Flak Magazine: Kick Out the Sports! 08.08.05

At its early 1970s peak, bowling was so popular that the wife of Cleveland's mayor blew off a dinner invitation from President Nixon, purportedly because the event fell on her bowling league night. Since then, bowling's popularity has steadily rolled toward the gutter, and the powers-that-be think they know why: juiced balls.

A juiced Rafael Palmeiro is hardly going to hurt America's love affair with baseball, but the U.S. Bowling Congress is on record as saying that manufacturers' competition to create, as AC/DC might put it, the baddest balls of them all has caused Americans to turn away from its sport.

These balls are not held for charity or for fancy dress, and they certainly can't be held by America's bowling lanes. Couple easier-to-roll balls with what the USBC calls increasingly forgiving lane conditions, and you have a sport in which even your average chain-smoking league bowler can toss up scores that previous generations of pro bowlers never reached.

As the USBC notes, perfect scores — 300 in a game, 900 in a three-game series — have skyrocketed in the past 25 years. Meanwhile, membership in bowling associations has gone down. Why continue to practice, as angry ex-pros Marshall Holman and Mike Aulby ask on the USBC's web site, when any schmoe can instantly bowl like the pros? Heck, why even bother watching pros? (Not that Americans do. The Professional Bowlers Association exists only because a few Microsoft millionaires bailed it out, and it's never on network TV anymore. Present and future generations will never have their own Chris Schenkel.)

So does causation equal correlation? Robert Putnam, in his book "Bowling Alone," argued that people weren't joining bowling leagues because they were, and I paraphrase, selfish bastards with no human connection to the societies around them, not because bowling was too easy. No one who rolls at a bowling alley with one of the free balls provided would argue the balls are better, not with most of them being chipped and dented to the point they resemble topographical maps of Mars.

Also, entering a bowling alley feels kind of dirty these days, even as lanes clean themselves up from the days when smoking and drinking was well-nigh required, even for children. Many alleys don't even use the words "bowling alley" anymore. Recently, the one near my house changed its sign to say "Fun Center," which, combined with its windowless walls, gives the impression it's hosting peep shows.

One of bowling's big problems is that it's been long considered a working-class sport populated by men with their names stitched to their shirts in cursive. (And the pool of those men is growing smaller; the USBC's chart on declining league membership correlates with the decline in union industrial jobs.) So when bowling gets discussed by hipsters, it's more in the realm of kitsch. Golf can be played un-ironically despite its skewering in Caddyshack. Bowling doesn't have the cachet to survive irony-free from the double barrels of Kingpin and The Big Lebowski. Golf can survive its players' multicolored pants. Bowling cannot survive its players' multicolored shoes.

But the biggest problem for bowling is that in sports such as golf and tennis, better equipment has allowed even average players to improve their games significantly, and pros to become almost superhuman. Furthermore, golf courses be can be made larger, with more challenges. Tennis courts aren't changed, but no equipment is going to make the local country club champ the equal to Roger Federer if each is using the same gear.

Bowling is an oddball because the lanes aren't going to be lengthened, and because it has a maximum score. In fact, over the years, some have suggested changing the scoring system, such as making each series six games instead of three, to separate the pros from the amateurs. Or maybe you could add style points, so someone who does a balletic, Fred Flintsone-like approach can have an advantage over your straightforward bowler.

The balls, though, are where the USBC is starting, because they are the easiest aspect to control. In fact, the ruling body last month issued guidelines that reduce the Mohs' hardness specification. I guess you'd have to be a league bowler to recognize that as a term regarding the covering of a bowling ball, and not a term for what you might experience after taking Levitra.

It's way too early to determine whether the USBC is on the right track to turning around bowling's popularity. For now, if someone is blowing off the president, it's just because they don't like him. The USBC should consider it a sign of progress if someone blows off a small-town mayor or a library commissioner to roll a few frames.

E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.