Why Bowling is Awesome

Bowling is awesome. It just is. And if you don't think so, maybe take a listen to today's episode. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and Jerry's here. All of us are
wearing bowling shoes, are feet hurt, they look kind of weird,
and we're ready to go. I want to shout out.

(00:22):
This was a genuine listener suggestion. Oh nice, what listener
Mark bowls? No, not b O w L. It's b
O L e s. But still kind of funny since
we're talking about I watched a video on automatic pin

(00:43):
setters by a kid name While a guy named Matt Boland.
He's a pin setter technician. So there's some some weirdness
going on here. I had a dentist named Dr Tuggle. Mmm,
that sounds painful, like you just made my scrotum shrink
up into myself. And I had a h My proctologist

(01:06):
is Dr Fingering. But what his first name finger in,
his middle initials in, and then his last name is
but no, his whole last name. I think his name
is Robert Fingering Butt, And I think, oh, yeah, doctor Fingering,
but yeah, maybe Finland or something. I don't know. I
just call him Robert Bobby Bobby Fingers. Yes, but Chuck,

(01:29):
the hilarious thing is, we're not talking about proctologists right now,
not at all. As a matter of fact, I'll be
very surprised if they come up again in this episode
because instead about talking about bowling. That's right, and big
thanks to Mark Bowls for this. He just simply wrote
in and said, hey, I bet you bowling has a
pretty interesting backstory, and it kind of does. I think, yeah,

(01:50):
it does. Mark Bowles was lazy, uh and wanted us
to do it for him, and here we are. And
we want to also give an even bigger thanks to
Ed Grabinowski for helping us out with this one. Yeah,
and before we get to that interesting history, though, bowling
seems like the kind of thing we could just say, hey,
we're doing one on bowling. Everyone knows what that is, right,
but at the risk of not covering our bases, we

(02:14):
can very quickly just sort of describe the game, right.
Oh yeah, I think that's a good idea because ten
pin bowling, which is what we're talking about. There's tons
and tons of different variations on bowling, but ten pin
bowling is specifically what we're talking about, and it's an
American invention. So it's entirely possible that there's people out
there who listen who have never played ten pin bowling.
Who knows I'm making it up, but it's a good guess,

(02:36):
I think. All right, So what you do here, and
it is keen to point out and we'll also get
to this in the history that bowling is is a
variation of just a game, which is it seems like
kind of one of the earlier kinds of games, which
is throw something at those things, whether it be corn
hole or horse shoes or any kind of rolled object

(03:00):
at a club or a pin or something. And tin
pin bowling is a variation of that where there are
tin pins arranged in a triangle starting at the headpin.
So you got your one, and then you've got two pins,
and then you got three pins, and then you've got
four pins, all in rows. So it forms a nice
little triangle. And you throw a bowling ball down a

(03:23):
lane that is forty two inches wide and sixty ft
long from the foul line to the headpin. Yeah, and
the entire lane itself is sixty two ft and ten
and three sixes long. To be precise, something that one
ever needs to know right, well, I mean, somebody put
it out there. I wanted to know, so I hats

(03:45):
off too. I can't remember what site helped me, but so. Um,
at the end where you're rolling the ball, where you
the player the bowler is standing, there's a line. It's
a foul line, and if you cross it, you just
gave up any points you might have accrued for that
shot up. Yeah, and then just to make it even harder,
to make it that would be amazing, kind of like

(04:06):
a running Man version of bowling or a squid game thing. Yeah,
the new running Man, frankly bring it into the modern era. Yeah, yeah, um.
And then to make it even harder in addition to
the threat of exploding if you cross the foul line,
there um these troughs on either side of the lane
that your ball can easily move into. They're called gutters,

(04:29):
and balls are usually about eight to eight and a
half inches in diameter. Gutters are a nice snug fit.
They're usually about nine and nine and a quarter inches
in diameter, so there's a little bit of room for
the ball to move along, but it's snug enough that
it's not coming out of the gutter once it goes
in there almost always. I've seen some aggressive bowlers have
one pop out of the gutter if it gets a

(04:50):
nice rock going. But you know, I think like that's
sort of like kitting a sevententh split. But you would
have been in that, Yeah, exactly. Bow nice foreshadowing. And
even if you had never bowled, you've probably had at
least heard the term gutter ball. It's just kind of
a catch all term for things that stink that happened

(05:11):
to you, whether you like it or not. Yeah, And
these days they have if you go bowling with your
younger kids or just someone who really wants to make
the game a lot easier, they have these little uh
gutter guards, little gates that lift up automatically if you
so choose, are not automatically, you trigger it to and
then that way, your six year old can throw a

(05:32):
bowling ball down and it'll just go side to side.
Hitting those things all the way today. Yeah, and they
might get lucky and ricochet it right into the pocket,
which is the sweet spot between those pins, between the
first pin and either one of the two behind it,
depending on whether you're a left hand or right hand bowler. Yeah,
I mean it's good that you brought that up that
if anyone ever didn't bowl much and thought, well, why

(05:55):
did those pro bowlers and uh and certain jerks at
regular bowling alleys really try to spin that ball hard,
so it's like kisses that gutter and then flies at
an angle. That's you know, they discovered that is the
best way to knock down all ten pins for a
strike is to come in at that sort of diagonal

(06:16):
between the headpin and the pins behind it. Right. They're
not doing it just because it looks cool. No, No,
that's basically how you bowl. If you're actually trying to
do you try to spend. I haven't bowled in a while,
but yeah, I definitely tried to try to spin, because
you don't want the ball to just skid along without

(06:37):
rolling on the on the the lane you wanted to spin.
You know. I never tried to spin. I was I
was never strong enough or good enough, but I was
an okay bowler in my bowling heyday. Same here. I
definitely peaked at bowling in about six to seventh grade,
when I was actually in an after school bowling program

(06:59):
that was much later. Okay, well, I also peaked at
basketball in second grade when I played on the Maroon
team in the Royal Blue team at the y m
c A. Were you taller earlier? No, it was just
I was less afraid of getting an elbow in the face,
so I was way more aggressive taking it to the
to the basket. My whole secret when my bowling game

(07:20):
was on, and you know, I wasn't going out there
and bowling like a two twenty or anything like that.
But you know, if I walked out of there with
like a one eight on a any game, I've considered
that a really good score for me. Yeah. My whole
trick was to just bullet really really straight. I was
pretty good at that, and to not launch it three

(07:41):
or four ft down the lane. It was a very
smooth action, making contact with the floor kind of right
at the foul line, and it all resulted in just
a pretty true throw. Nice, non professionally good. Okay, but yes,
one eight is definitely I mean, I wouldn't go around
boasting at it in some random bar you just walked into,
but it's still you could probably impress your closest friends

(08:04):
with that, you know. I mean, that's probably like my
best score, just to be clear, got you okay? Um
And speaking of scores chuck uh. Today, if you go bowling,
a computer keep score for you. You don't have to score.
And that's actually a huge relief for a lot of
people because scoring in bowling is really complicated and there's actually,

(08:24):
um I've seen a theory or hypothesis. I guess that
one of the reasons why bowling has become less of
a thing in America over the years is because it
is computerized scoring and people don't understand the game like
they used to when you had to keep score yourself. Well. Yeah,
but the goal for every single time you throw the

(08:46):
ball is to knock the pins down, right, But if
you don't, then you've got a problem on your hand.
And even if you do knock all the pins down,
you don't so that's a strike. By the way, for
those of you who have never played ten pin bowling,
if you knock all all ten pins down in your
first throw, you get two throws per frame. There's ten
frames per game, right in any given frame, you have

(09:09):
two possible throws. If you knock all ten pins down
with your first throw in a frame, that's a strike
and you're done. Okay, No, you're you're Are you done? Well?
You're done, if it's until your next if it's if
it's one through nine, you're done. And the in the
ten frame you get those bonus balls, which we'll get to.
Got you, So it's scoring. Since you knock called ten

(09:29):
pins down, you think, okay, you get ten points per frame.
If you bowl the strike in every frame, you'd have
a hundred points, like that's the maximum number of points.
It's actually not correct. There's bonus points in bowling, so
that if you bowl a strike in any given frame,
then the number of pins you knocked down in the
next two frames affect your score in that first frame

(09:54):
that you you bowl the strike in. Okay, I told
you it's really complicated, and ian scoring strikes is easier
than scoring spares, which I'm hesitant to even get into.
But the upshot is there are there are bonus points
and scoring a spare and a spare, by the way,
is when you knock down all ten pins. But it

(10:15):
takes you both of your throws in a single frame,
right right, which can happen. You can knock down one
pin and then nine pins, or you can knock down
nine and then one, or any combination therein. Yeah, as
long as all of the pins are knocked down by
your second throw, right, that's a spare, and then your
next throw in the next frame, those points get added

(10:37):
to that frame previously where you threw a spare the
frame before. It's way more nuanced than that actually, But
that's Frankly, I'm very relieved because that's a pretty good
overview of scoring and bowling. Yeah. And in the old days,
when we were growing up, pre computerized scoring, I felt
like there was always somebody in the group that knew

(10:57):
how to do it. They were kind of the de
factove scorekeeper, and you would indicate a strike and it's
still indicated via computer with an X and a spare
with a slash mark through the square. Uh. And of
course now with a computer thing, you can you know,
when you bowl a strike, they flash your name up there,
so people inevitably list their names, you know, Chewbacca or

(11:20):
fart Face or something, yeah, something really fun. Yeah, yeah,
I mean it's it's kind of incumbent upon you to
come up with a silly name unless your name is
ductr Finger. But and then you definitely just use your
real name. Right, So you've got like the scoring with
the spare scoring with the strike. Those are exceptional. Those
have bonus points. If you take two throws in a

(11:41):
frame and you knock down two pins and then in
your second throw you knocked down five, there's nothing special
about that. That's seven points for that frame. Boo. But
the thing is um, if you if you notice when
when you throw a strike, the next two frames scores
are added to your that's that phrase where you scored
a strike. If you score a strike in every frame,

(12:03):
it just keeps going down the line to where you
end up eventually with thirty in each frame. And then
by the time you get to the tenth frame, since
if you roll the strike in that tenth frame, you
actually get two more throws because you're basically adding two
more frames or one more frame. And um, if you
bowl a strike in every single one of those, including

(12:24):
your two extra throws, you will have just bowled twelve
strikes in a row, and you will have accrued a
score of three hundred, which in bowling is considered a
perfect game. That's right, uh, And bowling is all about
those strikes and spares and those bonus points. If you
want to score high because if you think about it,
if you if you knock down nine out of those

(12:44):
tin pins, you might think that's pretty good, But if
you do that ten times, you've only scored a ninety.
So you really need to hit those strikes and spares
or ideally a turkey, which is three strikes in a
row at least at one point during the game, and
you really really want to that money ball is that
last frame, Like that's where you can really, um add

(13:05):
a lot to your final total, right exactly. So, I
mean this isn't meant to be like an exhaustive primer
on bowling scoring. I think if this episode like gets
you into bowling, like you'll probably need to look up
some more you know, explanation of the rules or have
it taught to you or something like that. Um, But
that's that's generally like how it works, and it is

(13:28):
really really kind of difficult to understand. But it also
like kind of to me it's a throwback of when
the general public was a little smarter because we didn't
necessarily rely on computers for stuff like this. We had
to do it ourselves. Like now, if you can type
in Chewbacca, then you can bowl. It's misspelled. There's like
a capital letter randomly in the middle of it. All right,

(13:50):
I think that's a good break, right. I think so too, Chuck.
We're in sync right now. Yeah, let's do it. So
we'll come back and we'll talk about oh, all kinds
of fun stuff, bowling gear and and more. Right after this,

(14:20):
all right? Uh, ed Is uh wisely points out that, um,
there's quite a bit of bowling gear for a game
that you can play in short pants while drinking beer. Uh.
We'll talk about the ball in a second. But well,
let's go ahead and talk about the ball. Yeah, what
are you waiting for? I don't know. Uh. The original

(14:41):
bowling balls were would It was a hardwood, uh, native
to the Caribbean in South America, called lignum. I even
looked it up. Vit Yeah, or the um gia con
gia coon tree. Oh? Is that is that the tree?
That's the tree? That's the Yeah, you said the taxonic name.

(15:04):
I think one of the common names is kei khn okay.
But it's very hard, you know, dense wood. And that
worked out for a little while, but then the twentie
century rolls around and they said, hey, we got new
things like rubber, so let's make them out of rubber. Uh.
And they had a core which was either one or
two piece that would be connected by pegs and then

(15:26):
like a one inch outer shell and then bruns. What
came along the rubber men was the crew that worked
on this project and developed something called a mineralite bowling
ball in the nineteen tens, which ED couldn't figure out
what that was. And from what I saw, I don't
know if you didn't digging, I found that it wasn't

(15:46):
a substance, but it was more of a process, right, Yeah,
And I think that the process resulted in a hard
rubber ball, right, but it was a ball that floated
in liquid mercury that they would continually kind of uh
used to tweak the ball. Is that right? I didn't
see that. That must have been amazing and dangerous. Well

(16:07):
that's what I saw, because you know, mercury would be
the mineral. So I think it's it's a process of
making the bowling ball using this uh liquid mercury. And
we should say bowling balls didn't used to be made
out of like bouncy rubber. That would be an entirely
different game from what we're talking about. This is like
hard rubber, like a hockey puck. Yeah, not or flubber

(16:28):
you know what that? Oh no, no, chuck. And by
the way, if I'm wrong about the mineral ie, it
is pretty hard to find out a lot about that
for some reason. Yeah, I don't know either. Uh if
someone had, If I was wrong in that and someone
knows what it is, please let me know, right, um.
And then also chuck, they're the balls eventually were made

(16:50):
from plastic polyurethane UM and then resin took over in
the nineties, and the nineties were a decade Like each
decade basically brought along a pretty big sea change with
bowling balls, but the nineties are arguably the decade of
the most change because with that reson they started um
messing around with different codings on the outside of the ball,

(17:14):
the resident. They called it um reactive Resident, I think,
and it would actually kind of grip. It would give
the ball some grips and all of a sudden you
could control that ball way better. And because of that
um that change in balls, Chuck, the number of perfect
games exploded starting in the nineties. Look at this. Yeah,

(17:35):
in the nine nineteen sixty nine season, the US Bowling Congress,
which is this umbrella or umbrella organization that covers all
bowling from people who just show up at a lane
to you know, the highest paid pro bowler the The
USBC recorded nine d and five perfect games in the
sixty nine season. Okay, thirty years later in season, there

(18:01):
were thirty four thousand, four hundred and seventy perfect games. Yes,
and not only that, so that's at increase. But not
only that, there were two thirds fewer bowlers bowling in
that season than there had been in the nine season
bowling tech thank you, right, Yeah, I mean that. But

(18:22):
that's what the change in the balls did. It just
completely revolutionized the game. It made it way more easy.
You could also say a lot more fun, um for
the average casual bowler. Yeah, I would say so. Uh.
It's interesting if you look inside a bowling ball on
the internet, like a cross section. They do have a core,
but uh, it's it's not round, and it's really kind

(18:44):
of strange. There's some interesting and kind of odd shapes
uh that are inside bowling balls. In different shapes of
the core will give it different characteristics as it rolls
or is uh spun or not spun? What do they
call it? Uh? Um uh hooked hooked. Thank you hooked

(19:04):
down the lane. Uh. And then you've got your cover stock,
and that is the final outer layer that is now
that reactive resin that apparently changed the game. Yeah, totally. Um.
And if you want to make sure your bowling ball
is regulation, you want to get yourself one of those
things they used to measure. Um, what's it called a caliper.

(19:27):
You want to get a caliper and you want to
measure and make sure it's between eight point five o
o and eight point five nine five inches in diameter.
That's a regulation size bowling ball. There's no minimum weight,
but the maximum it can weigh sixteen pounds, which hurts
my elbow just thinking about that. Yeah, we're a heavy
ball guy, or not medium for sure? Medium to light

(19:49):
yeah I was. I was light to medium okay, Yeah,
well I think it's the same thing. We were just
going in opposite way. I mean, I definitely preferred lighter.
I was in still am a weakling so a big,
heavy bowling ball just it was no good for me. No,
it's it's not that fun. Um. And then the last
requirement for regulation bowling ball is that it has to
be gaudy. Yeah, I mean some of them are kind

(20:14):
of crazy looking. I mean, you can get all kinds
of Like if you're a real bowler and you want
to buy some weird specialty bowling ball that has a
crystal skull in it, you can, um but you know,
they have the plain black ones. But they also have
all sorts of fun marbleie colored bowling balls, and those
are always kind of fun. I found the one that
um Bill Mark Bill Murray bowled with um on in Kingpin,

(20:37):
the clear one with the rose in it. Okay, was
it a rose? I couldn't remember. Yeah, and you can
get it for like two fifty bucks online. I mean,
not the one he was bowling with, but you know,
a remake of it, but it's it's out there for sure. Okay.
I just might add that to the old Christmas list
for special podcaster nice. I hope you're talking about me

(20:59):
and pin bowling. Been bowling, right, Yeah, and my mind
just went there. That's funny. Should we talk pins? Yeah,
there's not a lot of interesting thing about pins as
far as I'm concerned, except for the fact that they
have to replace them about once a year because they
get so beat up. Yeah, and they're not a single
piece of wood. They used to be a single piece

(21:20):
of solid maple carved out, but since the fifties they've
been glued together in sections right um and then uh.
Also the lane itself is um its own kind of
piece of master work because it looks like you know,
individual pine boards. And the reason that it looks like
that is apparently they it's an homage to how lanes

(21:44):
actually used to be built, which was individual pine and
then maple boards. Depending on what part of the lane
you were talking about, you put maple at either end
because that's where most of the heavy action was going on,
and then in the middle you would make it pine.
But they were a little any links of boards that
were nailed down and screwed down to um like plywood.

(22:05):
Basically that was on top of heavy beams and that
was your your lane, and you had to varnish it
and then sand it and varnish it and varnish it again,
maybe once or twice a year, just to keep the thing,
you know, intact from all the wear and tear. Yeah,
and we should say that they use pine in the
middle because pine is really soft. If we have heart

(22:27):
pine floors from the nineteen thirties and our house, and
they're just if you look at it wrong, it can
dent and scratch. So it's a it's not a very
hardy wood. So that's why they had the hard super
hard maple where you're throwing that ball down at the
beginning and at the end where the pins are exploding
after you throw your sixteen pound ball down there, steve

(22:50):
you right. But nowadays bowling lanes are synthetic in that right, Yeah,
And again like that's it's funny that they make it
look like they're individual boards because it's it is. It's
all just synthetic. Apparently the manufacturers of lanes um keep
their their exact recipes as trade secret secrets, but ED
turned up one that described its um substance that it

(23:12):
made the synthetic substance that makes the lanes out of
his phenolic, which is a kind of synthetic resin made
from formalde hyde. So it's not it ain't pine or
maple anymore, is basically what I'm saying. Yeah, I like
the fact that they do make it look like the
olden days, but I I think they could get a
little more creative in some bowling alleys and just you know,

(23:36):
they're trying to get people bowling again, and another they're
doing all kinds of fun stuff with you know, cosmic
bowling and all these kind of crazy ideas. But I
think they could make the lanes look really interesting. Remember
those uh you remember that whatever that substance was made
out of that you'd find around like a brass bowl
in the nineties, but it was all sort of different,

(23:56):
weird colors mixed together, sort of okay, something like that,
or tied I want to not do tied eye bowling
lanes like it's synthetic. You could make it look any
way you want it, or maybe like the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Oh you know, it would be fun. You know people
do that sidewalk art that makes it look like the
sidewalks crumbled away the three dr awesome. That would be

(24:17):
so cool. It would so chuck. I think, um, we
should talk a little bit about um lane oil because
it's kind of interesting actually, and it kind of changes things.
Are you cool with talking about it at this point? Yeah? Yeah,
the the whole, the whole deal from the end. Yeah,
totally so um the despite it already being made of
pretty slick material. A bowling alley lane is actually coated

(24:42):
in mineral oil, and it's coated in different places, and
not just across bowling alleys, Like a different bowling alley
will have oil in different they apply it in different
patterns in different ways. Yeah, and this is um this
is the reason why. And Ed sort of pose the
question if a shmo like me can go out there

(25:03):
and bowl a one eighty and the average professional bowler
bowls between two tin and two twenty, like I might think, hey,
I'm pretty close to that score, Like I could do
this a couple of times a week and I could
be a pro bowler. And apparently that is not the
case because of the fact, this one fact that a

(25:24):
standard bowling alleys where schmos like us bowl, uh, we
get the mineral oil application and pattern that is the
most forgiving and I guess the easiest and most geared
towards amateur bowlers. Right, So, like if you get a
gutter ball or you just somehow miss all of your pins,

(25:45):
you have really failed at a just normal bowling alley
because they're actually setting you up as best they can
to get a strike every time. So you're actually really
working against the workers at the bowling alley. At that point.
But the upshot of it is is that, like it's
geared toward making the casual bowler a better bowler. If
the casual bowler stepped out and started bowling on the

(26:08):
lane that had a p B a Professional Bowlers Association
approved oil pattern, you would be totally lost. You would
probably get a gutter ball every single time. And that's that's,
like you said, that's the difference between the casual bowler
and the pro bowler. It's so much harder to bowl
in the pros because of that oil that they put
in different kinds of patterns, depending on the the tournament,

(26:31):
depending on the alley, depending on sometimes probably bowlers preferences. Yeah,
and the sort of the simplest way to describe it
without getting too dense into the patterns themselves. If there's
less oil, then it's not going to be a slick
and it's gonna have a little more grab. So, and
if you get the house oil treatment, which is what
they call the standard treatment for amateur bowlers, there's gonna

(26:54):
be less oil along the edges and along the sides
near the gutters. So hopefully if it veers that way,
it'll grab and try and veer itself back toward the center,
and it's not you know, I think it's fairly subtle.
It's not so much that you can just obviously throw
one up there and it'll just sort of ping pong

(27:14):
down there towards the middle because of the oil application. Um.
But apparently the pro patterns which uh have animal names
or they're named after famous bowlers from the past, like, uh,
there's a scorpion pattern stuff like that. Um, apparently that
stuff is there's a lot of nuance to how you
bowl on those and those PBA bowlers are are great

(27:36):
at it. Yeah, And so like at a p B
A approved tournament or championship, Um, everybody's bowling on the
same oil pattern. The oil pattern is established at the
official practice and then it's they they reapply it throughout
the tournament. So, but it's the same type of patterns.
So they've got these patterns down so well that you know,

(27:57):
after a day the oils worn off, but put on
the same exact pattern that night into the bowler who
comes the second day, it's like bowling exactly like it
was the day before. That's how that's how exact these
patterns are. I saw that some like the oil is applied. Uh,
the um the measurement that they use are like micro leaders,

(28:19):
Like that's how exact these oil patterns are. And there's
actually when I saw Chuck that's named after Chris Paul,
the NBA player, he's that much of a bowling enthusiastic
has own oil pattern named after I didn't know he
was into it. I love that. I like Chris Paul. Yeah,
oh yeah, he's huge into bowling for sure, but he's
still an amateur. Uh. And also the pro bowlers will

(28:42):
maybe dial in a certain ball, like they might have
several balls in their arsenal, and depending on what kind
of pattern they get, they may use a different ball,
and they may you know, they may throw it and
hook it a little bit differently, or they invariably will
depending on what kind of pattern. But they know the
patterns and they know what to do right. And then lastly, Chuck, UM,

(29:03):
the coutrement uh that you want to make sure you're
outfitted with if you're going to bowl are bowling shoes.
And if you're a pro bowler, your your bowling shoes
are rather different from the kind that you or I
would get from a guy who just sprayed it with
some weird disinfectant and handed them to us because they're
not normal bowling shoes. Yeah, that's such a classic part

(29:24):
of bowling. It's just seeing them grab those and spray
it in, right. Yeah, who was it that did that
for a living in some movie? Uh? I don't know,
I don't know. I want to say there is a
heist movie where one of the characters was like a
bowling shoe hand er outer. Okay, I bet you somebody,
all right, And I would like to know that too,

(29:45):
because that sounds to But the bowling shoes, uh, that
you will be probably renting unless you do bowl a lot,
if you're in a league, you probably have your own shoes.
But they have the right amount of amount of slip
and grip to send you gliding down the floor but
not slipping all over the place. And they are in
fact made ugly and the ncomfortable, so you don't take

(30:07):
them home. That's a true thing. That's awesome, But people
still do take him home. I mean once in the
I think I did that once in my twenties when
it was kind of cool to wear bowling shoes around. Shame, shame, shame,
whatever became of them. Did you take him back? Who knows?
You know, that stuff in the twenties just it's it's ephemeral,

(30:31):
you know. Did you wear them out? Yeah? Yeah, I
would wear them mountain Athens and be like a he's
chucking his bowling shoes. You're such a hipster. Uh. And
the the last bit of equipment we can mention is
if you're pro bowl or maybe if you have like
even risk problems, or if you're just a league bowler
who's highly enthusiastic, you might have a risk brace and

(30:52):
maybe a rosin bag to dry your hand off. Even
though they do have those great little air blowers at
the ball return station, Yeah, they really do. It's pretty great.
We're gonna talk about that in a minute, Chuck, because
I propose we take a break and come back and
talk about one of the most profound developments in the
history of bowling, the automatic pin setter. So, Chuck, for

(31:33):
this first part, I want to direct everybody to our
two thousand eighteen episode Jobs of Bygone Eras, because we
talked about something that really ties into bowling, which was
pin monkeys or pin boys. They were human people who
would stand at the back of a bowling lane. Sometimes
they were responsible for one lane, sometimes for two. And
then as people bowled, they were responsible for removing the

(31:55):
knocked over pins called deadwood, leaving the other pins up.
And then when was when a frame was done, resetting
the pins by hand, they would just set the pins
out in a triangle. They would also take somebody's ball
and roll it down a little incline back to them.
That was a human based job for a really long time. Actually,
that's right. Uh. Then they advanced it a little bit,

(32:18):
uh to where there was a machine that would position
and set the pins, but there was still a pin
boy because it wasn't fully automated. They would like use
the lever to lower lower it down, but it was
still like a mechanical machine that was helping getting them
in the exact correct position, eliminating human error I reckon,

(32:38):
Yeah sure, but also making it a lot faster too.
Oh yeah, way faster. Uh. And then they finally I
guess this was the early nineteen hundreds. Um, they tried
to automate it a little bit more and never really
caught on that well. And then a gentleman name Fred
Gottfried Fred Schmidt from New York State uh figured out

(33:02):
a machine that would actually clear the pins, lift them up,
set the pins, and it was bought in nineteen forty
one by the American Machine and Foundry Company, which, if
you don't think that sounds familiar, if you look at
if you go to any bowling alley, you'll see a
lot of equipment with a MF branded on it. UM,
and that's where it comes from. American Machine and Foundry Company. Yeah,

(33:25):
and that was a really really good purchase of those
patents by a MF. UM. They opened a factory in
an old I think bicycle factory in Shelby, Ohio. They
started out with two hundred employees, and those two hundred
employees could make two hundred of these automatic pin setters
a year at first, but they caught on so quickly
and the pin setter changed the game so much that

(33:48):
they they just started hiring and building more and more
and more, so much so that from nineteen fifty to
nineteen fifty eight, forty thousand a m F pin setters,
and a pin setter is a huge machine at the
back of every lane in a bowling alley. Forty thousand
of them have been sold or leased out to bowling
alleys just in the United States alone. So it was

(34:09):
like a a revolutionary shock way that went through bowling
because bowling was no longer a slow and unpredictably paced
game anymore. It was fast and it had a rhythm
that you could get into it. As a matter of fact,
a m F tuted that, um, this was a new
type of bowling. They called it rhythm bowling because it

(34:29):
was automated, so you could kind of determine when the
ball was going to come back, when the pins are
gonna be ready, and it was just much more fast
paced than having some kid hands setting up pins in
the back, which is what it had been like, you know,
just a decade before. It's interesting you mentioned the rhythm,
like you don't really think about it, but even an
amateur schmo like me, when the thing messes up or

(34:51):
when you're bald and come back right, it does you
do feel a little put out, Like, oh man, I
was like I was feeling things. I was in my
groove and now I got to push that button to
make you know, the person from the front desk come
over and talk to it. Yeah, that's funny, because I
don't feel disappointed. I feel like I did something wrong,
and I'm about to get in trouble for doing something
to their ball. That's how I always felt. Really yeah,

(35:14):
I'm coming to realize that that's like a hallmark of
my entire life that I really need to get past.
It's not your fault. You don't need to hide in
the bathroom. Thanks. I wouldn't quite hide in the bathroom,
but I wouldn't make eye contact with the person came
over and you know fixed it well, you know you
were probably had a scarring thing at a young age
where someone came back and went, would you do? Would

(35:34):
you do with that bull? I'm crumbling right now. That
was like such a perfect impression. You didn't do anything,
Todd Gack, you didn't do anything, Thank you? Walking back
and forth. So we're gonna get into, um, not the weeds,
but we're gonna get a little bit into the nitty
gritty of the modern automatic pin center, which is just
a truly amazing machine. If you like watching uh how

(35:57):
It's made, or any of those shows about like factory
mechanical processes, then look no further than the automatic pin setter.
And I can recommend, I think we both can. A
YouTube video from a gentleman named Jared Owen Animations, So
just look up Jared Owin Animations pin setter and he
does he's great, Uh, animations of mechanical processes. And this

(36:19):
one was so cool and fascinating. It's not how amazing
it is this how great this this animation was. And
then also I want to just re recommend pin setter
operation video. Kind of a sterile title, and it's live action,
it's not it's not um it's not animation by Matt
Boland again, who's a pin setter mechanic, and he took

(36:40):
apart all sorts of different components of the pin setter
to show how they worked in operation and explains it.
So both of those videos are really good at explaining
how pin setters work, right. And one last thing before
we get into it, uh, I did think of a
lot of ideas along the way, like the you know,
the plaid bowling lanes and things to get bowling more interesting. Again,

(37:01):
I say, get rid of the facade in front of
these machines and let people look at them. It's amazing
looking and it would be super cool. It would be
super cool. But one of the things that's really critical
on those facades is another a MF invention that helped
change bowling. What's called the magic triangle, which shows which
pins are still standing in their location on that facade,

(37:23):
so that you know how to throw your balls. Can
get rid of that, They could put that somewhere else.
And apparently a MFUM really tried to call this thing
the pindicator and it never caught on. Everybody called it
the magic triangle like in indicator. I'm surprised I didn't.
I didn't catch it did not catch. All right, should
we get into this? Yeah? Also, real quick shout out.

(37:44):
I think it was Richmond County history dot com, which
was all the info I got that um, Shelby, Ohio
a MF info from all right, shoutouts. Over Here we
go with automatic Concenter, one of the human kinds greatest inventions.
The first thing that's gonna happen. You're gonna throw your
ball down there and hit pins. And as soon as

(38:07):
your ball crosses that little threshold where the pins are,
there are sensors on both sides that tell the pin
setting machine, Hey, the ball has passed through. It's time
to go to work. Right, So a bunch of things
happen initially, Like obviously, when you throw a ball really
fast that weighs up to sixteen pounds down sixty ft

(38:28):
of lane and it knocks into a bunch of wooden
pins that suddenly go flying, you need some sort of
backstop or barrier, and they have that. They have like
some sort of tarp or sheet that's um that covers
rubber stoppers that are mounted to like a wood panel,
and that's like the backstop. And then directly below the backstop,
between it and the end of the lane is a

(38:51):
little conveyor belt that pushes everything that got knocked over
towards the backstop back away from the lane. That's that's
going on simultaneously while the sweep and the pin setter
come down right right. And the other thing we should
mention that is happening ideally, if it's working correctly, is
your ball is going to be sort of shuttled over

(39:14):
to what's called an accelerator and it's just a really
fast moving conveyor belt on a pulley and it's gonna
shoot that ball, uh pretty fast actually, But it's all
happening underground. Again, make these things clear, like people want
to see this stuff, and it goes through that tunnel
between the lanes. It's uh, you know, the lanes share
one of those ball return machines. And then at the

(39:37):
very end, when it reaches the big uh covered up
thing that shouldn't be covered, you have an S shaped
uh sort of system with two spinning tires and it
just sort of grabs the ball and shoots it through
this s S track for lack of a better term,
out to where you are, and you can kind of

(39:57):
think of those spinning tires. It's like a like a
baseball all pitching machine. When you stiff the baseball in
between the two uh, the two tires, and it shoots
it out right, but not only shoots it out, it
moves it upward vertically, which is pretty cool because again,
this is a sixteen pound ball. And then I looked,
and I didn't see anybody say anything about it, but
it looks like that top wheel spins in a direction

(40:19):
that will put spin on the ball, so it loses
momentum as it's coming up because it's spinning the opposite
direction of the direction it's traveling. I'm not a high
percent sure that's based exclusively on my own information or observation,
and I haven't conducted any sort of scientific study of
it because you gotta watch those fingies when you got
to pick the ball up for sure, because I mean,

(40:40):
that's that's a lot coming out. But I think that
they put spin on it to make it slow down,
that's right, alright. So meanwhile, you've got a rack, uh
that's gonna drop over the pins, and you have um
a you know, obviously if you if you don't knock
everything down, there's something called a sweep wagon or a sweeper.
It's gonna sweep away those pins, but you want to

(41:02):
keep those pins that are there. And this machine drops down, uh,
it's there's something called the pin detecting plate that's gonna
detect whether or not there's a pin there, and then
it will engage these grasping claws called spotting tongs. Is
that right? Yeah? I think so, okay, and they grab
that pin and pick it up, yeah, because it's really

(41:24):
important that the whatever pins are left standing after the
first throw in the frame. You want to move them
up and out of the way before you sweep the
dead wood that's left on the lane back towards that
conveyor belt, right, and then it brings it back down,
sets them back in place, and then the pins that
are lists back up and it's ready for that second throw.
But in the meantime, that conveyor belt that's moving all

(41:46):
the dead wood in the ball that was swept back
beyond the lane that's moving, so the ball has been
shunted off into the ball return and what's left or
pins that are just kind of spinning around, bobbling around.
It almost looks like a lot of sheen with the
balls pop bump, but like jumping around inside of it
and behind right behind that conveyor belt. UM is an elevator,

(42:08):
and an elevator is designed UM with a bunch of
I think fourteen different little buckets. In each bucket very
snugly holds a bowling pin, and the bowling pinches kind
of fall into the elevator one by one, yeah, sideways
on their side right, and then one by one they're
lifted up and UM taken to the top of the
pin setter and some more magic happens to Yeah, some

(42:30):
more magic happens. They have the centering wedges that get
them all ready to go. And we should point out
they can be laying either you know, skinny side left
or skinny side right. Uh. And they are horizontal and
then they when they're dropped off, they're just sort of
you know, one end of it is sort of smacked
around and it goes down a little shoot. So they

(42:51):
are sitting upright again. Yeah, they're all facing the same
way with the base at the board. Yeah, at the
bottom toward the towards the person. So yeah, there's all
sorts of little like thins and shoots and just little
things that that manipulate how the bowling pin um moves
around and where it's laying and how it's oriented that

(43:14):
are really simple in design, but they're also extremely ingenious. Um.
And it's like it's not like the kind of thing
that you wouldn't intuitively figure out if you sat down
and thought about how to do it. But somebody sat
down and thought about how to do this, and they
came up with a really elegant, really complex electro mechanical solution,

(43:37):
which is the pin setter. Yeah, and they I'm sure
there are other places around the country, but I know
there's one in l a and Highland Park called Highland
Park Bowl, which was a bowling alley from the nineteen
thirties that they restored to its original beauty, um, not
too too long ago. And they do leave the pin
setting machines exposed there and it's super cool looking. Yeah. So,

(43:57):
so you've got eventually ten pins that are lined up
in the pin setter and they are um, they're knocked
into a vertical position, standing upright. And then eventually that
same pin setter that lifts up the remaining pins after
the first um after the first throw, that same pin
setter drops down ten pins after the second throw, resets

(44:18):
everything and the whole thing starts all over. That's right,
it's beautiful again. Go watch one of those videos. It's
really really interesting to see how how it works because
we haven't quite done it justice if you ask me. Yeah,
and I imagine they're expensive and there are a lot
of them in a full size bowling alley like it's
it's a it's a lot of money going on there,
for sure. So should we talk about some of the history. Yeah,

(44:39):
we'll finish that with some history. Uh So, like we said,
this started out as a lot of human games, which
is throw something at something else to knock it down. Uh.
They have found things in Egyptian tombs that show that
they might have done something like bowling. Uh, they definitely
know that. In the Middle Ages, they were bowling on
lawns like a bowling green. That's where that comes from.

(45:02):
And at various times bowling became super popular and various
kings got angry that bowling was popular, and so they said,
you you cannot bowl anymore. But also Germany is tagged
as possibly the beginning of uh, not what we modern
tinpin bowling, but early bowling in the three a d

(45:23):
s as a religious religious right in ritual where you
would roll a stone at a bunch of standing clubs
to absolve your sins. Yeah, it was religious bowling. I
love it. Yeah. Germany still has claimed to the invention
of bowling based on those monks that used to do that. Again,
that's ninepin and eventually, Um, we don't really know where

(45:46):
ten pin or win or who I should say, who
created tenpin and exactly where and when it was created,
but we do know it was an American invention in
the very late nineteenth century. And there's a long standing
rumor an old saw you will, about um where ten
pin came from, and that was that there were there
are all sorts of prohibitions on nine pin bowling because

(46:09):
it had become a means of gambling or something to
be gambled on, and so to prevent gambling, there were
prohibitions on nine pin bowling, so they added a tenth
pin to get around those bands. And that's supposedly where
ten pin came from. Apparently it's never no one's ever
really turned up any original source material saying that, but
it's a pretty good story. I like it. Uh. In

(46:33):
a gentleman named Joe Thumb, the grandfather of modern bowling,
brought together a bunch of people and it formed the
American Bowling Congress, the ABC, which is now what you
mentioned earlier, the USBC, the United States Bowling Conference. And
over the years, you know, bowling is kind of ebdon
flowed in its popularity. Uh. There were beer leagues in

(46:54):
the thirties and forties where um beers would sponsor tournaments
and sponsor bowlers. The Mafia got involved for a while
with um action bowling, which is like, hey, let me
get some action on this, and it there were some
pretty high stakes games going on in uh in New
York back then, right. Yeah, Supposedly action bowling would take

(47:16):
place after the leagues were done, and it would start
around midnight or one am, and sometimes these games would
go to seven in the morning. And their stories of
people who were into action bowling in New York who
would walk out of there with ten thousand plus dollars
that they won from these basically gambling on bowling late
at night. And it was a huge thing in New York,
and it got to be so big that some of

(47:37):
these action bowlers ended up getting so good that they
became pros. They ended up in the Pro Bowlers Association
because they couldn't find anybody who would take their money anymore,
because people just knew how good they were, so the
only people they could compete against where other pros. So
Ed has uh the nineteen eighties he lists the peak

(47:58):
of bowling's popularity. I'm gonna take issue with that. Maybe
in the eighties it was the peak of televised professional bowling. UM,
but everything I saw clearly indicated like the nineteen fifties
and sixties was when bowling was at its peak of
popularity as as far as the American public goes bowling

(48:20):
is concerned. Yeah, let me give you an example of that.
And I got this from a price inomics article by
Zachary Crockett. I think it's called The Rise and follow Bowling.
Zachary Crockett is one of my favorite writers on the web.
He's just awesome. He's popped up in a bunch of
our episodes because he just writes about the most interesting
stuff in a really great way. But in it he
cites that the first athlete of any sport, chuck, any

(48:43):
sport to land a one million dollar contract was Don
Carter in nineteen sixty four. And that's one million dollars
in nineteen sixty four dollars, so it's about more than
seven and a half billion dollars today. And that's pretty
astounding that a bowler was the first one to land
a million dollar endorsement contract. But it's even more astounding

(49:04):
when you juxtapose it against what some of the other stars,
some of the other sports stars were getting at the
same time. Right, yes, ye, the top bowler was a
man named Harry Smith, and he made more money than
baseball m v P Sandy kofax and NFL m v
P uh y eights it will combined. Yeah, also, yeah, exactly,

(49:28):
And then also, um, there were other sports figures who
had endorsement contracts, but they were nothing like a million
dollar endorsement contract. Arnold Palmer had one with Wilson for
five thousand dollars that's less than forty thousand dollars in
today's money. Joe Nameth had one with I think Shick Razors.

(49:49):
He had a contract for ten thousand dollars, which is
worth about seventy five grand today. A bowler in nineteen
sixty four got a million dollar contract. That's how popular
bowling was at the time. Yeah, it was huge. The
those a legend named Dick Webber. Uh and he has
a son named Pete Webber, who's probably one of the

(50:10):
more well known bowlers today. And the only reason to
bring him up is because Ed pointed out a very
fun video of of Pete Webber in after winning a tournament,
and you got to see it because it just Ed says,
you know, he shouted nonsensically, who do you think I am?
Or who do you think you are I am? And

(50:31):
I was like, what does that mean? And I said
it was nonsensical? But did you see the video? Oh? Yeah,
I kept watching it over and I did too. It's
so funny. He gets so fired up and he's screaming,
and he just goes, who do you think you are?
I am? And just the double thumbs and everyone went
what yeah, And and of course has happened in two

(50:52):
dozen twelve, So it immediately became a meme. And so
a lot of people who are not at all the
bowling are familiar with who do you think you are?
I am? Apparently it's on coffee mugs and shirts and
all sorts of stuff. Yeah, I've not heard of it
before then, but I looked into is definitely a meme.
But yeah, he was. He was the kind of like
the John McEnroe of bowling, but he from what I

(51:13):
could see it, I mean, it's definitely great in a personality,
but um, he also did it to keep attention on
bowling at a time when bowling was losing viewers like
left and right. As a matter of fact, the Pro
Bowlers Association the p b A was purchased in two
thousand by three Microsoft employees for five million dollars. That's

(51:34):
the state that bowling was in back in the day.
That's how far it declined, And slowly but surely it's
starting to tick back up. And I've got a couple
of stats. If you'll indulge me real quick, because I've
got more okay, so um. In the heyday in the sixties,
there was something like twelve thousand bowling alleys and there
were ten million Americans who were considered regular bowlers. Today,

(51:57):
there's less than half of that in the number of
bowling alleys, and it's down to less than three million
regular bowlers. So it's been a pretty precipitous drop. And
one of the things that that this group White Hutchison,
who from what I can tell, is basically the KPMG
consultants of Amusement Um Games. Uh, they did a bunch
of studies and focus groups and they kind of put

(52:18):
their finger on the idea that the old bowling alleys
were kind of neglected as customers dropped off and they
got to be really sad, cigarette e stale, beer smelly
places that you would not want to take your family.
It was just a pressing place to hang out. And
now people are starting to tear those down, remodel and
replace them with these new, happy, huge fund centers, and

(52:41):
as a result, bowling is actually starting to make a comeback. Yeah,
and a league bowling too, has been a big part
of that hit. Um, I think it used to account
for about sevent of total bowling revenue. And I mean
when you and I are growing up, like my parents
didn't do it, but league bowling was big thing, like
a lot of people did it. Uh. Now that's down

(53:03):
to total revenue is from league bowling. And you're right
like with I think like Lucky Strike is one of them.
And there's all kinds of sort of new fancy schmancy
bowling centers that where you can get you know, like
a quality cocktail and like for bowling alley maybe decent food.
Definitely more family friendly for you know, holding like birthday
parties and stuff there. I mean, those places are fine.

(53:27):
I am a fan of just sort of an old
school um you know, not gross, but like an old
school bowling alley. No, I know, to mean for sure,
that's what I grew up into. Yeah, if you can
find one, I do want to shout out. They're both
closed now, but I know I've talked about the Hollywood
Star Lanes, which I lived down the street from an
l A Lebowski Lanes where they film The Big Lebowski

(53:48):
and on any given Friday night, you know we'd be
in there. Hanging out and there'd be like, you know,
the cast of the seventies show bowling and Vince Vaughn
and Jon fabrou over there having a drink, and it
was like a really cool place to see celebrities on
the d l uh. And then when I moved, we
moved to Eagle Rock and there was Eagle Rock Lanes
which had a killer karaoke uh. And I just looked

(54:09):
up in Eagle Rock Lanes closed a couple of years ago,
which makes me very so I want to shout out
my home lane, which was not nearly as hip or
celebrity studded as yours. Um Southwick Lanes, where the bowling
alley I grew up bowling at. And also, if I
remember correctly, the place where I first really smelled a
cigarette and thought, I wonder what it's like to smoke

(54:30):
one of those. Yeah. I probably bowled more in my
twenties when I lived in l A and early thirties
because it was just fun and you know, pretty cheap,
like these new places are a lot more expensive. I
mean you used to could go in there and bowl
for you know, ten bucks or so for a couple
of hours, you know, not including your beer and stuff,

(54:51):
but um, maybe we should close on the seventin split.
Oh nice thinking, buddy. So I've always heard about the
dreaded seven tin split, which means the only two pins
remaining are the ones on the very very back corners
opposite one another, uh, the seven pin and the tinpin.
And I knew it was like a really hard thing

(55:13):
to do, but I had no idea, literally until today,
that it's only been done four times in like televised
pro bowling tournaments. Yeah. I think the first time it
was ever shown live was like two thousand and ten
or twelve. When was that one? Well, I mean I
saw I don't know about live, but I saw clips
from the eighties. Okay, so so, so what I saw

(55:37):
on CBS Sports is that there was a bowler who
did it. It was a PBA bowler. He did it,
and it was the first time it was captured on live,
live television. The last time that it had happened was
like and apparently it wasn't televised live, So it is
extremely rare and the chances of you actually making it
happen are really really slim. I saw something like a

(55:59):
point eight five or maybe even point zero eight five
percent chance point eight m of sinking a seven ten split.
And it's because you have to hit either the seven
pin or the tenpin in such a way that you
knock it directly into the other pin opposite it, in
a direction that's perpendicular essentially to the direction the ball's traveling.

(56:22):
And in that sense, you're you're knocking both pins down,
using one pin to knock the other pin down. It's
extremely hard to do. I didn't realize how hard it
was to do either. I'm like you. I was just like, yeah,
the seven tenths play. Everybody knows that's hard. Yeah, but
I did not know is that rare? And just to
shout out the gentleman who did it most recently, you
can look it up on the internet, eighteen year old

(56:43):
name Anthony Newer. Uh. It's kind of fun to watch
because people go nuts. It's it's you know, it's kind
of fun to see something like that happen. But the
announcer screamed out because his kids got red hair. The
ginger Assassin, he did say that not only is the
have red hair, he's got a luxurious mullet. I believe

(57:03):
it looked pretty mullody. I didn't get a side of view,
but it looked like he was partying in the rear.
It definitely did like Molody too, So congratulations to you, sir,
Um And I guess that's about it. Bowling still goes
on that the change in balls didn't just change it
for the casual bowler changed it for the pros too,
so that it's undergoing or in the process of a

(57:24):
big sea change as far as how the game is
played by the pros. But it's still hanging around. I
think bowling is ever going extinct anytime soon, agreed, I need.
I haven't been in so long. This has inspired me
to go go out. I think I think my daughter
would enjoy it at this age. Would be fun. I'll
see you there, Chuck, Let's do it. And one more thing,
I want to shout or direct everybody to the um

(57:44):
song that I usually think of any time I think
of bowling, Camper Van Beethoven's take the Skinheads Bowling, which
is a surprisingly happy song. You know. Uh. And since
I said it's a surprisingly happy song and Chuck said, yeah,
that means it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna
call this a quick pronunciation tip. This is from Teresa

(58:08):
and Melbourne, Australia. Hey, guys, enjoy the podcast. Firstly, I
would like to know which one of you had the
delightful giggle. Oh, I think we know who that is.
I guess that's me, right, I was gonna say Jerry, okay,
but that is not my genuine question. Like many Americans,
you struggle to pronounce English towns and cities and locales
and government names. Particularly. I've noticed the ones that end

(58:31):
in s h I r e sheery the unofficial rule, guys.
When standing alone, it's pronounced shire like wire, but when
used as a suffix, it's it rhymes with beer, so Oxfordshire,
Worcestershire obviously instead of Worcestershire or Leicestershire. I say worh

(58:53):
to sure worceter Shire, Worcestershire, sauce. I don't say any
works us. I say it three times in secession just
like that. Pronounces correctly and you will probably get many
free beers next time you're in the UK. Uh. And again,
that is from Teresa in Australia. Thanks a lot of Teresa.
That was a great one. Cheer, cheer, delight um. If
you want to be like Teresa and give us some
tips on how to talk good. We would love to

(59:16):
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