Just the Place to Sport Best Bowling Shirt

By MIKE DOWNEY

July 22, 1985 12 AM PT

I do not yet know if California people go bowling or hire somebody to do it for them. Bowling has always struck me--there is a joke there somewhere--as a Midwestern pastime, even though I know this to be untrue. New Yorkers bowl. New Englanders bowl. New Mexicans bowl. Most of God’s children have bowled.

I do not yet know, however, how seriously Californians take bowling. I am new here, and haven’t even had time to get my ball drilled. When someone invited me last week to the Hollywood Bowl, I was euphoric until I discovered that it did not have 48 lanes or automatic pinspotters. All it had was a bunch of cello players.

Where I grew up, bowling was a way of life. Most of my friends walked around town wearing rented shoes. My prom date had her name stitched across the pocket of her blouse. She put her corsage in her wrist protector.

For years now, friends and strangers alike have been pleading with me for more coverage of bowling in the newspaper. These are people who worship the game, who hang portraits of Dick Weber and Andy Varipapa on their walls. I always argued that bowlers did not really want to read about other bowlers; they just wanted to see their names in the papers. “Myrtle Jones, Monday Night Mixed Guys & Dolls, 537.” Some people wanted 6-7-10 split conversions listed like holes-in-one.

My knowledge of bowling was confined in the beginning to hanging around the local alleys and watching Whispering Joe Wilson describe professional action on TV. There were also such syndicated programs as “Jackpot Bowling” and “Make That Spare,” where celebrities rolled for fun and dollars. I think Buddy Hackett once attached two bowling balls to an iron bar, like a weightlifter’s barbell, then positioned the balls in both gutters and sent this contraption in motion down the lane, where the bar mowed down all the pins.

Bowling is great fun. Somewhere between Whispering Joe Wilson and Chris Schenkel, there was a TV bowling announcer named Fred Wolf who used to remind his audience: “You don’t have to play a sport good to be a good sport.” Fred wasn’t much on grammar, but his heart was in the right place.

It was with a love of bowling in my heart that, on a recent visit to St. Louis, I made sure to stop in the National Bowling Hall of Fame and Museum. In Paris, you go to the Eiffel Tower. In Agra, you go to the Taj Mahal. In St. Louis, you go to the National Bowling Hall of Fame and Museum.

It cost three bucks. It was worth it. There was beauty, style, tribute and knowledge, all under one roof. Besides, it was hot outside and the place was air-conditioned.

Once you get out of the souvenir shop, where you can get your official National Bowling Hall of Fame and Museum windbreaker, you head for the portals of ecstasy. It is a land of both shadow and substance, a place not only of sight and sound, but of mind.

There are computers and display cases and shrines. There are hand-carved pins and centuries-old balls and exhibits of beautiful bowling shirts, which--mark my word--will become the hot new wave fashion of the late ‘80s. Possibly the 2080s, but that’s OK, too.

The very first display is that of a prehistoric man. He did not have a bowling shirt on. “Who was the first bowler?” the sign asked. “We think it might have been a cave man, tossing rocks at animal bones. What do you think?”

I think sure, why not?

A bust of William Penn quotes from his personal correspondence, in which he describes having rolled a few lines. Actually, what he said was: “We were at bowls yesteryeen.” I kept hoping that the museum could have uncovered an old scoresheet of his, maybe one that said: “Bill.”

As the tour continued, it turned out that bowlers were once frowned upon, much the way actors once were. “Ninepins” was the game of the day, although there were variations all over the world. Laws were passed in some areas, declaring bowling illegal. On Dec. 15, 1855, a bunch of women in Lincoln, Ill., barged into Boyd’s Bowling Saloon, carrying axes, shovels, knives, hatchets and pistols, and they wrecked the joint. Ah, women--you can’t live with ‘em, you can’t live without ‘em.

Nine museum TV monitors flashed scenes from 23 years of the ABC Pro Bowlers Tour. Chris Schenkel has been handling these telecasts since 1964, by the way. The guy has Brunswick on the brain.

Computers invited the tour guest to call up information about bowling. Any information at all. How about 300 games rolled in your hometown? Go ahead, call up your state. Now find your town on this alphabetical list. Now punch the key. Wow, there they were--Jim Denton, Joe Basile, Denny Pirani, all the guys from the little town back home. Immortalized.

There was no telling what could be around the next corner. It might be--yes! A patchwork quilt sewn by Don Carter’s mother, made of all his old bowling shirts! A color portrait of Marion Ladewig! A little theater with a film on the history of bowling--”the most widely played and beloved game ever known,” as the announcer says.

Do yourself a favor. Go to the museum soon, and go bowl tomorrow. Unless, of course, you went yesteryeen.