Spare Me

Some who know me may recall that, occasionally, I feel sadness for those who don't necessarily want my sadness, don't need it, and aren't sad themselves.

Pro bowlers, for example.

I'm sad for everyone on the Professional Bowlers Tour. They're relatively content from what I read, but I don't care, they shouldn't be. They should be sad--sad for their lot in life, for their tragic fate of having chosen a sport sailing so swiftly into irrelevance.

Professional bowling is rotting. It's the 21st century and its rigor mortis time for the kings of Geekdom. Extreme sports now capture the imagination of the young and spirited. The NBA, NFL and MLB continue to infuse their offerings with contemporary vitality, steering clear of accusations of stodginess.

I see pro bowlers locked in a polyester time warp. Players, mostly balding fleshy men with bad shirts and the occasional mid-70's mustache, seem out of place on ESPN. Other sports feature athletes with style and panache. Bowling stories seem better suited to the suburban shopper.

Pro bowlers seem somehow alien. They wear hard shoes. Their wives, who often can be spotted seated behind them, stoically staring off in the distance, don't look like the wives of other athletes. They have that 80's hair style and big eye-wear. They look a bit lost. They seem to know that their men are offering the sports anchor but one lone highlight that evening: All the pins going down. That's it. Night after night an endless offering of mind numbing repetition.

These so-called athletes don't have a repertoire of graceful moves, a fluid series of distinct and individual aerial leaps or acrobatic motions. They have the one trick: arm going back, ball going forward. For that they're given a pay check, and allowed to head home to watch their hairline recede a bit more.

Professional bowlers think they have it made. They toss a ball for a living and marry wives (usually gals named Gretchen) who serve them Salisbury steaks in the evening. But they operate on the fringe. They orbit a sports world that has been bumped further and further to the edge with each passing decade. They are not jocks. They're blue collar workers without the lunch pails. They can't muster drama, they can't create suspense. They are repetitive automatons mindlessly hurling that orb over and over, lulling us all to sleep.

They're in a game with a finite goal: 300. No player can do better. Teen-agers are getting 300 these days. The game's inventor allowed this fatal flaw and sealed bowling's fate. What kind of game has a top score, a score more and more amateurs are attaining? I'm told local bowling lanes no longer post commemorative plagues for 300 winners. Their numbers are legion. It's not worth noting.

What kind of game has one move, one motion, one direction? It's a sport for the
off-spring of mothers who, during pregnancy, were kicked by saloon bouncers.

Bowling tries to get outside this box of banality. Bowlers long for a lean, edgy feel. They think they come close with hip terms like "the viper pattern." That's a genuine name for a kind of throw. It could have been called the "Lounge Singer." It's just as interesting. The ball looks like it's going to hit the gutter, but then comes spinning back toward the ten pin. Neat. More Salisbury steak, please.

I feel sadness for bowlers. It's been an ignominious fall. They were cool in 1957. Girls maybe even followed them home back then. But those girls have gotten older and now collect Precious Moment figurines in a senior high-rise. If bowlers are followed home these days it's by sex offenders.

I know, I know, bowlers don't care that I'm sad for them. They do what they love, make decent money, hear that applause and, from time to time, pump their fists in the air like they've actually accomplished something. But I sense dormant pain--pain that oozes to the surface on Super Bowl Sunday (bowlers don't have such a pageant), during a Wheaties commercial (bowlers are never depicted), when guys like Brady and Romo date actresses and super models (bowlers don't date, they marry Gretchen, saving her from a dry-cleaning career).

I write all this only because I've recently returned from hours in front of a big-screen TV at a local tavern where bowling was all that was offered. I was shooting pool with an old pal. The bartender told us his boss was smitten with the sport. He'd given his workers orders to keep the cable channel where it was. The TV hung above the pool table, so we couldn't escape the horror. We listened to the aging announcer, imagining a man not there by choice, but under duress, due to a disgruntled former pin-setter who was holding a .38 to his head demanding he make the match seem engaging.

I eventually spotted that bartender's boss, on the way out the door some two hours later. I remembered him from my college days when he didn't yet own the joint but was only a manager. He waved as I walked out to my car. I waved back as he finished a cigarette near the bar's entrance.

"Have a good day, fellas," he said, standing in his ratty golf shirt, rubbing his fleshy balding head.

"Thanks," I replied. "You have a good day too, and say hi to your wife,......Gretchen isn't it?"