying to hit my above-average average…and it’ll be frustrating.

The cup half-full viewpoint would be that my new hot pink and black bowling shoes were the very thing that caused me to bowl so much better or that perhaps I raised my average appreciably by sheer skill and ability.

I tend to think, however, it was just beginner’s luck. “Beginner” meaning that I haven’t bowled since last April. Well, okay, so I did bowl one time over the summer, but that didn’t count because (a) it was on a Sunday morning rather than a Sunday evening, and (b) no beer was involved.

Or maybe it didn’t count because I didn’t yet have my new hot pink and black bowling shoes? Yeah, that’s probably it.

I’m going to think positively and assume that my new bowling shoes with their soft felt soles that allow the bowler to do that professional bowler’s “glide” thing…

…Okay, I just can’t pull it off. I have no flippin’ clue how to do that professional bowler’s “glide” thing. When I tried one time, I hurt my knee. So what I do is pretty much just walk up to the little center dot in my lane and chuck the ball toward the pins and hope for the best.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Sunday night it worked – unfortunately. So this means I’ll either have to drink massive quantities of beer every Sunday evening in hopes that it was, in fact, the beer that helped my bowling scores…or I’ll just have to do what I normally do the week after I’ve had a good night of bowling, which is to bowl three games with scores that don’t even crack the 100 mark.

Believe me, I’ve done it enough to know.

The first time I had a great night of bowling (on another league), I bowled 170 and 182. I was feeling all bowling proficient and figured that I finally “got it” and would be bowling strikes left and right from that point on. Yeah, sure. The next week I think I bowled an 82 and an 88. Can you say “inconsistent”?!

Ah well. Bowling great scores every week on a bowling league isn’t really the point. The beer is. Oops. I mean, the camaraderie with teammates and opponents alike is the point. Getting a chance to heft a 12 pound ball so that my right bicep gets at least a little bit of a workout is the point. And having a legitimate reason to wear a hot pink and black bowling shirt with matching bowling shoes (so that I rather resemble a box of Good N’ Plenty candy)…well that, my friends, is the point.

But the beer doesn’t hurt.

And As We Say Farewell to Another Bowling Season...

So this past Sunday was our last night of bowling and all that is left of the season is the banquet. Fortunately, I wasn’t anticipating winning any bowling trophies, which is a good thing because I simply have no more room on the mantle for another award. Oh, sure. Who am I kidding? Like I have any other trophies on there. I don’t really seem to have the talent for trophy collecting.

Anyway, I’m sort of sad that the season is over, but I’m also sort of glad. I was running low on Advil, and now I’m thinking I won’t need to restock until just prior to the start of the next bowling season. Let’s hope not, anyway. Besides, I’m kind of tired of beer.

Yeah, I had to take a lot of Advil (and drink a lot of beer) to keep the ol’ joints from complaining too much. Knees, elbows, shoulders – you name it – they weren’t happy that I repeatedly hefted a 12-lb. ball and threw it down a wooden lane trying to knock down some pins at the other end. The number of throws was even higher considering I didn’t get very many strikes.

But oh well. It has been great hanging out with friends on Sunday evenings for the past few months. Got us through the long winter, that’s for sure. Plus, we had cool bowling shirts and, well, where else are you going to wear hot pink and black shirts with “Pin Panthers” imprinted on the back? At a Putt-Putt course? Euchre Tournament? I don’t think so. That would just look silly.

I figured that our last night of bowling would be stress-free because we weren’t in any sort of play-off situation, so it would be purely for the fun of it. Because of this, I assumed I’d be getting strikes right and left. I assumed wrong. Well, I was throwing the ball down the lane right and left, which meant I wasn’t getting the middle pins and thus, no strikes. Not a single one. All evening.

So, as you might imagine, my scores were pretty abysmal. I didn’t even break 100 the first game. I did break 100 the second game, but only barely. I finally managed to squeak by at a little higher than my average on the third game, but for the most part it was a pitiful performance.

As if bowling itself isn’t enough jam-packed fun, we also throw in a buck per game and we play poker. At the first spare or strike, we pick up a set of 5 cards and we get to draw one card from the pile. And any mark after that earns us another card. Well, I wasn’t earning many cards all evening. Which is a shame because we were playing with Chippendales cards. Who wouldn’t want the chance to pick up a card featuring a smiling, bare-chested oiled up dude with a six-pack? Well, bedsides the two dudes on our team?!

Lest you think we get to play with Chippendales cards every game, I must tell you the rules. We play with “normal” cards regularly. However, if a woman bowls a game with a score over 150, we get to play a game with scantily clad men. Cards, I mean. Not real scantily clad men! And if the men bowl a game with a score over 175, we play poker with cards featuring scantily clad women. Oh, who am I kidding? The women on these cards are not wearing any clothes whatsoever. And, no, I didn’t make the rules.

One night my parents, who happened to be in town that weekend, came to watch us bowl. I had to forewarn them about the cards thing because one guy on our team bowled TWO games the previous week with scores over 175. But my 80-something-and-change mother did me proud. One of my teammates kept trying to embarrass her and would hand her two cards and ask her to pick which “woman” he should keep and which one he should discard. My mom didn’t bat an eye – she matter-of-factly studied them and then told him which woman she thought had better, uh, attributes. Go mom!

(Dad, by the way, was probably getting eye strain from furtively looking at the cards out of the corner of his eye all the while feigning complete indifference. But I wouldn’t swear to that in court.)

Anyway, on our last game of the season, I bowled three spares. That meant I got to pick up my first set of cards and draw one. I had three natural Aces and a 10. The card I drew was a 10. Yippee – a Full House on my first hand! At the second spare, I drew another Ace. Wow – 4 Aces. Finally, after my third spare, I drew a Joker/Wild Card, which meant I ended the last game of the season and the last game of Poker with FIVE ACES. Yay, me!

It was a great way to end the season. It even took some of the sting out of my abysmal bowling scores, but I’m not dwelling on it too much. I don’t want to go through the summer bummed because I bowled crappy the last night of the season.

Maybe we could practice all summer and be bowling champs next year? Well, “champs” might be a bit of a stretch, but I could see weekly practices – provided we play poker with the Chippendales cards. I’d maybe even be willing to buy some more Advil for that.

Go Pin Panthers, Go!

It’s Sunday afternoon and you know what that means…

Well, okay, so it could mean different things to different people. For me, it means I’ve gotta go bowling in a couple hours.

Yep, I’m bowling on the Ski Club bowling league this year. My team is the Pin Panthers. Cute, huh? I have to credit my teammate Patty for that inspiration. We even got those old fashioned bowling shirts with our team name on the back, a Pink Panther patch on the front and our names stitched on the left front pocket. We look like official bowlers even. Kind of. ‘Til we start bowling.

No, I’m just kidding. My team has done pretty well this year – the last time I saw the league standings list, I believe we were in 3rd place in our division. That’s a little surprising with me in the mix since I’m one of those people who can bowl a 135 one game, and an 88 the next. Yeesh. Talk about inconsistent.

Of course, I’m not really a “bowler,” per se. All I know about the game is that I’m supposed to throw a ball at a bunch of pins at the other end of the lane. And don’t ask me what a curve ball is – I couldn’t manage to throw one to save my life. I’ve seen people do it and I marvel at how it looks like the ball is headed for the gutter, only to curve at the last possible moment, hit the head pin and knock all the rest of the pins down.

Yeah, I’m lucky if the ball meanders relatively straight down the center of the lane and doesn’t cause a split. ‘Cause there’s no possible way I’d manage to knock down two pins on opposite ends. If I get a split, what usually happens is I throw the ball down the middle hitting neither pin, and when I turn around, all my teammates are holding both arms straight up in the air in a “goalpost” gesture. Funny, guys…as if my humiliation isn’t enough.

No, I never really learned the fine art of bowling. As a kid, one of our few pastimes in Alliance was heading to the Parkway Lanes bowling alley where my friend Diana’s mom worked in the lounge area. Not that it helped us snag any free beer since we were underage and anyway we didn’t do bad things like underage drinking. We did bowl a lot, though. I just never learned what it was exactly I was supposed to be doing to knock those pins down on a regular basis.

As an adult bowler, I’ve learned that beer helps. A lot. Mostly it helps me forget the aches and pains I experience when bowling. Or maybe it’s just the pain I experience when I bowl an 88.

One time I bowled a 231. I swear, I did – I even had witnesses! And I received a watch from the USBC – the United States Bowling Congress – for bowling 100 pins over my average. (Apparently, this token is so I can prove that I bowled well once.) But don’t ask me what I did differently that game that gave me such a great score. Maybe I drank a lot of extra beer that day? I don’t know, but what I DO know is that if I could bowl a 231 once, I should be able to do it again.

Hope springs eternal.

Anyway, the fortunate thing about the Pin Panthers is that we bowl for fun. Nobody expects me to bowl a 231. Believe me, they’d rejoice if I did – but they don’t expect it. And they don’t pick on me (too much) when I bowl an 88.

So here’s hoping for a good night of bowling. Now, who’s gonna buy the first pitcher?!