Bowling ain't just Bud Bombs and balls.
Fall-what better time of year to begin indulging in indoor sports? Bowling is an excellent way to ease away from poolside gatherings, horseshoes and barbecues and begin the subtle shift toward activities that take place under a roof: The sport provides the camaraderie of pals gathered around a grill, the physical activity of outdoor games, and, well, you can drink while you do it, all while shielded from the elements, surrounded by polished hardwood floors and the lovely din of pins dropping.
My own fall bowling preview begins at 9 pm on a Wednesday night. League night at Santa Fe's Silva Lanes bowling alley. Giant Budweiser beer bottles the size and shape of tee-ball
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bats litter the table as my friends and I finish up 12 frames of casual bowling.
In fact, the beers this night at Silva Lanes only cost $2.50, and they are called "pounders," because they are 16 ounces. My friends and I giggle at the concept of a pound of beer.
But 16 is not the number I'm thinking about. The number that rotates through my mind like a flipping Rolodex is…171…171…171.
I was a lucky recipient of a midday bowling lesson just a few hours before, and now I've rolled a personal best: 171. A bowling score of 300 is the golden goose, a perfect game of all strikes, achieved only by ace bowlers and pros, and even they don't bowl that every game. Casual bowlers, the kind who drink and smoke cigarettes and run off between frames to sneak in a game of Ms. Pac Man, are lucky to break 100.
So, 171. A mother-lovin' miracle.
But let's start with the lesson. Mine comes at the hands of Delfina Eddington, the youth co-ordinator at Silva Lanes.
"We start with kids as young as 2½," Eddington tells me about her kids' program, explaining how she has the tots waddle up to the lane and then roll the ball with two hands from between their legs. At first, I am mildly insulted at the idea of getting a primary lesson usually reserved for the preschool set. It's bowling-how hard could it be?
But I soon realize bowling is about much more than
Laverne & Shirley
and a pound of beer. This is a sport almost anyone can play, and often it is derided as a casual pastime or silly game. But bowling really is a Zen exercise in technique and subtle mental skills. Like golf, it's one of those sports where, though you may be competing against other people, your main roadblock is your own brain. You can be
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strong and able, a specimen of technical perfection, and still be soundly defeated by a 75-year-old grandma with one eye, cuz she's got the mental mojo and you don't.
Eddington gives me a primer on the basics. To bowl, you only need two pieces of equipment: shoes and a ball. Footgear needs to correspond to which hand you bowl with; if you're right-handed, the slide-y shoe needs to be the left foot and vice-versa. You can rent shoes at your local bowling alley, of course, but a cheaper pair will only set you back around $25, according to Eddington. That way, you won't have to go home with your socks reeking of Lysol. The most expensive pairs will set you back a couple hundred dollars.
Next, ball. It's so damn hard to figure out what weight ball you need. Basically, Eddington says, if you can hold the ball in your throwing hand, palm up, arm slightly stretched, with your other hand behind your back, without much strain, that's the weight you need (for kids, it's a little easier; the ball should be about 10 percent of their body weight). Your fingers should fit snugly-but not too snugly-into the holes up to about the knuckles. "It should fit like a glove, not like a mitt," Eddington says.
Eddington runs me through the very basics. It's deceptively simple. You know those dots next to the foul line on a bowling lane? Those correspond with the arrows you see a bit down the lane, which in turn correspond with the individual pins (there are 10 of them).
There's too much detail to enter into
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here, but my lesson boils down to a few things:
Aiming at a pin will cause you to keep your head up and your body too far away from the ground, throwing your ball off-balance. Choose a dot or an arrow, which are closer to your eyes, to aim your ball at.
Make your "approach," the part where you walk up to the foul line, and keep focused on the dot or arrow of your choice.
Here's the most important part, the part that I believe leads directly to my 171: After you release your ball,
continue following through
with your arm, straight past your thigh, all the way up by your ear. You want to end with your arm and your hand in a sort of reverse tomahawk chop position. Make sure, from the start of your roll, your hand follows the line of the dot or arrow you are aiming at. Your body position at the end of it all, Eddington says, should be balanced and graceful, "kind of like a ballerina."
In general, the mechanics of bowling aren't as intricate and frustrating as, say, golf, nor is the sport as
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frighteningly gruesome on your body as, say, hockey. But these mechanics still are deceptive. One slight head motion, one subtle misstep, one second of dropped focus, and you go from strike to gutterball.
Which is close to what happens my first two frames of the 171 game. I exhibit a brazen disrespect for the Zen of the dots, allowing my head to jerk like a pony's and my eyes to roll like a wild boar's. My follow-through is a spastic, frenzied motion, and my general suckiness shows in my lowly first tallies of seven pins and five pins.
But then, something magical happens. I find the zone. My eyes are lasers honing in on those dots. My right arm follow-through is a piston, pumping straight past my ear. I am a ballerina with a 12-pound ball. Spare. Spare.
And then…strike…strike…strike.
Three strikes in a row-an elusive feat that merits its own nickname: a turkey.
Gobble freakin' gobble. This is no longer a casual game amongst myself and drunken friends. Even though my bowling pals are oblivious to the churning buzz of power rolling through my stomach, they will soon be subdued by its prowess. I am here as a bowling Conan the Barbarian, slaying all foes and defeating the evils of mediocre bowling.
Spare. Nine pins down. Strike. Spare again.
Until, spent, I look up at the automated scoreboard.
171.
Such is the magic of bowling when your mind is right: The mechanics fall into place, confidence builds, your all-important follow-through glides through the air.
But then, there's the other side. A few lapses in concentration, and
you
become the turkey. Overconfidence will send your ball careening off the side pins, flirting with the gutter or finally succumbing to it. "Strikes are beautiful," Eddington told me during my earlier lesson, "but spares will win your game."
In game two, I make neither. Suddenly the world is a psychedelic swirl. My right arm doesn't understand the boundaries of physics or even basic non-spastic motions. I am a parody of my first game. I roll a 67.
That's what's so great about bowling: It looks so simple, but in the end it's a battle between your own body and your own mind. In that sense, with its inexpensive equipment and bargain-priced games, its a more egalitarian version of golf, more mental than physical, a challenge, and a lifetime sport. Who says it's just a game?
