"Bowling Blind"

PBA Tour

Still "Dead" on
He still won't go away...

Even at 49 years of age, Walter Ray Williams Jr. continues to defy Father Time (and perhaps the hearts of several fans who would rather see him vanish) by taking down Bill O'Neill, 246-202, for his 45th PBA title Sunday afternoon in Hammond, Indiana.

Yes...forty five titles.

It is truly staggering to think that Williams is still winning in a generation where power and youth are being served more so than ever. If you take a look around the Big Wood PBA Tour, the young stars have power, they have revs, they have collegiate successes, they have national championships, they have degrees, they have exposure...in an essence, they have everything Williams never had (sans the Caly Poly-Pomona alum's physics degree, which has been greatly underrated over the years as to how successful he has been over the changes in the sport). However, Williams still has wins...he still has money...he still has drive...he still has his legacy as the greatest player in PBA history intact...in essence, Williams has what everyone else wishes they had: greatness.

Walter Ray truly is great and it's hard to describe how he does it. He throws it end over end, he throws it too firm, he throws it too straight, he falls off balance on every shot...this assuredly goes through just about every opponent's mind when they face the man nicknamed "Dead-Eye", but he does it the same way every time and the results are similar..."red ball up 5, ten in the pit...", he has made it almost comical and did I mention he is 49 years old? He defies logic, age, physics, and modern convention yet still wins. There is one more thing he defies and that is the game's mortality.

A question opposed to me this morning at Bowl Long Island by one of the seniors was how can Walter Ray win so much and yet he does not transcend bowling like Tiger Woods does golf or Roger Federer does tennis? I had no logical answer for him trying to avoid the simplicity of saying that nobody cares about bowling but that is not true. Bowling still has a place in society, albeit not as lucrative or as prominent as it once was decades ago in relation to fame and fortune, but the sport has suffered through inexorable tolls in the last 15-20 years due to lack of interest of lack of revenues or lack of money or lack of TV exposure. Say what any bowling purist wants to say about the current state bowling is in, this fact remains: this is a severe uphill climb for the sport in regards to notoriety and will be for years to come. To the PBA's credit, they have pushed new players to the public's viewing in the last few years in O'Neill, Sean Rash, Rhino Page, Wes Malott, and Tommy Jones to garner interest in young stars that can carry the sport's water for the next decade plus. However, they still have one glaring issue that whether or not anyone will admit to saying it still plagues their future and that is they cannot get rid of the main player that put them in this perilous hole: Walter Ray Williams Jr.

After thinking about it for a few hours before writing that last line, it is something I have genuinely thought about for the last 3-4 years and never had the guts to publicly say for fear of excommunication from bowling but here goes nothing: you cannot have a sport prosper when its greatest player has not done anything in the way of promotion on a global stage the way Walter Ray Williams Jr. has in his career. Whether or not people like to admit this but the sport's great demise has happened with Williams as its top player and that is a sad reality. Look, this is not saying Walter Ray is not a nice guy by any stretch of the imagination but when the game has needed him to be an ambassador, a leader for youth bowling, a figurehead above all the other players, to be a transcendent figure he has not been there. Where Williams could have promoted the game globally during the tour's off season, he stayed at home and pitched horseshoes and played golf (both exceedingly well, in fact Williams is a member of the National Horseshoe Pitching Association Hall of Fame). Only recently, did the World Tenpin Bowling Association decided to give its top stars a chance as promoting the game by allowing professional to participate on their national teams and Williams was the star of the Men's World Championships, winning the Masters event. It was truly a landmark event for bowling having arguably its greatest player ever win and still show at his age that he is still better than all the young talent arriving on the bowling scene, however this moment for Walter Ray came about a decade too late for himself or for American bowling.

This isn't to say that he is responsible alone for the downfall of bowling but he is a very prominent face in bowling annals for the last 3 decades and the sport is still suffering to regain its equilibrium because of many bad decisions. With all that being said, Walter Ray could have and perhaps should have tried to do more for bowling from a promotional standpoint in his career when he was easily the best player in the game. He will be remembered in January as probably the greatest player in PBA history for the PBA's first 50 years, but this begs the great question to the great man's legacy: is Walter Ray Williams Jr. the greatest player of all-time?

Is he better than Dick Weber or Don Carter? The PBA won't agree with that statement but let's get some semblance of facts for a moment. Both Carter and Weber won 4 US Open championships (formerly named the BPAA All-Star) and in the case of Carter if you count his bowling world championships that many consider majors, Don Carter has 11 majors. Most though will argue that Williams was a better and more consistent player than Carter was so his resume as a bowler nuts to bolts is comparable.

Is it to Weber's? You can make the case that Dick Weber is not even close to Williams in terms of overall success as a bowler but there is one thing that no man that has ever bowled before or after Dick Weber can argue with: when it came to promotion, showmanship, class, professionalism, and sheer bowling talent, Dick Weber was the total package. He had aura and mystique (not the night dancers, Curt Schilling), he had audacity and persistence, and he had the winning pedigree. In short, he transcended the game of bowling in the 50's and 60's the way Arnold Palmer did for golf.

That is maybe the greatest correlation you can make in denouncing Williams' greatness is looking at it from golf's lineage in the last 50 years. For golf, there was Palmer who was then followed by Jack Nicklaus, the greatest golfer of all time. Nicklaus was followed by Tom Watson and Greg Norman, then followed by Tiger Woods who has sent the game from a popular standpoint into the stratosphere. Bowling had Weber, then followed by Earl Anthony, the most beloved bowler ever by the common fans who sent the game into new paralles winning titles and majors at a breakneck pace, then it was followed by Williams by winning player of the year in 1986. This was 22 years ago and Williams should have sent the game to greater heights by traveling globally and promoting the game, instead the mantle of promotion went to Parker Bohn III and Mike Aulby, who were both great players and legendary players but were not truly the world's best player. Pete Weber (Dick's son) would have been the great link to bowling's past but the PBA in its conservative past never allowed Pete Weber to be "Pete Weber", the dynamic and at times controversial player. Suspensions have cost him roughly 8-10 titles and there the PBA has butchered its greatest what if...

What if Weber, who currently has 34 titles, had won at least 8 more titles if suspensions had not stopped him? He would be sitting at 42 titles, still with a few more years in him to get 4 or 5 more titles he would be in the mid forties as well. What if, given the rise in promoting bowling from a postmodern standpoint, you had two players in Williams and Weber-polar opposites of each other in every conceivable form-going week to week seeing who was truly the greatest player in tour history? What if both players could rise each other's game to new levels and bowling to new levels by having a weekly chance to take over the career titles lead? Finally, what if Weber could have picked off Williams a few times when he was suspended and was truly bowling's greatest talent, denying him of a few titles...would this conversation be about Pete Weber being the greatest player in history having Walter Ray chasing him? We will never know the truth but what we do know is that bowling has suffered with Williams as its top player and he had every chance in the world to enhance the game and most importantly to him, his paychecks.

What if...?

There is no need for what if...? We know unfortunately.


About the Editor: Tommy Scherrer (that's me) is one of the night managers-a far more fancier term for 'Shift Leader'-at AMF Syosset Lanes. A former student at William Paterson in Wayne, NJ as well as a former member of the Pioneer bowling team for 4 years, he is a regular contributor to the pockets of many great players and on occasion, will actually make his money back generall in marathon tournaments.