The Dark Side of Bowling
Two Sundays ago I bowled against the most unpleasant people ever to set foot inside a bowling alley.
I’ve been in the league since September but until two weeks ago was only dimly aware of this team’s existence. Bowlers are by nature a pretty laid-back and friendly bunch, and these qualities are magnified severalfold as the evening progresses and vast quantities of beer are consumed. (The bar at our bowling alley sells mixed drinks, at least on paper. I’ve never seen anybody buy one.1)
On this Sunday, after almost two weeks of February weather, the temperature suddenly popped up to 82 °F. Relieved of its burden of winter ice, Lake Erie half evaporated, driving the humidity up to heights seldom encountered even in midsummer.
The first two people on our opposing team show up, both independently cursing a blue streak about…something. It might have been the weather; it might have been the fact that the management had stuck us at the far end of the lanes again.2 I don’t know, and I didn’t ask. It seems rude-not to mention dangerous-to interrupt such a heartfelt and long-lasting litany of shits and fucks.
The sport of bowling is much more sensitive to the weather than most people realize. For some reason the human hand expands more rapidly with increasing temperature than bowling balls do. I spent twenty minutes before warmups routing out my thumb hole with a bevel knife. Both bowling shoes and the approach eagerly soak up the humidity, so that instead of sliding gracefully to the foul line, you stop short about two feet early and make an embarrassing little hop as your ankle bones shatter under the abrupt deceleration. Even the pins like to get in on the act. I left nine or ten 10-pins on good solid hits, because the waterlogged pins just weren’t reacting as much as usual.
Looking at the score monitors, I could see that nobody was dealing well with the weird conditions. I was actually able to adjust better than most people, and I really don’t like bowling when it’s that hot outside.
Naturally, there was a great deal of complaining going on, but most of the league took it philosophically, at least after their first beer. Not our opposing team. Even worse, they weren’t content to merely curse their luck.
You’ve undoubtedly seen people who know each other well start yelling incoherently at each other. My instinctual reaction is to wait it out, as after a little while they’re bound to bust up laughing and break the tension, and it becomes apparent that they were only joking around. Well, that never happened here. The shouting would continue until both parties either ran out of energy or vulgar metaphors. It was the verbal equivalent of hippopotamuses fighting: basically a contest of who could fling shit the fastest-and the loudest-without any attempt at logic or subtlety. And nobody not directly involved could fathom the least of what they were arguing about. These fights occurred between bowlers and members of the peanut gallery they’d brought with them. (The most ill-tempered of the lot usually bowled but was sitting this week out, her blood sugar having risen past 800 mg/dl.)
Early in the second game, their anchor man3 tripped up short at the foul line and heaved the ball, which stuck momentarily to his thumb, sailed about twenty feet down the lane in a beautiful parabolic arc, touched land and immediately caromed into the right gutter. Did his anguished response address the humidity, the condition of the approach, or the poor fit of his thumb hole? Oh, good Lord, no. He spun around and snarled, for the benefit of the general audience, “‘Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap!’ All that woman can talk about is money, money, money!” We all just stared at him in stunned silence while our shell-shocked brains attempted to make sense of this grand non sequitur. As he stomped back, his diatribe radar-locked on its actual target, and yet another shouting match ensued.
Somehow I managed to throw a 208 the second game. After my strong finish, one of them began to make faces at me behind my back. Seriously. A man over 50. Making faces at his opponents. I distinctly heard this guy mutter “jackass” after I threw a strike in the third game. I walked over to him and said, really loud, “Were you talking to me just now, Bob? I couldn’t quite hear what you said, there.” Embarrassed silence.
They weren’t all evil-their scorekeeper (who was bowling as a substitute, natch) seemed quite pleasant-and even the evil ones weren’t nasty all the time. Halfway through the third game, the anchor chatted us up a little, noting how challenging the lane conditions were. Oddly, it wasn’t until this point that I began having uncharitable thoughts, mostly along the lines of “Why won’t he go away?” and “If he ever got a dental plan, he’d drive the insurance company bankrupt with his first visit.”
If that evening’s performance was amazing, I was even more surprised to find out that this team acted like that every week. After we finished up, my brother-in-law submitted the last of a long string of complaints against their abrasive behavior and atrocious sportsmanship. He received a promise that they’d be ejected from the league for next year, but the league officers almost immediately backed down, saying that instead, they’d deliver a general lecture on proper bowling decorum at our league banquet next week. In other words, they’ll do nothing. The offenders will be the only people in the building who don’t get the fact that the lecture is directed specifically at them, while the rest of us will sit there in embarrassed silence for the duration.
On hearing this, we began discussing different places we might bowl next year, but last week we learned that the team evil was quitting the league. Don’t know why, but I’d rather not jinx our good fortune by enquiring.
___________________
1The bar’s signature drink is a 100-ounce beer served in what looks exactly like a huge bong. A huge graduated cylinder, with markings every ten ounces, serves as the chamber; it sits atop a plastic bowling ball with a spigot at the top, right where the stem would be. The thing stands about three feet high.
2It doesn’t sound like much, but our bowling alley has 96 lanes in one big row. Standing at Lane 1, you can’t see the balls rolling down Lane 96-they’re hidden behind the earth’s curvature. And dragging all my equipment from one end to the other feels like a mile’s forced march. The alley claims to be the world’s largest bowling center. Since the 106-lane house attached to Castaways closed (along with the hotel) in 2006, it does probably deserve the title of the largest center in the US; but the world record belongs to Japan, at least twice. Inazawa Grand Bowl, with 116 lanes in one gigantic room, is still operating, as is Nagoya Grand Bowl, with 156 lanes on three floors.
3The anchor, usually the best bowler, bowls last. They’re the person who can most be trusted to have a strong 10th frame in a close game. I bowl anchor for our team. I’m usually a good 10th-frame bowler, but I did not distinguish myself in that position this season.
I’ve been in the league since September but until two weeks ago was only dimly aware of this team’s existence. Bowlers are by nature a pretty laid-back and friendly bunch, and these qualities are magnified severalfold as the evening progresses and vast quantities of beer are consumed. (The bar at our bowling alley sells mixed drinks, at least on paper. I’ve never seen anybody buy one.1)
On this Sunday, after almost two weeks of February weather, the temperature suddenly popped up to 82 °F. Relieved of its burden of winter ice, Lake Erie half evaporated, driving the humidity up to heights seldom encountered even in midsummer.
The first two people on our opposing team show up, both independently cursing a blue streak about…something. It might have been the weather; it might have been the fact that the management had stuck us at the far end of the lanes again.2 I don’t know, and I didn’t ask. It seems rude-not to mention dangerous-to interrupt such a heartfelt and long-lasting litany of shits and fucks.
The sport of bowling is much more sensitive to the weather than most people realize. For some reason the human hand expands more rapidly with increasing temperature than bowling balls do. I spent twenty minutes before warmups routing out my thumb hole with a bevel knife. Both bowling shoes and the approach eagerly soak up the humidity, so that instead of sliding gracefully to the foul line, you stop short about two feet early and make an embarrassing little hop as your ankle bones shatter under the abrupt deceleration. Even the pins like to get in on the act. I left nine or ten 10-pins on good solid hits, because the waterlogged pins just weren’t reacting as much as usual.
Looking at the score monitors, I could see that nobody was dealing well with the weird conditions. I was actually able to adjust better than most people, and I really don’t like bowling when it’s that hot outside.
Naturally, there was a great deal of complaining going on, but most of the league took it philosophically, at least after their first beer. Not our opposing team. Even worse, they weren’t content to merely curse their luck.
You’ve undoubtedly seen people who know each other well start yelling incoherently at each other. My instinctual reaction is to wait it out, as after a little while they’re bound to bust up laughing and break the tension, and it becomes apparent that they were only joking around. Well, that never happened here. The shouting would continue until both parties either ran out of energy or vulgar metaphors. It was the verbal equivalent of hippopotamuses fighting: basically a contest of who could fling shit the fastest-and the loudest-without any attempt at logic or subtlety. And nobody not directly involved could fathom the least of what they were arguing about. These fights occurred between bowlers and members of the peanut gallery they’d brought with them. (The most ill-tempered of the lot usually bowled but was sitting this week out, her blood sugar having risen past 800 mg/dl.)
Early in the second game, their anchor man3 tripped up short at the foul line and heaved the ball, which stuck momentarily to his thumb, sailed about twenty feet down the lane in a beautiful parabolic arc, touched land and immediately caromed into the right gutter. Did his anguished response address the humidity, the condition of the approach, or the poor fit of his thumb hole? Oh, good Lord, no. He spun around and snarled, for the benefit of the general audience, “‘Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap!’ All that woman can talk about is money, money, money!” We all just stared at him in stunned silence while our shell-shocked brains attempted to make sense of this grand non sequitur. As he stomped back, his diatribe radar-locked on its actual target, and yet another shouting match ensued.
Somehow I managed to throw a 208 the second game. After my strong finish, one of them began to make faces at me behind my back. Seriously. A man over 50. Making faces at his opponents. I distinctly heard this guy mutter “jackass” after I threw a strike in the third game. I walked over to him and said, really loud, “Were you talking to me just now, Bob? I couldn’t quite hear what you said, there.” Embarrassed silence.
They weren’t all evil-their scorekeeper (who was bowling as a substitute, natch) seemed quite pleasant-and even the evil ones weren’t nasty all the time. Halfway through the third game, the anchor chatted us up a little, noting how challenging the lane conditions were. Oddly, it wasn’t until this point that I began having uncharitable thoughts, mostly along the lines of “Why won’t he go away?” and “If he ever got a dental plan, he’d drive the insurance company bankrupt with his first visit.”
If that evening’s performance was amazing, I was even more surprised to find out that this team acted like that every week. After we finished up, my brother-in-law submitted the last of a long string of complaints against their abrasive behavior and atrocious sportsmanship. He received a promise that they’d be ejected from the league for next year, but the league officers almost immediately backed down, saying that instead, they’d deliver a general lecture on proper bowling decorum at our league banquet next week. In other words, they’ll do nothing. The offenders will be the only people in the building who don’t get the fact that the lecture is directed specifically at them, while the rest of us will sit there in embarrassed silence for the duration.
On hearing this, we began discussing different places we might bowl next year, but last week we learned that the team evil was quitting the league. Don’t know why, but I’d rather not jinx our good fortune by enquiring.
___________________
1The bar’s signature drink is a 100-ounce beer served in what looks exactly like a huge bong. A huge graduated cylinder, with markings every ten ounces, serves as the chamber; it sits atop a plastic bowling ball with a spigot at the top, right where the stem would be. The thing stands about three feet high.
2It doesn’t sound like much, but our bowling alley has 96 lanes in one big row. Standing at Lane 1, you can’t see the balls rolling down Lane 96-they’re hidden behind the earth’s curvature. And dragging all my equipment from one end to the other feels like a mile’s forced march. The alley claims to be the world’s largest bowling center. Since the 106-lane house attached to Castaways closed (along with the hotel) in 2006, it does probably deserve the title of the largest center in the US; but the world record belongs to Japan, at least twice. Inazawa Grand Bowl, with 116 lanes in one gigantic room, is still operating, as is Nagoya Grand Bowl, with 156 lanes on three floors.
3The anchor, usually the best bowler, bowls last. They’re the person who can most be trusted to have a strong 10th frame in a close game. I bowl anchor for our team. I’m usually a good 10th-frame bowler, but I did not distinguish myself in that position this season.