Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here. All of us are
Speaker 1: wearing bowling shoes, are feet hurt, they look kind of weird,
Speaker 1: and we're ready to go. I want to shout out.
Speaker 1: This was a genuine listener suggestion. Oh nice, what listener
Speaker 1: Mark bowls? No, not b O w L. It's b
Speaker 1: O L e s. But still kind of funny since
Speaker 1: we're talking about I watched a video on automatic pin
Speaker 1: setters by a kid name While a guy named Matt Boland.
Speaker 1: He's a pin setter technician. So there's some some weirdness
Speaker 1: going on here. I had a dentist named Dr Tuggle. Mmm,
Speaker 1: that sounds painful, like you just made my scrotum shrink
Speaker 1: up into myself. And I had a h My proctologist
Speaker 1: is Dr Fingering. But what his first name finger in,
Speaker 1: his middle initials in, and then his last name is
Speaker 1: but no, his whole last name. I think his name
Speaker 1: is Robert Fingering Butt, And I think, oh, yeah, doctor Fingering,
Speaker 1: but yeah, maybe Finland or something. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: just call him Robert Bobby Bobby Fingers. Yes, but Chuck,
Speaker 1: the hilarious thing is, we're not talking about proctologists right now,
Speaker 1: not at all. As a matter of fact, I'll be
Speaker 1: very surprised if they come up again in this episode
Speaker 1: because instead about talking about bowling. That's right, and big
Speaker 1: thanks to Mark Bowls for this. He just simply wrote
Speaker 1: in and said, hey, I bet you bowling has a
Speaker 1: pretty interesting backstory, and it kind of does. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: it does. Mark Bowles was lazy, uh and wanted us
Speaker 1: to do it for him, and here we are. And
Speaker 1: we want to also give an even bigger thanks to
Speaker 1: Ed Grabinowski for helping us out with this one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and before we get to that interesting history, though, bowling
Speaker 1: seems like the kind of thing we could just say, hey,
Speaker 1: we're doing one on bowling. Everyone knows what that is, right,
Speaker 1: but at the risk of not covering our bases, we
Speaker 1: can very quickly just sort of describe the game, right.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think that's a good idea because ten
Speaker 1: pin bowling, which is what we're talking about. There's tons
Speaker 1: and tons of different variations on bowling, but ten pin
Speaker 1: bowling is specifically what we're talking about, and it's an
Speaker 1: American invention. So it's entirely possible that there's people out
Speaker 1: there who listen who have never played ten pin bowling.
Speaker 1: Who knows I'm making it up, but it's a good guess,
Speaker 1: I think. All right, So what you do here, and
Speaker 1: it is keen to point out and we'll also get
Speaker 1: to this in the history that bowling is is a
Speaker 1: variation of just a game, which is it seems like
Speaker 1: kind of one of the earlier kinds of games, which
Speaker 1: is throw something at those things, whether it be corn
Speaker 1: hole or horse shoes or any kind of rolled object
Speaker 1: at a club or a pin or something. And tin
Speaker 1: pin bowling is a variation of that where there are
Speaker 1: tin pins arranged in a triangle starting at the headpin.
Speaker 1: So you got your one, and then you've got two pins,
Speaker 1: and then you got three pins, and then you've got
Speaker 1: four pins, all in rows. So it forms a nice
Speaker 1: little triangle. And you throw a bowling ball down a
Speaker 1: lane that is forty two inches wide and sixty ft
Speaker 1: long from the foul line to the headpin. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the entire lane itself is sixty two ft and ten
Speaker 1: and three sixes long. To be precise, something that one
Speaker 1: ever needs to know right, well, I mean, somebody put
Speaker 1: it out there. I wanted to know, so I hats
Speaker 1: off too. I can't remember what site helped me, but so. Um,
Speaker 1: at the end where you're rolling the ball, where you
Speaker 1: the player the bowler is standing, there's a line. It's
Speaker 1: a foul line, and if you cross it, you just
Speaker 1: gave up any points you might have accrued for that
Speaker 1: shot up. Yeah, and then just to make it even harder,
Speaker 1: to make it that would be amazing, kind of like
Speaker 1: a running Man version of bowling or a squid game thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the new running Man, frankly bring it into the modern era. Yeah, yeah, um.
Speaker 1: And then to make it even harder in addition to
Speaker 1: the threat of exploding if you cross the foul line,
Speaker 1: there um these troughs on either side of the lane
Speaker 1: that your ball can easily move into. They're called gutters,
Speaker 1: and balls are usually about eight to eight and a
Speaker 1: half inches in diameter. Gutters are a nice snug fit.
Speaker 1: They're usually about nine and nine and a quarter inches
Speaker 1: in diameter, so there's a little bit of room for
Speaker 1: the ball to move along, but it's snug enough that
Speaker 1: it's not coming out of the gutter once it goes
Speaker 1: in there almost always. I've seen some aggressive bowlers have
Speaker 1: one pop out of the gutter if it gets a
Speaker 1: nice rock going. But you know, I think like that's
Speaker 1: sort of like kitting a sevententh split. But you would
Speaker 1: have been in that, Yeah, exactly. Bow nice foreshadowing. And
Speaker 1: even if you had never bowled, you've probably had at
Speaker 1: least heard the term gutter ball. It's just kind of
Speaker 1: a catch all term for things that stink that happened
Speaker 1: to you, whether you like it or not. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: these days they have if you go bowling with your
Speaker 1: younger kids or just someone who really wants to make
Speaker 1: the game a lot easier, they have these little uh
Speaker 1: gutter guards, little gates that lift up automatically if you
Speaker 1: so choose, are not automatically, you trigger it to and
Speaker 1: then that way, your six year old can throw a
Speaker 1: bowling ball down and it'll just go side to side.
Speaker 1: Hitting those things all the way today. Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: might get lucky and ricochet it right into the pocket,
Speaker 1: which is the sweet spot between those pins, between the
Speaker 1: first pin and either one of the two behind it,
Speaker 1: depending on whether you're a left hand or right hand bowler. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's good that you brought that up that
Speaker 1: if anyone ever didn't bowl much and thought, well, why
Speaker 1: did those pro bowlers and uh and certain jerks at
Speaker 1: regular bowling alleys really try to spin that ball hard,
Speaker 1: so it's like kisses that gutter and then flies at
Speaker 1: an angle. That's you know, they discovered that is the
Speaker 1: best way to knock down all ten pins for a
Speaker 1: strike is to come in at that sort of diagonal
Speaker 1: between the headpin and the pins behind it. Right. They're
Speaker 1: not doing it just because it looks cool. No, No,
Speaker 1: that's basically how you bowl. If you're actually trying to
Speaker 1: do you try to spend. I haven't bowled in a while,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I definitely tried to try to spin, because
Speaker 1: you don't want the ball to just skid along without
Speaker 1: rolling on the on the the lane you wanted to spin.
Speaker 1: You know. I never tried to spin. I was I
Speaker 1: was never strong enough or good enough, but I was
Speaker 1: an okay bowler in my bowling heyday. Same here. I
Speaker 1: definitely peaked at bowling in about six to seventh grade,
Speaker 1: when I was actually in an after school bowling program
Speaker 1: that was much later. Okay, well, I also peaked at
Speaker 1: basketball in second grade when I played on the Maroon
Speaker 1: team in the Royal Blue team at the y m
Speaker 1: c A. Were you taller earlier? No, it was just
Speaker 1: I was less afraid of getting an elbow in the face,
Speaker 1: so I was way more aggressive taking it to the
Speaker 1: to the basket. My whole secret when my bowling game
Speaker 1: was on, and you know, I wasn't going out there
Speaker 1: and bowling like a two twenty or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But you know, if I walked out of there with
Speaker 1: like a one eight on a any game, I've considered
Speaker 1: that a really good score for me. Yeah. My whole
Speaker 1: trick was to just bullet really really straight. I was
Speaker 1: pretty good at that, and to not launch it three
Speaker 1: or four ft down the lane. It was a very
Speaker 1: smooth action, making contact with the floor kind of right
Speaker 1: at the foul line, and it all resulted in just
Speaker 1: a pretty true throw. Nice, non professionally good. Okay, but yes,
Speaker 1: one eight is definitely I mean, I wouldn't go around
Speaker 1: boasting at it in some random bar you just walked into,
Speaker 1: but it's still you could probably impress your closest friends
Speaker 1: with that, you know. I mean, that's probably like my
Speaker 1: best score, just to be clear, got you okay? Um
Speaker 1: And speaking of scores chuck uh. Today, if you go bowling,
Speaker 1: a computer keep score for you. You don't have to score.
Speaker 1: And that's actually a huge relief for a lot of
Speaker 1: people because scoring in bowling is really complicated and there's actually,
Speaker 1: um I've seen a theory or hypothesis. I guess that
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why bowling has become less of
Speaker 1: a thing in America over the years is because it
Speaker 1: is computerized scoring and people don't understand the game like
Speaker 1: they used to when you had to keep score yourself. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the goal for every single time you throw the
Speaker 1: ball is to knock the pins down, right, But if
Speaker 1: you don't, then you've got a problem on your hand.
Speaker 1: And even if you do knock all the pins down,
Speaker 1: you don't so that's a strike. By the way, for
Speaker 1: those of you who have never played ten pin bowling,
Speaker 1: if you knock all all ten pins down in your
Speaker 1: first throw, you get two throws per frame. There's ten
Speaker 1: frames per game, right in any given frame, you have
Speaker 1: two possible throws. If you knock all ten pins down
Speaker 1: with your first throw in a frame, that's a strike
Speaker 1: and you're done. Okay, No, you're you're Are you done? Well?
Speaker 1: You're done, if it's until your next if it's if
Speaker 1: it's one through nine, you're done. And the in the
Speaker 1: ten frame you get those bonus balls, which we'll get to.
Speaker 1: Got you, So it's scoring. Since you knock called ten
Speaker 1: pins down, you think, okay, you get ten points per frame.
Speaker 1: If you bowl the strike in every frame, you'd have
Speaker 1: a hundred points, like that's the maximum number of points.
Speaker 1: It's actually not correct. There's bonus points in bowling, so
Speaker 1: that if you bowl a strike in any given frame,
Speaker 1: then the number of pins you knocked down in the
Speaker 1: next two frames affect your score in that first frame
Speaker 1: that you you bowl the strike in. Okay, I told
Speaker 1: you it's really complicated, and ian scoring strikes is easier
Speaker 1: than scoring spares, which I'm hesitant to even get into.
Speaker 1: But the upshot is there are there are bonus points
Speaker 1: and scoring a spare and a spare, by the way,
Speaker 1: is when you knock down all ten pins. But it
Speaker 1: takes you both of your throws in a single frame,
Speaker 1: right right, which can happen. You can knock down one
Speaker 1: pin and then nine pins, or you can knock down
Speaker 1: nine and then one, or any combination therein. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: long as all of the pins are knocked down by
Speaker 1: your second throw, right, that's a spare, and then your
Speaker 1: next throw in the next frame, those points get added
Speaker 1: to that frame previously where you threw a spare the
Speaker 1: frame before. It's way more nuanced than that actually, But
Speaker 1: that's Frankly, I'm very relieved because that's a pretty good
Speaker 1: overview of scoring and bowling. Yeah. And in the old days,
Speaker 1: when we were growing up, pre computerized scoring, I felt
Speaker 1: like there was always somebody in the group that knew
Speaker 1: how to do it. They were kind of the de
Speaker 1: factove scorekeeper, and you would indicate a strike and it's
Speaker 1: still indicated via computer with an X and a spare
Speaker 1: with a slash mark through the square. Uh. And of
Speaker 1: course now with a computer thing, you can you know,
Speaker 1: when you bowl a strike, they flash your name up there,
Speaker 1: so people inevitably list their names, you know, Chewbacca or
Speaker 1: fart Face or something, yeah, something really fun. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's kind of incumbent upon you to
Speaker 1: come up with a silly name unless your name is
Speaker 1: ductr Finger. But and then you definitely just use your
Speaker 1: real name. Right, So you've got like the scoring with
Speaker 1: the spare scoring with the strike. Those are exceptional. Those
Speaker 1: have bonus points. If you take two throws in a
Speaker 1: frame and you knock down two pins and then in
Speaker 1: your second throw you knocked down five, there's nothing special
Speaker 1: about that. That's seven points for that frame. Boo. But
Speaker 1: the thing is um, if you if you notice when
Speaker 1: when you throw a strike, the next two frames scores
Speaker 1: are added to your that's that phrase where you scored
Speaker 1: a strike. If you score a strike in every frame,
Speaker 1: it just keeps going down the line to where you
Speaker 1: end up eventually with thirty in each frame. And then
Speaker 1: by the time you get to the tenth frame, since
Speaker 1: if you roll the strike in that tenth frame, you
Speaker 1: actually get two more throws because you're basically adding two
Speaker 1: more frames or one more frame. And um, if you
Speaker 1: bowl a strike in every single one of those, including
Speaker 1: your two extra throws, you will have just bowled twelve
Speaker 1: strikes in a row, and you will have accrued a
Speaker 1: score of three hundred, which in bowling is considered a
Speaker 1: perfect game. That's right, uh, And bowling is all about
Speaker 1: those strikes and spares and those bonus points. If you
Speaker 1: want to score high because if you think about it,
Speaker 1: if you if you knock down nine out of those
Speaker 1: tin pins, you might think that's pretty good, But if
Speaker 1: you do that ten times, you've only scored a ninety.
Speaker 1: So you really need to hit those strikes and spares
Speaker 1: or ideally a turkey, which is three strikes in a
Speaker 1: row at least at one point during the game, and
Speaker 1: you really really want to that money ball is that
Speaker 1: last frame, Like that's where you can really, um add
Speaker 1: a lot to your final total, right exactly. So, I
Speaker 1: mean this isn't meant to be like an exhaustive primer
Speaker 1: on bowling scoring. I think if this episode like gets
Speaker 1: you into bowling, like you'll probably need to look up
Speaker 1: some more you know, explanation of the rules or have
Speaker 1: it taught to you or something like that. Um, But
Speaker 1: that's that's generally like how it works, and it is
Speaker 1: really really kind of difficult to understand. But it also
Speaker 1: like kind of to me it's a throwback of when
Speaker 1: the general public was a little smarter because we didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily rely on computers for stuff like this. We had
Speaker 1: to do it ourselves. Like now, if you can type
Speaker 1: in Chewbacca, then you can bowl. It's misspelled. There's like
Speaker 1: a capital letter randomly in the middle of it. All right,
Speaker 1: I think that's a good break, right. I think so too, Chuck.
Speaker 1: We're in sync right now. Yeah, let's do it. So
Speaker 1: we'll come back and we'll talk about oh, all kinds
Speaker 1: of fun stuff, bowling gear and and more. Right after this,
Speaker 1: all right? Uh, ed Is uh wisely points out that, um,
Speaker 1: there's quite a bit of bowling gear for a game
Speaker 1: that you can play in short pants while drinking beer. Uh.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about the ball in a second. But well,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and talk about the ball. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: are you waiting for? I don't know. Uh. The original
Speaker 1: bowling balls were would It was a hardwood, uh, native
Speaker 1: to the Caribbean in South America, called lignum. I even
Speaker 1: looked it up. Vit Yeah, or the um gia con
Speaker 1: gia coon tree. Oh? Is that is that the tree?
Speaker 1: That's the tree? That's the Yeah, you said the taxonic name.
Speaker 1: I think one of the common names is kei khn okay.
Speaker 1: But it's very hard, you know, dense wood. And that
Speaker 1: worked out for a little while, but then the twentie
Speaker 1: century rolls around and they said, hey, we got new
Speaker 1: things like rubber, so let's make them out of rubber. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they had a core which was either one or
Speaker 1: two piece that would be connected by pegs and then
Speaker 1: like a one inch outer shell and then bruns. What
Speaker 1: came along the rubber men was the crew that worked
Speaker 1: on this project and developed something called a mineralite bowling
Speaker 1: ball in the nineteen tens, which ED couldn't figure out
Speaker 1: what that was. And from what I saw, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you didn't digging, I found that it wasn't
Speaker 1: a substance, but it was more of a process, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that the process resulted in a hard
Speaker 1: rubber ball, right, but it was a ball that floated
Speaker 1: in liquid mercury that they would continually kind of uh
Speaker 1: used to tweak the ball. Is that right? I didn't
Speaker 1: see that. That must have been amazing and dangerous. Well
Speaker 1: that's what I saw, because you know, mercury would be
Speaker 1: the mineral. So I think it's it's a process of
Speaker 1: making the bowling ball using this uh liquid mercury. And
Speaker 1: we should say bowling balls didn't used to be made
Speaker 1: out of like bouncy rubber. That would be an entirely
Speaker 1: different game from what we're talking about. This is like
Speaker 1: hard rubber, like a hockey puck. Yeah, not or flubber
Speaker 1: you know what that? Oh no, no, chuck. And by
Speaker 1: the way, if I'm wrong about the mineral ie, it
Speaker 1: is pretty hard to find out a lot about that
Speaker 1: for some reason. Yeah, I don't know either. Uh if
Speaker 1: someone had, If I was wrong in that and someone
Speaker 1: knows what it is, please let me know, right, um.
Speaker 1: And then also chuck, they're the balls eventually were made
Speaker 1: from plastic polyurethane UM and then resin took over in
Speaker 1: the nineties, and the nineties were a decade Like each
Speaker 1: decade basically brought along a pretty big sea change with
Speaker 1: bowling balls, but the nineties are arguably the decade of
Speaker 1: the most change because with that reson they started um
Speaker 1: messing around with different codings on the outside of the ball,
Speaker 1: the resident. They called it um reactive Resident, I think,
Speaker 1: and it would actually kind of grip. It would give
Speaker 1: the ball some grips and all of a sudden you
Speaker 1: could control that ball way better. And because of that
Speaker 1: um that change in balls, Chuck, the number of perfect
Speaker 1: games exploded starting in the nineties. Look at this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the nine nineteen sixty nine season, the US Bowling Congress,
Speaker 1: which is this umbrella or umbrella organization that covers all
Speaker 1: bowling from people who just show up at a lane
Speaker 1: to you know, the highest paid pro bowler the The
Speaker 1: USBC recorded nine d and five perfect games in the
Speaker 1: sixty nine season. Okay, thirty years later in season, there
Speaker 1: were thirty four thousand, four hundred and seventy perfect games. Yes,
Speaker 1: and not only that, so that's at increase. But not
Speaker 1: only that, there were two thirds fewer bowlers bowling in
Speaker 1: that season than there had been in the nine season
Speaker 1: bowling tech thank you, right, Yeah, I mean that. But
Speaker 1: that's what the change in the balls did. It just
Speaker 1: completely revolutionized the game. It made it way more easy.
Speaker 1: You could also say a lot more fun, um for
Speaker 1: the average casual bowler. Yeah, I would say so. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's interesting if you look inside a bowling ball on
Speaker 1: the internet, like a cross section. They do have a core,
Speaker 1: but uh, it's it's not round, and it's really kind
Speaker 1: of strange. There's some interesting and kind of odd shapes
Speaker 1: uh that are inside bowling balls. In different shapes of
Speaker 1: the core will give it different characteristics as it rolls
Speaker 1: or is uh spun or not spun? What do they
Speaker 1: call it? Uh? Um uh hooked hooked. Thank you hooked
Speaker 1: down the lane. Uh. And then you've got your cover stock,
Speaker 1: and that is the final outer layer that is now
Speaker 1: that reactive resin that apparently changed the game. Yeah, totally. Um.
Speaker 1: And if you want to make sure your bowling ball
Speaker 1: is regulation, you want to get yourself one of those
Speaker 1: things they used to measure. Um, what's it called a caliper.
Speaker 1: You want to get a caliper and you want to
Speaker 1: measure and make sure it's between eight point five o
Speaker 1: o and eight point five nine five inches in diameter.
Speaker 1: That's a regulation size bowling ball. There's no minimum weight,
Speaker 1: but the maximum it can weigh sixteen pounds, which hurts
Speaker 1: my elbow just thinking about that. Yeah, we're a heavy
Speaker 1: ball guy, or not medium for sure? Medium to light
Speaker 1: yeah I was. I was light to medium okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I think it's the same thing. We were just
Speaker 1: going in opposite way. I mean, I definitely preferred lighter.
Speaker 1: I was in still am a weakling so a big,
Speaker 1: heavy bowling ball just it was no good for me. No,
Speaker 1: it's it's not that fun. Um. And then the last
Speaker 1: requirement for regulation bowling ball is that it has to
Speaker 1: be gaudy. Yeah, I mean some of them are kind
Speaker 1: of crazy looking. I mean, you can get all kinds
Speaker 1: of Like if you're a real bowler and you want
Speaker 1: to buy some weird specialty bowling ball that has a
Speaker 1: crystal skull in it, you can, um but you know,
Speaker 1: they have the plain black ones. But they also have
Speaker 1: all sorts of fun marbleie colored bowling balls, and those
Speaker 1: are always kind of fun. I found the one that
Speaker 1: um Bill Mark Bill Murray bowled with um on in Kingpin,
Speaker 1: the clear one with the rose in it. Okay, was
Speaker 1: it a rose? I couldn't remember. Yeah, and you can
Speaker 1: get it for like two fifty bucks online. I mean,
Speaker 1: not the one he was bowling with, but you know,
Speaker 1: a remake of it, but it's it's out there for sure. Okay.
Speaker 1: I just might add that to the old Christmas list
Speaker 1: for special podcaster nice. I hope you're talking about me
Speaker 1: and pin bowling. Been bowling, right, Yeah, and my mind
Speaker 1: just went there. That's funny. Should we talk pins? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of interesting thing about pins as
Speaker 1: far as I'm concerned, except for the fact that they
Speaker 1: have to replace them about once a year because they
Speaker 1: get so beat up. Yeah, and they're not a single
Speaker 1: piece of wood. They used to be a single piece
Speaker 1: of solid maple carved out, but since the fifties they've
Speaker 1: been glued together in sections right um and then uh.
Speaker 1: Also the lane itself is um its own kind of
Speaker 1: piece of master work because it looks like you know,
Speaker 1: individual pine boards. And the reason that it looks like
Speaker 1: that is apparently they it's an homage to how lanes
Speaker 1: actually used to be built, which was individual pine and
Speaker 1: then maple boards. Depending on what part of the lane
Speaker 1: you were talking about, you put maple at either end
Speaker 1: because that's where most of the heavy action was going on,
Speaker 1: and then in the middle you would make it pine.
Speaker 1: But they were a little any links of boards that
Speaker 1: were nailed down and screwed down to um like plywood.
Speaker 1: Basically that was on top of heavy beams and that
Speaker 1: was your your lane, and you had to varnish it
Speaker 1: and then sand it and varnish it and varnish it again,
Speaker 1: maybe once or twice a year, just to keep the thing,
Speaker 1: you know, intact from all the wear and tear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we should say that they use pine in the
Speaker 1: middle because pine is really soft. If we have heart
Speaker 1: pine floors from the nineteen thirties and our house, and
Speaker 1: they're just if you look at it wrong, it can
Speaker 1: dent and scratch. So it's a it's not a very
Speaker 1: hardy wood. So that's why they had the hard super
Speaker 1: hard maple where you're throwing that ball down at the
Speaker 1: beginning and at the end where the pins are exploding
Speaker 1: after you throw your sixteen pound ball down there, steve
Speaker 1: you right. But nowadays bowling lanes are synthetic in that right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And again like that's it's funny that they make it
Speaker 1: look like they're individual boards because it's it is. It's
Speaker 1: all just synthetic. Apparently the manufacturers of lanes um keep
Speaker 1: their their exact recipes as trade secret secrets, but ED
Speaker 1: turned up one that described its um substance that it
Speaker 1: made the synthetic substance that makes the lanes out of
Speaker 1: his phenolic, which is a kind of synthetic resin made
Speaker 1: from formalde hyde. So it's not it ain't pine or
Speaker 1: maple anymore, is basically what I'm saying. Yeah, I like
Speaker 1: the fact that they do make it look like the
Speaker 1: olden days, but I I think they could get a
Speaker 1: little more creative in some bowling alleys and just you know,
Speaker 1: they're trying to get people bowling again, and another they're
Speaker 1: doing all kinds of fun stuff with you know, cosmic
Speaker 1: bowling and all these kind of crazy ideas. But I
Speaker 1: think they could make the lanes look really interesting. Remember
Speaker 1: those uh you remember that whatever that substance was made
Speaker 1: out of that you'd find around like a brass bowl
Speaker 1: in the nineties, but it was all sort of different,
Speaker 1: weird colors mixed together, sort of okay, something like that,
Speaker 1: or tied I want to not do tied eye bowling
Speaker 1: lanes like it's synthetic. You could make it look any
Speaker 1: way you want it, or maybe like the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Speaker 1: Oh you know, it would be fun. You know people
Speaker 1: do that sidewalk art that makes it look like the
Speaker 1: sidewalks crumbled away the three dr awesome. That would be
Speaker 1: so cool. It would so chuck. I think, um, we
Speaker 1: should talk a little bit about um lane oil because
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting actually, and it kind of changes things.
Speaker 1: Are you cool with talking about it at this point? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the whole, the whole deal from the end. Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally so um the despite it already being made of
Speaker 1: pretty slick material. A bowling alley lane is actually coated
Speaker 1: in mineral oil, and it's coated in different places, and
Speaker 1: not just across bowling alleys, Like a different bowling alley
Speaker 1: will have oil in different they apply it in different
Speaker 1: patterns in different ways. Yeah, and this is um this
Speaker 1: is the reason why. And Ed sort of pose the
Speaker 1: question if a shmo like me can go out there
Speaker 1: and bowl a one eighty and the average professional bowler
Speaker 1: bowls between two tin and two twenty, like I might think, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty close to that score, Like I could do
Speaker 1: this a couple of times a week and I could
Speaker 1: be a pro bowler. And apparently that is not the
Speaker 1: case because of the fact, this one fact that a
Speaker 1: standard bowling alleys where schmos like us bowl, uh, we
Speaker 1: get the mineral oil application and pattern that is the
Speaker 1: most forgiving and I guess the easiest and most geared
Speaker 1: towards amateur bowlers. Right, So, like if you get a
Speaker 1: gutter ball or you just somehow miss all of your pins,
Speaker 1: you have really failed at a just normal bowling alley
Speaker 1: because they're actually setting you up as best they can
Speaker 1: to get a strike every time. So you're actually really
Speaker 1: working against the workers at the bowling alley. At that point.
Speaker 1: But the upshot of it is is that, like it's
Speaker 1: geared toward making the casual bowler a better bowler. If
Speaker 1: the casual bowler stepped out and started bowling on the
Speaker 1: lane that had a p B a Professional Bowlers Association
Speaker 1: approved oil pattern, you would be totally lost. You would
Speaker 1: probably get a gutter ball every single time. And that's that's,
Speaker 1: like you said, that's the difference between the casual bowler
Speaker 1: and the pro bowler. It's so much harder to bowl
Speaker 1: in the pros because of that oil that they put
Speaker 1: in different kinds of patterns, depending on the the tournament,
Speaker 1: depending on the alley, depending on sometimes probably bowlers preferences. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the sort of the simplest way to describe it
Speaker 1: without getting too dense into the patterns themselves. If there's
Speaker 1: less oil, then it's not going to be a slick
Speaker 1: and it's gonna have a little more grab. So, and
Speaker 1: if you get the house oil treatment, which is what
Speaker 1: they call the standard treatment for amateur bowlers, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be less oil along the edges and along the sides
Speaker 1: near the gutters. So hopefully if it veers that way,
Speaker 1: it'll grab and try and veer itself back toward the center,
Speaker 1: and it's not you know, I think it's fairly subtle.
Speaker 1: It's not so much that you can just obviously throw
Speaker 1: one up there and it'll just sort of ping pong
Speaker 1: down there towards the middle because of the oil application. Um.
Speaker 1: But apparently the pro patterns which uh have animal names
Speaker 1: or they're named after famous bowlers from the past, like, uh,
Speaker 1: there's a scorpion pattern stuff like that. Um, apparently that
Speaker 1: stuff is there's a lot of nuance to how you
Speaker 1: bowl on those and those PBA bowlers are are great
Speaker 1: at it. Yeah, And so like at a p B
Speaker 1: A approved tournament or championship, Um, everybody's bowling on the
Speaker 1: same oil pattern. The oil pattern is established at the
Speaker 1: official practice and then it's they they reapply it throughout
Speaker 1: the tournament. So, but it's the same type of patterns.
Speaker 1: So they've got these patterns down so well that you know,
Speaker 1: after a day the oils worn off, but put on
Speaker 1: the same exact pattern that night into the bowler who
Speaker 1: comes the second day, it's like bowling exactly like it
Speaker 1: was the day before. That's how that's how exact these
Speaker 1: patterns are. I saw that some like the oil is applied. Uh,
Speaker 1: the um the measurement that they use are like micro leaders,
Speaker 1: Like that's how exact these oil patterns are. And there's
Speaker 1: actually when I saw Chuck that's named after Chris Paul,
Speaker 1: the NBA player, he's that much of a bowling enthusiastic
Speaker 1: has own oil pattern named after I didn't know he
Speaker 1: was into it. I love that. I like Chris Paul. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, he's huge into bowling for sure, but he's
Speaker 1: still an amateur. Uh. And also the pro bowlers will
Speaker 1: maybe dial in a certain ball, like they might have
Speaker 1: several balls in their arsenal, and depending on what kind
Speaker 1: of pattern they get, they may use a different ball,
Speaker 1: and they may you know, they may throw it and
Speaker 1: hook it a little bit differently, or they invariably will
Speaker 1: depending on what kind of pattern. But they know the
Speaker 1: patterns and they know what to do right. And then lastly, Chuck, UM,
Speaker 1: the coutrement uh that you want to make sure you're
Speaker 1: outfitted with if you're going to bowl are bowling shoes.
Speaker 1: And if you're a pro bowler, your your bowling shoes
Speaker 1: are rather different from the kind that you or I
Speaker 1: would get from a guy who just sprayed it with
Speaker 1: some weird disinfectant and handed them to us because they're
Speaker 1: not normal bowling shoes. Yeah, that's such a classic part
Speaker 1: of bowling. It's just seeing them grab those and spray
Speaker 1: it in, right. Yeah, who was it that did that
Speaker 1: for a living in some movie? Uh? I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I want to say there is a
Speaker 1: heist movie where one of the characters was like a
Speaker 1: bowling shoe hand er outer. Okay, I bet you somebody,
Speaker 1: all right, And I would like to know that too,
Speaker 1: because that sounds to But the bowling shoes, uh, that
Speaker 1: you will be probably renting unless you do bowl a lot,
Speaker 1: if you're in a league, you probably have your own shoes.
Speaker 1: But they have the right amount of amount of slip
Speaker 1: and grip to send you gliding down the floor but
Speaker 1: not slipping all over the place. And they are in
Speaker 1: fact made ugly and the ncomfortable, so you don't take
Speaker 1: them home. That's a true thing. That's awesome, But people
Speaker 1: still do take him home. I mean once in the
Speaker 1: I think I did that once in my twenties when
Speaker 1: it was kind of cool to wear bowling shoes around. Shame, shame, shame,
Speaker 1: whatever became of them. Did you take him back? Who knows?
Speaker 1: You know, that stuff in the twenties just it's it's ephemeral,
Speaker 1: you know. Did you wear them out? Yeah? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would wear them mountain Athens and be like a he's
Speaker 1: chucking his bowling shoes. You're such a hipster. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the the last bit of equipment we can mention is
Speaker 1: if you're pro bowl or maybe if you have like
Speaker 1: even risk problems, or if you're just a league bowler
Speaker 1: who's highly enthusiastic, you might have a risk brace and
Speaker 1: maybe a rosin bag to dry your hand off. Even
Speaker 1: though they do have those great little air blowers at
Speaker 1: the ball return station, Yeah, they really do. It's pretty great.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about that in a minute, Chuck, because
Speaker 1: I propose we take a break and come back and
Speaker 1: talk about one of the most profound developments in the
Speaker 1: history of bowling, the automatic pin setter. So, Chuck, for
Speaker 1: this first part, I want to direct everybody to our
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen episode Jobs of Bygone Eras, because we
Speaker 1: talked about something that really ties into bowling, which was
Speaker 1: pin monkeys or pin boys. They were human people who
Speaker 1: would stand at the back of a bowling lane. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they were responsible for one lane, sometimes for two. And
Speaker 1: then as people bowled, they were responsible for removing the
Speaker 1: knocked over pins called deadwood, leaving the other pins up.
Speaker 1: And then when was when a frame was done, resetting
Speaker 1: the pins by hand, they would just set the pins
Speaker 1: out in a triangle. They would also take somebody's ball
Speaker 1: and roll it down a little incline back to them.
Speaker 1: That was a human based job for a really long time. Actually,
Speaker 1: that's right. Uh. Then they advanced it a little bit,
Speaker 1: uh to where there was a machine that would position
Speaker 1: and set the pins, but there was still a pin
Speaker 1: boy because it wasn't fully automated. They would like use
Speaker 1: the lever to lower lower it down, but it was
Speaker 1: still like a mechanical machine that was helping getting them
Speaker 1: in the exact correct position, eliminating human error I reckon,
Speaker 1: Yeah sure, but also making it a lot faster too.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, way faster. Uh. And then they finally I
Speaker 1: guess this was the early nineteen hundreds. Um, they tried
Speaker 1: to automate it a little bit more and never really
Speaker 1: caught on that well. And then a gentleman name Fred
Speaker 1: Gottfried Fred Schmidt from New York State uh figured out
Speaker 1: a machine that would actually clear the pins, lift them up,
Speaker 1: set the pins, and it was bought in nineteen forty
Speaker 1: one by the American Machine and Foundry Company, which, if
Speaker 1: you don't think that sounds familiar, if you look at
Speaker 1: if you go to any bowling alley, you'll see a
Speaker 1: lot of equipment with a MF branded on it. UM,
Speaker 1: and that's where it comes from. American Machine and Foundry Company. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was a really really good purchase of those
Speaker 1: patents by a MF. UM. They opened a factory in
Speaker 1: an old I think bicycle factory in Shelby, Ohio. They
Speaker 1: started out with two hundred employees, and those two hundred
Speaker 1: employees could make two hundred of these automatic pin setters
Speaker 1: a year at first, but they caught on so quickly
Speaker 1: and the pin setter changed the game so much that
Speaker 1: they they just started hiring and building more and more
Speaker 1: and more, so much so that from nineteen fifty to
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight, forty thousand a m F pin setters,
Speaker 1: and a pin setter is a huge machine at the
Speaker 1: back of every lane in a bowling alley. Forty thousand
Speaker 1: of them have been sold or leased out to bowling
Speaker 1: alleys just in the United States alone. So it was
Speaker 1: like a a revolutionary shock way that went through bowling
Speaker 1: because bowling was no longer a slow and unpredictably paced
Speaker 1: game anymore. It was fast and it had a rhythm
Speaker 1: that you could get into it. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: a m F tuted that, um, this was a new
Speaker 1: type of bowling. They called it rhythm bowling because it
Speaker 1: was automated, so you could kind of determine when the
Speaker 1: ball was going to come back, when the pins are
Speaker 1: gonna be ready, and it was just much more fast
Speaker 1: paced than having some kid hands setting up pins in
Speaker 1: the back, which is what it had been like, you know,
Speaker 1: just a decade before. It's interesting you mentioned the rhythm,
Speaker 1: like you don't really think about it, but even an
Speaker 1: amateur schmo like me, when the thing messes up or
Speaker 1: when you're bald and come back right, it does you
Speaker 1: do feel a little put out, Like, oh man, I
Speaker 1: was like I was feeling things. I was in my
Speaker 1: groove and now I got to push that button to
Speaker 1: make you know, the person from the front desk come
Speaker 1: over and talk to it. Yeah, that's funny, because I
Speaker 1: don't feel disappointed. I feel like I did something wrong,
Speaker 1: and I'm about to get in trouble for doing something
Speaker 1: to their ball. That's how I always felt. Really yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm coming to realize that that's like a hallmark of
Speaker 1: my entire life that I really need to get past.
Speaker 1: It's not your fault. You don't need to hide in
Speaker 1: the bathroom. Thanks. I wouldn't quite hide in the bathroom,
Speaker 1: but I wouldn't make eye contact with the person came
Speaker 1: over and you know fixed it well, you know you
Speaker 1: were probably had a scarring thing at a young age
Speaker 1: where someone came back and went, would you do? Would
Speaker 1: you do with that bull? I'm crumbling right now. That
Speaker 1: was like such a perfect impression. You didn't do anything,
Speaker 1: Todd Gack, you didn't do anything, Thank you? Walking back
Speaker 1: and forth. So we're gonna get into, um, not the weeds,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna get a little bit into the nitty
Speaker 1: gritty of the modern automatic pin center, which is just
Speaker 1: a truly amazing machine. If you like watching uh how
Speaker 1: It's made, or any of those shows about like factory
Speaker 1: mechanical processes, then look no further than the automatic pin setter.
Speaker 1: And I can recommend, I think we both can. A
Speaker 1: YouTube video from a gentleman named Jared Owen Animations, So
Speaker 1: just look up Jared Owin Animations pin setter and he
Speaker 1: does he's great, Uh, animations of mechanical processes. And this
Speaker 1: one was so cool and fascinating. It's not how amazing
Speaker 1: it is this how great this this animation was. And
Speaker 1: then also I want to just re recommend pin setter
Speaker 1: operation video. Kind of a sterile title, and it's live action,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not um it's not animation by Matt
Speaker 1: Boland again, who's a pin setter mechanic, and he took
Speaker 1: apart all sorts of different components of the pin setter
Speaker 1: to show how they worked in operation and explains it.
Speaker 1: So both of those videos are really good at explaining
Speaker 1: how pin setters work, right. And one last thing before
Speaker 1: we get into it, uh, I did think of a
Speaker 1: lot of ideas along the way, like the you know,
Speaker 1: the plaid bowling lanes and things to get bowling more interesting. Again,
Speaker 1: I say, get rid of the facade in front of
Speaker 1: these machines and let people look at them. It's amazing
Speaker 1: looking and it would be super cool. It would be
Speaker 1: super cool. But one of the things that's really critical
Speaker 1: on those facades is another a MF invention that helped
Speaker 1: change bowling. What's called the magic triangle, which shows which
Speaker 1: pins are still standing in their location on that facade,
Speaker 1: so that you know how to throw your balls. Can
Speaker 1: get rid of that, They could put that somewhere else.
Speaker 1: And apparently a MFUM really tried to call this thing
Speaker 1: the pindicator and it never caught on. Everybody called it
Speaker 1: the magic triangle like in indicator. I'm surprised I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't catch it did not catch. All right, should
Speaker 1: we get into this? Yeah? Also, real quick shout out.
Speaker 1: I think it was Richmond County history dot com, which
Speaker 1: was all the info I got that um, Shelby, Ohio
Speaker 1: a MF info from all right, shoutouts. Over Here we
Speaker 1: go with automatic Concenter, one of the human kinds greatest inventions.
Speaker 1: The first thing that's gonna happen. You're gonna throw your
Speaker 1: ball down there and hit pins. And as soon as
Speaker 1: your ball crosses that little threshold where the pins are,
Speaker 1: there are sensors on both sides that tell the pin
Speaker 1: setting machine, Hey, the ball has passed through. It's time
Speaker 1: to go to work. Right, So a bunch of things
Speaker 1: happen initially, Like obviously, when you throw a ball really
Speaker 1: fast that weighs up to sixteen pounds down sixty ft
Speaker 1: of lane and it knocks into a bunch of wooden
Speaker 1: pins that suddenly go flying, you need some sort of
Speaker 1: backstop or barrier, and they have that. They have like
Speaker 1: some sort of tarp or sheet that's um that covers
Speaker 1: rubber stoppers that are mounted to like a wood panel,
Speaker 1: and that's like the backstop. And then directly below the backstop,
Speaker 1: between it and the end of the lane is a
Speaker 1: little conveyor belt that pushes everything that got knocked over
Speaker 1: towards the backstop back away from the lane. That's that's
Speaker 1: going on simultaneously while the sweep and the pin setter
Speaker 1: come down right right. And the other thing we should
Speaker 1: mention that is happening ideally, if it's working correctly, is
Speaker 1: your ball is going to be sort of shuttled over
Speaker 1: to what's called an accelerator and it's just a really
Speaker 1: fast moving conveyor belt on a pulley and it's gonna
Speaker 1: shoot that ball, uh pretty fast actually, But it's all
Speaker 1: happening underground. Again, make these things clear, like people want
Speaker 1: to see this stuff, and it goes through that tunnel
Speaker 1: between the lanes. It's uh, you know, the lanes share
Speaker 1: one of those ball return machines. And then at the
Speaker 1: very end, when it reaches the big uh covered up
Speaker 1: thing that shouldn't be covered, you have an S shaped
Speaker 1: uh sort of system with two spinning tires and it
Speaker 1: just sort of grabs the ball and shoots it through
Speaker 1: this s S track for lack of a better term,
Speaker 1: out to where you are, and you can kind of
Speaker 1: think of those spinning tires. It's like a like a
Speaker 1: baseball all pitching machine. When you stiff the baseball in
Speaker 1: between the two uh, the two tires, and it shoots
Speaker 1: it out right, but not only shoots it out, it
Speaker 1: moves it upward vertically, which is pretty cool because again,
Speaker 1: this is a sixteen pound ball. And then I looked,
Speaker 1: and I didn't see anybody say anything about it, but
Speaker 1: it looks like that top wheel spins in a direction
Speaker 1: that will put spin on the ball, so it loses
Speaker 1: momentum as it's coming up because it's spinning the opposite
Speaker 1: direction of the direction it's traveling. I'm not a high
Speaker 1: percent sure that's based exclusively on my own information or observation,
Speaker 1: and I haven't conducted any sort of scientific study of
Speaker 1: it because you gotta watch those fingies when you got
Speaker 1: to pick the ball up for sure, because I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's a lot coming out. But I think that
Speaker 1: they put spin on it to make it slow down,
Speaker 1: that's right, alright. So meanwhile, you've got a rack, uh
Speaker 1: that's gonna drop over the pins, and you have um
Speaker 1: a you know, obviously if you if you don't knock
Speaker 1: everything down, there's something called a sweep wagon or a sweeper.
Speaker 1: It's gonna sweep away those pins, but you want to
Speaker 1: keep those pins that are there. And this machine drops down, uh,
Speaker 1: it's there's something called the pin detecting plate that's gonna
Speaker 1: detect whether or not there's a pin there, and then
Speaker 1: it will engage these grasping claws called spotting tongs. Is
Speaker 1: that right? Yeah? I think so, okay, and they grab
Speaker 1: that pin and pick it up, yeah, because it's really
Speaker 1: important that the whatever pins are left standing after the
Speaker 1: first throw in the frame. You want to move them
Speaker 1: up and out of the way before you sweep the
Speaker 1: dead wood that's left on the lane back towards that
Speaker 1: conveyor belt, right, and then it brings it back down,
Speaker 1: sets them back in place, and then the pins that
Speaker 1: are lists back up and it's ready for that second throw.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, that conveyor belt that's moving all
Speaker 1: the dead wood in the ball that was swept back
Speaker 1: beyond the lane that's moving, so the ball has been
Speaker 1: shunted off into the ball return and what's left or
Speaker 1: pins that are just kind of spinning around, bobbling around.
Speaker 1: It almost looks like a lot of sheen with the
Speaker 1: balls pop bump, but like jumping around inside of it
Speaker 1: and behind right behind that conveyor belt. UM is an elevator,
Speaker 1: and an elevator is designed UM with a bunch of
Speaker 1: I think fourteen different little buckets. In each bucket very
Speaker 1: snugly holds a bowling pin, and the bowling pinches kind
Speaker 1: of fall into the elevator one by one, yeah, sideways
Speaker 1: on their side right, and then one by one they're
Speaker 1: lifted up and UM taken to the top of the
Speaker 1: pin setter and some more magic happens to Yeah, some
Speaker 1: more magic happens. They have the centering wedges that get
Speaker 1: them all ready to go. And we should point out
Speaker 1: they can be laying either you know, skinny side left
Speaker 1: or skinny side right. Uh. And they are horizontal and
Speaker 1: then they when they're dropped off, they're just sort of
Speaker 1: you know, one end of it is sort of smacked
Speaker 1: around and it goes down a little shoot. So they
Speaker 1: are sitting upright again. Yeah, they're all facing the same
Speaker 1: way with the base at the board. Yeah, at the
Speaker 1: bottom toward the towards the person. So yeah, there's all
Speaker 1: sorts of little like thins and shoots and just little
Speaker 1: things that that manipulate how the bowling pin um moves
Speaker 1: around and where it's laying and how it's oriented that
Speaker 1: are really simple in design, but they're also extremely ingenious. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's like it's not like the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't intuitively figure out if you sat down
Speaker 1: and thought about how to do it. But somebody sat
Speaker 1: down and thought about how to do this, and they
Speaker 1: came up with a really elegant, really complex electro mechanical solution,
Speaker 1: which is the pin setter. Yeah, and they I'm sure
Speaker 1: there are other places around the country, but I know
Speaker 1: there's one in l a and Highland Park called Highland
Speaker 1: Park Bowl, which was a bowling alley from the nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties that they restored to its original beauty, um, not
Speaker 1: too too long ago. And they do leave the pin
Speaker 1: setting machines exposed there and it's super cool looking. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so you've got eventually ten pins that are lined up
Speaker 1: in the pin setter and they are um, they're knocked
Speaker 1: into a vertical position, standing upright. And then eventually that
Speaker 1: same pin setter that lifts up the remaining pins after
Speaker 1: the first um after the first throw, that same pin
Speaker 1: setter drops down ten pins after the second throw, resets
Speaker 1: everything and the whole thing starts all over. That's right,
Speaker 1: it's beautiful again. Go watch one of those videos. It's
Speaker 1: really really interesting to see how how it works because
Speaker 1: we haven't quite done it justice if you ask me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I imagine they're expensive and there are a lot
Speaker 1: of them in a full size bowling alley like it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a lot of money going on there,
Speaker 1: for sure. So should we talk about some of the history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll finish that with some history. Uh So, like we said,
Speaker 1: this started out as a lot of human games, which
Speaker 1: is throw something at something else to knock it down. Uh.
Speaker 1: They have found things in Egyptian tombs that show that
Speaker 1: they might have done something like bowling. Uh, they definitely
Speaker 1: know that. In the Middle Ages, they were bowling on
Speaker 1: lawns like a bowling green. That's where that comes from.
Speaker 1: And at various times bowling became super popular and various
Speaker 1: kings got angry that bowling was popular, and so they said,
Speaker 1: you you cannot bowl anymore. But also Germany is tagged
Speaker 1: as possibly the beginning of uh, not what we modern
Speaker 1: tinpin bowling, but early bowling in the three a d
Speaker 1: s as a religious religious right in ritual where you
Speaker 1: would roll a stone at a bunch of standing clubs
Speaker 1: to absolve your sins. Yeah, it was religious bowling. I
Speaker 1: love it. Yeah. Germany still has claimed to the invention
Speaker 1: of bowling based on those monks that used to do that. Again,
Speaker 1: that's ninepin and eventually, Um, we don't really know where
Speaker 1: ten pin or win or who I should say, who
Speaker 1: created tenpin and exactly where and when it was created,
Speaker 1: but we do know it was an American invention in
Speaker 1: the very late nineteenth century. And there's a long standing
Speaker 1: rumor an old saw you will, about um where ten
Speaker 1: pin came from, and that was that there were there
Speaker 1: are all sorts of prohibitions on nine pin bowling because
Speaker 1: it had become a means of gambling or something to
Speaker 1: be gambled on, and so to prevent gambling, there were
Speaker 1: prohibitions on nine pin bowling, so they added a tenth
Speaker 1: pin to get around those bands. And that's supposedly where
Speaker 1: ten pin came from. Apparently it's never no one's ever
Speaker 1: really turned up any original source material saying that, but
Speaker 1: it's a pretty good story. I like it. Uh. In
Speaker 1: a gentleman named Joe Thumb, the grandfather of modern bowling,
Speaker 1: brought together a bunch of people and it formed the
Speaker 1: American Bowling Congress, the ABC, which is now what you
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, the USBC, the United States Bowling Conference. And
Speaker 1: over the years, you know, bowling is kind of ebdon
Speaker 1: flowed in its popularity. Uh. There were beer leagues in
Speaker 1: the thirties and forties where um beers would sponsor tournaments
Speaker 1: and sponsor bowlers. The Mafia got involved for a while
Speaker 1: with um action bowling, which is like, hey, let me
Speaker 1: get some action on this, and it there were some
Speaker 1: pretty high stakes games going on in uh in New
Speaker 1: York back then, right. Yeah, Supposedly action bowling would take
Speaker 1: place after the leagues were done, and it would start
Speaker 1: around midnight or one am, and sometimes these games would
Speaker 1: go to seven in the morning. And their stories of
Speaker 1: people who were into action bowling in New York who
Speaker 1: would walk out of there with ten thousand plus dollars
Speaker 1: that they won from these basically gambling on bowling late
Speaker 1: at night. And it was a huge thing in New York,
Speaker 1: and it got to be so big that some of
Speaker 1: these action bowlers ended up getting so good that they
Speaker 1: became pros. They ended up in the Pro Bowlers Association
Speaker 1: because they couldn't find anybody who would take their money anymore,
Speaker 1: because people just knew how good they were, so the
Speaker 1: only people they could compete against where other pros. So
Speaker 1: Ed has uh the nineteen eighties he lists the peak
Speaker 1: of bowling's popularity. I'm gonna take issue with that. Maybe
Speaker 1: in the eighties it was the peak of televised professional bowling. UM,
Speaker 1: but everything I saw clearly indicated like the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties was when bowling was at its peak of
Speaker 1: popularity as as far as the American public goes bowling
Speaker 1: is concerned. Yeah, let me give you an example of that.
Speaker 1: And I got this from a price inomics article by
Speaker 1: Zachary Crockett. I think it's called The Rise and follow Bowling.
Speaker 1: Zachary Crockett is one of my favorite writers on the web.
Speaker 1: He's just awesome. He's popped up in a bunch of
Speaker 1: our episodes because he just writes about the most interesting
Speaker 1: stuff in a really great way. But in it he
Speaker 1: cites that the first athlete of any sport, chuck, any
Speaker 1: sport to land a one million dollar contract was Don
Speaker 1: Carter in nineteen sixty four. And that's one million dollars
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty four dollars, so it's about more than
Speaker 1: seven and a half billion dollars today. And that's pretty
Speaker 1: astounding that a bowler was the first one to land
Speaker 1: a million dollar endorsement contract. But it's even more astounding
Speaker 1: when you juxtapose it against what some of the other stars,
Speaker 1: some of the other sports stars were getting at the
Speaker 1: same time. Right, yes, ye, the top bowler was a
Speaker 1: man named Harry Smith, and he made more money than
Speaker 1: baseball m v P Sandy kofax and NFL m v
Speaker 1: P uh y eights it will combined. Yeah, also, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And then also, um, there were other sports figures who
Speaker 1: had endorsement contracts, but they were nothing like a million
Speaker 1: dollar endorsement contract. Arnold Palmer had one with Wilson for
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars that's less than forty thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: today's money. Joe Nameth had one with I think Shick Razors.
Speaker 1: He had a contract for ten thousand dollars, which is
Speaker 1: worth about seventy five grand today. A bowler in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four got a million dollar contract. That's how popular
Speaker 1: bowling was at the time. Yeah, it was huge. The
Speaker 1: those a legend named Dick Webber. Uh and he has
Speaker 1: a son named Pete Webber, who's probably one of the
Speaker 1: more well known bowlers today. And the only reason to
Speaker 1: bring him up is because Ed pointed out a very
Speaker 1: fun video of of Pete Webber in after winning a tournament,
Speaker 1: and you got to see it because it just Ed says,
Speaker 1: you know, he shouted nonsensically, who do you think I am?
Speaker 1: Or who do you think you are I am? And
Speaker 1: I was like, what does that mean? And I said
Speaker 1: it was nonsensical? But did you see the video? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kept watching it over and I did too. It's
Speaker 1: so funny. He gets so fired up and he's screaming,
Speaker 1: and he just goes, who do you think you are?
Speaker 1: I am? And just the double thumbs and everyone went
Speaker 1: what yeah, And and of course has happened in two
Speaker 1: dozen twelve, So it immediately became a meme. And so
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are not at all the
Speaker 1: bowling are familiar with who do you think you are?
Speaker 1: I am? Apparently it's on coffee mugs and shirts and
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff. Yeah, I've not heard of it
Speaker 1: before then, but I looked into is definitely a meme.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he was. He was the kind of like
Speaker 1: the John McEnroe of bowling, but he from what I
Speaker 1: could see it, I mean, it's definitely great in a personality,
Speaker 1: but um, he also did it to keep attention on
Speaker 1: bowling at a time when bowling was losing viewers like
Speaker 1: left and right. As a matter of fact, the Pro
Speaker 1: Bowlers Association the p b A was purchased in two
Speaker 1: thousand by three Microsoft employees for five million dollars. That's
Speaker 1: the state that bowling was in back in the day.
Speaker 1: That's how far it declined, And slowly but surely it's
Speaker 1: starting to tick back up. And I've got a couple
Speaker 1: of stats. If you'll indulge me real quick, because I've
Speaker 1: got more okay, so um. In the heyday in the sixties,
Speaker 1: there was something like twelve thousand bowling alleys and there
Speaker 1: were ten million Americans who were considered regular bowlers. Today,
Speaker 1: there's less than half of that in the number of
Speaker 1: bowling alleys, and it's down to less than three million
Speaker 1: regular bowlers. So it's been a pretty precipitous drop. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that that this group White Hutchison,
Speaker 1: who from what I can tell, is basically the KPMG
Speaker 1: consultants of Amusement Um Games. Uh, they did a bunch
Speaker 1: of studies and focus groups and they kind of put
Speaker 1: their finger on the idea that the old bowling alleys
Speaker 1: were kind of neglected as customers dropped off and they
Speaker 1: got to be really sad, cigarette e stale, beer smelly
Speaker 1: places that you would not want to take your family.
Speaker 1: It was just a pressing place to hang out. And
Speaker 1: now people are starting to tear those down, remodel and
Speaker 1: replace them with these new, happy, huge fund centers, and
Speaker 1: as a result, bowling is actually starting to make a comeback. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a league bowling too, has been a big part
Speaker 1: of that hit. Um, I think it used to account
Speaker 1: for about sevent of total bowling revenue. And I mean
Speaker 1: when you and I are growing up, like my parents
Speaker 1: didn't do it, but league bowling was big thing, like
Speaker 1: a lot of people did it. Uh. Now that's down
Speaker 1: to total revenue is from league bowling. And you're right
Speaker 1: like with I think like Lucky Strike is one of them.
Speaker 1: And there's all kinds of sort of new fancy schmancy
Speaker 1: bowling centers that where you can get you know, like
Speaker 1: a quality cocktail and like for bowling alley maybe decent food.
Speaker 1: Definitely more family friendly for you know, holding like birthday
Speaker 1: parties and stuff there. I mean, those places are fine.
Speaker 1: I am a fan of just sort of an old
Speaker 1: school um you know, not gross, but like an old
Speaker 1: school bowling alley. No, I know, to mean for sure,
Speaker 1: that's what I grew up into. Yeah, if you can
Speaker 1: find one, I do want to shout out. They're both
Speaker 1: closed now, but I know I've talked about the Hollywood
Speaker 1: Star Lanes, which I lived down the street from an
Speaker 1: l A Lebowski Lanes where they film The Big Lebowski
Speaker 1: and on any given Friday night, you know we'd be
Speaker 1: in there. Hanging out and there'd be like, you know,
Speaker 1: the cast of the seventies show bowling and Vince Vaughn
Speaker 1: and Jon fabrou over there having a drink, and it
Speaker 1: was like a really cool place to see celebrities on
Speaker 1: the d l uh. And then when I moved, we
Speaker 1: moved to Eagle Rock and there was Eagle Rock Lanes
Speaker 1: which had a killer karaoke uh. And I just looked
Speaker 1: up in Eagle Rock Lanes closed a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: which makes me very so I want to shout out
Speaker 1: my home lane, which was not nearly as hip or
Speaker 1: celebrity studded as yours. Um Southwick Lanes, where the bowling
Speaker 1: alley I grew up bowling at. And also, if I
Speaker 1: remember correctly, the place where I first really smelled a
Speaker 1: cigarette and thought, I wonder what it's like to smoke
Speaker 1: one of those. Yeah. I probably bowled more in my
Speaker 1: twenties when I lived in l A and early thirties
Speaker 1: because it was just fun and you know, pretty cheap,
Speaker 1: like these new places are a lot more expensive. I
Speaker 1: mean you used to could go in there and bowl
Speaker 1: for you know, ten bucks or so for a couple
Speaker 1: of hours, you know, not including your beer and stuff,
Speaker 1: but um, maybe we should close on the seventin split.
Speaker 1: Oh nice thinking, buddy. So I've always heard about the
Speaker 1: dreaded seven tin split, which means the only two pins
Speaker 1: remaining are the ones on the very very back corners
Speaker 1: opposite one another, uh, the seven pin and the tinpin.
Speaker 1: And I knew it was like a really hard thing
Speaker 1: to do, but I had no idea, literally until today,
Speaker 1: that it's only been done four times in like televised
Speaker 1: pro bowling tournaments. Yeah. I think the first time it
Speaker 1: was ever shown live was like two thousand and ten
Speaker 1: or twelve. When was that one? Well, I mean I
Speaker 1: saw I don't know about live, but I saw clips
Speaker 1: from the eighties. Okay, so so, so what I saw
Speaker 1: on CBS Sports is that there was a bowler who
Speaker 1: did it. It was a PBA bowler. He did it,
Speaker 1: and it was the first time it was captured on live,
Speaker 1: live television. The last time that it had happened was
Speaker 1: like and apparently it wasn't televised live, So it is
Speaker 1: extremely rare and the chances of you actually making it
Speaker 1: happen are really really slim. I saw something like a
Speaker 1: point eight five or maybe even point zero eight five
Speaker 1: percent chance point eight m of sinking a seven ten split.
Speaker 1: And it's because you have to hit either the seven
Speaker 1: pin or the tenpin in such a way that you
Speaker 1: knock it directly into the other pin opposite it, in
Speaker 1: a direction that's perpendicular essentially to the direction the ball's traveling.
Speaker 1: And in that sense, you're you're knocking both pins down,
Speaker 1: using one pin to knock the other pin down. It's
Speaker 1: extremely hard to do. I didn't realize how hard it
Speaker 1: was to do either. I'm like you. I was just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the seven tenths play. Everybody knows that's hard. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I did not know is that rare? And just to
Speaker 1: shout out the gentleman who did it most recently, you
Speaker 1: can look it up on the internet, eighteen year old
Speaker 1: name Anthony Newer. Uh. It's kind of fun to watch
Speaker 1: because people go nuts. It's it's you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of fun to see something like that happen. But the
Speaker 1: announcer screamed out because his kids got red hair. The
Speaker 1: ginger Assassin, he did say that not only is the
Speaker 1: have red hair, he's got a luxurious mullet. I believe
Speaker 1: it looked pretty mullody. I didn't get a side of view,
Speaker 1: but it looked like he was partying in the rear.
Speaker 1: It definitely did like Molody too, So congratulations to you, sir,
Speaker 1: Um And I guess that's about it. Bowling still goes
Speaker 1: on that the change in balls didn't just change it
Speaker 1: for the casual bowler changed it for the pros too,
Speaker 1: so that it's undergoing or in the process of a
Speaker 1: big sea change as far as how the game is
Speaker 1: played by the pros. But it's still hanging around. I
Speaker 1: think bowling is ever going extinct anytime soon, agreed, I need.
Speaker 1: I haven't been in so long. This has inspired me
Speaker 1: to go go out. I think I think my daughter
Speaker 1: would enjoy it at this age. Would be fun. I'll
Speaker 1: see you there, Chuck, Let's do it. And one more thing,
Speaker 1: I want to shout or direct everybody to the um
Speaker 1: song that I usually think of any time I think
Speaker 1: of bowling, Camper Van Beethoven's take the Skinheads Bowling, which
Speaker 1: is a surprisingly happy song. You know. Uh. And since
Speaker 1: I said it's a surprisingly happy song and Chuck said, yeah,
Speaker 1: that means it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call this a quick pronunciation tip. This is from Teresa
Speaker 1: and Melbourne, Australia. Hey, guys, enjoy the podcast. Firstly, I
Speaker 1: would like to know which one of you had the
Speaker 1: delightful giggle. Oh, I think we know who that is.
Speaker 1: I guess that's me, right, I was gonna say Jerry, okay,
Speaker 1: but that is not my genuine question. Like many Americans,
Speaker 1: you struggle to pronounce English towns and cities and locales
Speaker 1: and government names. Particularly. I've noticed the ones that end
Speaker 1: in s h I r e sheery the unofficial rule, guys.
Speaker 1: When standing alone, it's pronounced shire like wire, but when
Speaker 1: used as a suffix, it's it rhymes with beer, so Oxfordshire,
Speaker 1: Worcestershire obviously instead of Worcestershire or Leicestershire. I say worh
Speaker 1: to sure worceter Shire, Worcestershire, sauce. I don't say any
Speaker 1: works us. I say it three times in secession just
Speaker 1: like that. Pronounces correctly and you will probably get many
Speaker 1: free beers next time you're in the UK. Uh. And again,
Speaker 1: that is from Teresa in Australia. Thanks a lot of Teresa.
Speaker 1: That was a great one. Cheer, cheer, delight um. If
Speaker 1: you want to be like Teresa and give us some
Speaker 1: tips on how to talk good. We would love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. You can send us an email to
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.