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Is Bowling a Sport?
What can be said about bowling that has not already been said a million times before? What cute little personal experience about bowling can I relate that has not already been told ad nauseam before?
Those are two separate and distinct questions. We shall see how well I do with each one. I do have one advantage, however: I grew up in New Jersey during the 1950s -- that is, during the most banal time in the most banal spot in the world.
My father was a member of the Thursday evening bowling league from Westinghouse. He kept the bag containing his ball and shoes on the floor of the front closet. (His exquisite fedora hats in gray and mauve rested on a rack on the inside of the door to that same closet.)
That was the place, the culture which served as a perfect incubator for a 'sport' like bowling. (Indeed, in speaking about bowling below, I will be speaking of it in that ideal time and place -- which of course included the use of the large balls.)
There, you see? I have already raised a couple of interesting questions about bowling, including (through the use of quotation marks) whether it is even a sport.
One Saturday afternoon when we were home from college, my brother and I went out bowling with our father and a friend of his named Carl Smith. Carl was in my father's bowling league at work. He was the quintessential Dirty Old Man, complete with long phallic cigars and suggestive remarks pointing out "young cuties". Carl was married to a shrew named May whom my father had gone out with before she knew Carl. (Had she married my father -- which would have been a disaster for him and for me -- her name would have been 'May May' -- an experiment in redundancy.)
Yes I know the arguments in favor of declaring bowling a sport: the bowler is moving, and in the process he/she is tossing an object in order to accomplish some sort of strategic end. My goodness, that puts bowling alongside throwing the shot put or the discus! Not only is it a sport (shorn of its quotes), but it is right up there in the most-august-and-ancient company of the original Greeks! No doubt in the near future archaeologists will be unearthing a bowling alley in what had been the basement of the Parthenon.
(I was once admonished for shooting pool [speaking of 'sports'] in the basement of my hometown church while the service was going on. The clicking of the balls was apparently providing an unwelcome counterpoint to the minister's sermon. [By the way, our town bowling alley was right across the street from our church.])
But somehow -- it's just a sneaking suspicion -- I doubt that such a bowling alley will be dug up. And the reason for this has to do with personal discipline. The fact that the discus and the shot put were practiced (still are) by only the strongest and most disciplined athletes should give one pause. These men trained ruthlessly and systematically toward accomplishing one end: the throwing of a specific object as far as possible. Even now, as part of their training, they renounce the use of foreign substances such as alcohol or tobacco, as well as any consorting with women before a match.
The situation is slightly different when it comes to bowling (he said in gross understatement.) This is as far from the use of the word 'training' as we can get. No one has ever been known to lift weights or otherwise work out on sophisticated exercise equipment for even one minute in preparation for a bowling match. No one has ever lit up a cigarette, paused before taking a drag, then shook their head and snuffed it out while declaring, "I'd better not -- I have a bowling match next week and the smoke might affect my breathing!" No one has ever been heard to utter the words "We'd better not, Honey -- I don't want to be weakened for my bowling match tomorrow!"
We went to an alley called "The Bowlero" over in Clifton. To prepare for the occasion, my brother had had custom drilled a left-handed semi-fingertip ball at the exact weight he wanted. He had even acquired a special kid-skin glove to wear on his bowling hand! Since I took bowling less seriously, I planned to use the generic 'alley ball' furnished by the bowling alley. I recall that my fingers were lost in the huge holes of the ball I chose.
(On the positive side, I have never heard of any situation in which performance-enhancing drugs like steroids were ever used before a bowling match. The reasons for this are obvious: first, they're not needed; and second, the judges might get just a mite suspicious were the bowler to inadvertently toss a big heavy ball the entire length of the lane, smashing into the wall above the pins.)
No -- you would have heard none of those words and phrases associated with bowling. Far from renouncing those things in order to bowl, its practitioners would flaunt their uses. In fact -- and this I think is what makes bowling truly unique -- the 'sport' would encourage the use of most of those things during the course of an actual bowling match itself! And so I have seen men (a few women too) who actually could be seen smoking and drinking beer as an accompaniment to keeping score (I'd hate to think that they might be doing the converse: bowling and keeping score as an accompaniment to smoking and drinking!) Of course there is a lot of flirting going on during the course of a match.
Perhaps you are willing to excuse such behavior with words such as: “Well, as long as they confine it to the seats and to the scoring table, I suppose that’s not too bad...” Oh silly naïve one! Shall I tell you what I saw? A young woman in the act of bowling, holding a lit cigarette flamboyantly in her free bejeweled hand. And a young man taking a swig of beer at the very moment he released the ball. (The exact fate of the ball he threw is unknown; but I would wager that it may not have been that different from that which awaited the young man himself in a few years if that sort of behavior continued.)
Now I ask you: what other 'sport' encourages such freedom of behavior and expression in its actual undertaking? We allow our minds to roam over everything that can be even remotely considered a 'sport'. We fixate upon such dubious entities as men's softball leagues (no -- they celebrate after a game.)
The teams were my brother and my father (the two lefties) against Carl and me. Carl was dispensing his usual advice to "roll the ball out like a hoop." Ordinarily I was not all that good a bowler, being naturally intimidated by the sight of the pins down at the end of the long alley. But that day I got myself into a sort of trance wherein I looked down at the foul line as I released the ball. As a result, I reeled off strike after strike.
A useful guide for comparison may be the type of footwear worn while participating in a sport. Football and baseball, amongst other sports, demand special shoes with cleats for traction; while basketball playing requires a sneaker with a special elastic sole to support jumps. And bowling? That requires a special shoe as well -- something which as a matter of fact every bowling alley has, each pair in its own special cubicle and arranged by size. So bowling, by dint of the special shoes that it requires, appears to be a sport by this criterion.
It is only when we look a little more closely at the bowling shoe situation that doubt begins to seep in. We examine the sole of the bowling shoe: it seems to be a type of felt or suede -- that is, a material that is decidedly softer, more delicate than the leather on the soles of your street shoes. They seem to be designed so that you will not slip and fall and break your neck. How laudable of the bowling alley to be so concerned about your health! But do you know what all this sounds like to me? That the purpose of the shoes is not so much to make the practitioner a better and safer bowler, as to keep the bowling alley free of lawsuits and ugly-black-skidmarks-on-the-beautiful-parquet-floors. Does all this sound like the accoutrements of a true sport to you?
As a result, I finished up with 10 strikes and a 242. My brother, who bowled a respectable enough game (his exact score has been lost to history), was furious. Meanwhile, Carl had his eye on 'a sweet young thing' over on a neighboring alley. Soon he had crossed the flimsiest of divides (the racks jutting out which held the extra balls) and was giving the young woman some 'pointers'.
And then there is the delivery of the thing thrown -- that is, the use of the legs and hips and upper body as parts of a complex integrated whole to throw something as efficiently as possible. In the ancient sports, we find this hyper-integration in the throwing of the discus, the shot put, and the javelin; while in modern sports, the pitching of a baseball. In the javelin throw, for example, the athlete appears to be lurching toward the foul line; actually, each movement of the legs is choreographed as part of a precise process wherein the whole body is storing up the energy it needs for the violent release of the climactic throw. In all of this the body is like a huge coiled spring. And this process of tension/release seems to be present for all sports.
Or is it? What about the delivery of the ball in bowling? Nothing appears to be coiled or under tension. On the contrary: all the bowlers I've observed always appeared to be loose -- very loose; in fact, we could almost call them 'relaxed'! As for the athlete (do we dare use this word to connote a bowler? Apparently!) "lurching toward the foul line" and "the violence of release", nothing could be further from the truth in bowling. Indeed, words like 'smooth approach and effortless release' are more apt to be used in praise of a fine bowler. However, before we too hastily consign bowling to the 'sport' category, here is a detailed description of the process leading up to the release of the ball. The reader might find it interesting for its detailed complexity:
First the bowler, solemnly holding the ball up just under his/her chin, stands stock still and ramrod straight about six feet from the foul line and gazes down the alley to contemplate the task at hand (or maybe they are making use of the ball as a sort of opaque crystal ball;)
Second, holding the ball in the right hand, the bowler takes three small accelerating steps which find release in a longer one. (Caution: begin steps with right foot! If left-handed, reverse everything I say.) And so the left foot is allowed to effortlessly glide forward right up to the foul line (the coefficient of friction of the shoes' soles is calibrated to ensure that they will slide exactly 0.75 feet and no further.) At the exact same time all that is happening, the right arm (ball in hand) is cocking itself back so as to balance that far-ranging foot. (Caution: try to avoid the so-called "Centipede Syndrome" in following these directions!)
Third, the right hand with the ball is brought forward and the ball is released smoothly into the alley and hopefully into the 'pocket' between the pins. (Caution: do not toss ball out into alley or otherwise drop ball!)
Now I ask you: does that description of precision sound like a sport or a 'sport' to you?
And then there is the question of those holes in the balls. Can you name another sport which has this feature? Are there holes in the venerable shot so as to make it easier to put? There are not, and it is heresy to even imagine such a thing! Are there holes in the nearly-as-venerable softball or baseball, making them easier to pitch (or those pitches more pernicious)? No, and no. And so we go down the list: basketball? Nope, for obvious reasons. Soccer ball? Ditto, for all sorts of reasons. And so on.
On the other hand, do the presence of holes in the balls automatically disqualify bowling from the annals of sportdom? Or are they simply one of a number of things which make it unique?
And so I ask once more: is bowling a sport or a 'sport'?
We could see Carl on the next alley, demonstrating by flinging his arm out 'like a hoop'. The woman nodded her head and seemed to understand. When at length Carl returned to our little group, my father told him that he seemed to have helped the girl, that she appeared to be bowling better... Carl snorted: "Jesus, who cares if she can bowl?!"
Bowling is a 'sport' (in Carl's sense, wherein the actual act of bowling is incidental) all right; it just may or may not be the kind that I speak about in most of the above narrative.
(29 January 2009)
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