Pins & puns

Bowling Digest, Spring, 2004

THE ALPHABET OF BOWLING, daffynition style.

Alley--A little street between buildings. Was once the thing you bowled on, but that's now a lane.

Bowler--Any person who at any time rolled a bowling ball and had an excuse for why it didn't go where it was supposed to go.

Cherry--A delicious fruit, but poison to any bowler. Also known by names of "chop" or "pick" and a number of others not suitable for a family magazine.

Down--Where the pins won't go often enough.

Easy--What you think the other team or individual is--before the match.

Foul--When the lights, bells, and buzzers go on to tell the whole bowling center you stepped out of line, usually when you roll a good ball and get a strike that won't count.

Game--What bowling is supposed to be, but often turns into a battle, bowler against lanes, bowler against pins, and bowler against bowler.

Home--The place you get away from by bowling and the place you run back to in order to get away from bowling.

Inside--Opposite of outside. An angle you switch to because you heard a pro bowler mention it on television.

Jerk--What you feel like when you do it to your bowling ball in a clutch situation.

Kitty--All the money you donate to it after low scores and missed spares turns it into a fat cat.

Leave--Pins left after your first ball. Also what you want to do when you see them.

Match--When a couple of bowlers who didn't want to bowl end up bowling against each other because the bowlers who did want to bowl in the first place decide that they didn't want to bowl.

Never--When you will quit bowling.

Oil--What bowlers think should be put on salad instead of on lanes.

Pin Bowlers almost all agree/That they will sometimes see/A pin that won't fall free/And should have remained a tree.

Quick--How soon the news about your terrible game gets around.

Split--The leave that makes you wish your ball was as wide as the lane.

Tenpin--The only thing some bowlers never win an argument against.

Useless--Trying to convince another bowler how many pins you were robbed of when the pins didn't go down on perfect hits.

Vile The language you'd like to use on the pins.

Worse What your bowling seems to be getting with each passing year.

X--A strike or a kiss.

XXX--A striking string of kisses or a kissing string of strikes.

Young--Any bowler who hasn't reached 100.

Zany--Anyone who had the guts to read this all the way through.

Pete Couture has become the 205th man to be elected to the ABC Hall of Fame. The 58-year-old native of Maine who now fives in Florida is the first bowler from Maine to be elected to the Hall. He also joins a select group who have made the Hall the first time they appeared on the ballot.

In his prime Couture weighed 140 or less and doesn't go much beyond that now, as a star on the Senior tour. Couture has always been strong and athletic, and for many years was the best tennis player in the pro bowling ranks. He might still be.

The ABC Hall, founded in 1941, is the third oldest in sports, after baseball in 1936 and golf in 1940. Since the ABC was organized in 1895, some 200 million bowlers have been sanctioned in league and tournament play. Many of them were sanctioned for many years, but the odds against being elected to the ABC Hall still run anywhere from half a million to a million to one against.

What a difference one game or even one shot can make. On the PBA's 2003-04 telecasts there were many occasions when a win could change a career. The difference in a win or loss was a minimum of $20,000. A win would put some bowlers into the Tournament of Champions with a guaranteed prize and a chance at more than $100,000. And a win would cinch a spot in the 2004-05 all-exempt tour, almost assuring the bowler of making a decent living for at least one more season. So this season there are single tosses that gained or cost a bowler some $200,000.

Though youngsters are advised not to treat athletes as role models, they do. One of the best role models possible is Mike Aulby, the PBA and ABC Hall-of-Famer who has announced he will retire this year. Aulby is a gentleman on and off the lanes, highly respected as a family man and businessman, and has been cited for his contributions to every area of bowling and his devotion to youth bowling and charity causes. With all that he has been one of the toughest competitors of all time, particularly in the clutch. He was the 1979 PBA Rookie of the Year and won his first major at 19. At age 43, he's still a threat to win any event he enters.

He always had a simple but effective bowling philosophy: Every time you bowl, just strive to bowl a little bit better than the last time you bowled.