A Bowling League of Our Own

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

And yet, that unmistakable smell of conditioning oil and the rumble and crack of the pins still hold the same allure for me that they did when I was a child in the '50s. I would watch in wonderment as Dick Weber hung out a string of seven or eight strikes at the Hollywood Legion Lanes. In no other organized sport is the line between amateur and pro so blurred. Almost every bowling alley pro shop is staffed by a pro—a major-league bowler. When my mentor, Rick Polzien, isn't fitting me for a new ball or working with me out on the lanes to keep my head up and shoulders straight, he's likely to be on tour competing for the big bucks. Next time Mike Piazza's in town, try calling him and asking if he's got a few moments to play catch with you.

At my neighborhood bowling alley there are, apart from Rick, half a dozen other card-carrying members of the Professional Bowlers Association playing side by side with bookkeepers, teachers, and mechanics in the Thursday-night singles league. To enter the PBA you need only to average 200 for any two years of amateur league play—for me, a wholly attainable goal. Into mid-middle age, I still toy with the notion of going on tour. I might even be a contender.

Part of January/February 2000 cover story section. From The Nation (August 10, 1998).

When he was a teenager in the 1950s, Marc Cooper bowled at the youth championship level. "Then later, in the 1960s, I found other things more alluring, and I dropped out," he says. But not for good. In "A League of Our Own", Cooper, now host and executive producer of the syndicated news show Radio Nation, writes about his recent rediscovery of bowling, praising the sport's "deeply democratic" roots. Cooper is currently hard at work on a book about the sport for Verso Publishing.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print