Bowling Philosophy-March 2010

"R-E-S-P-E-C-T"

Mike Scroggins: respect due, greatness still lacking

by Tommy Scherrer

If you are a frequent follower of Twitter, you may have noticed that former Tonight Show host Conan O'Brien is following the 'tweets' of young 19 year old Sarah Killen. O'Brien joked that interviewing squirrels in his backyard and cutting to a commercial was a call for help and his salvation was to randomly follow a person on Twitter for which Killen was the lucky soul who has seen her life change almost instantaneously. Killen is due to be married in September and was afraid of financing the wedding. O'Brien steps in, follows her, and at the snap of a finger custom made shoes, wedding dress offers, bottles of wine, and limos. What, did Ric Flair's "Custom Made" segment get hijacked for purposes of Killen's wedding? Killen has turned from teenage bride-to-be into a celebrity overnight.

(Note: isn't it strange that in 2010 that an unemployed entertainer can randomly 'follow' a teenage girl over the Internet or social network, give her instant credibility, she in turn, gets all of her wedding dreams to come true, where she might not have been able to finance it on her own. And we're cool with this??? Really....any other situation, Detective Stabler and Benson would be at CoCo's front door asking questions about this but since it's O'Brien, we just think he is bored and needed to make someone's day, or in this case, her wedding day.)

What does Killen have to do with Mike Scroggins? They have both become overnight sensations. Now it is hard to say that a 45 year old balding professional bowler can have the same overnight sensation as Killen but we, the bowling people, have made Scroggins a storyline often this season. How could we not? The 2009 US Open champion did the rare feat of defending his title as the 2010 Open #1 qualifier, yet being unable to successfully defend it, losing to Bill O'Neill in the title match. Scroggins has won two titles this season, the second time in his career he has won multiple titles in a season. Scroggins has now put himself in a position for Player of the Year with 3 events remaining in the PBA season and it would honestly not surprise anyone if Scroggins could find his way onto television once more and possibly win another title and become the man of the 2009-10 season.

In the past few weeks, Scroggins has been bandied about in a few articles (including one of my own) defining his greatness as a player. I am sticking to my guns and saying that Scroggins needs to crack the 10 title plateau in order to be a Hall of Famer, and possibly throw in another major title in there as well. His performance last week in the Etonic Don Johnson Eliminator was simply put, a tremendous performance. Scroggins was the only lefthander to make the 16 person eliminator portion of the tournament. He was all alone on the left and as strange as it may sound, may have helped him. No one crossing his line to the pocket, Scroggins creating his ski slope to the 1-2 for 3 games in each eliminator section. It was tremendous bowling by Scroggins to make the show and he got the added benefit of the eliminator format to create a better ball reaction than his fellow righthanders. All he had to do was not have the lowest score in any match and he was a champion again and that is just what he did, outlasting crowd favorite Brian Kretzer in the title match 206-195 (yes, it was a tough title match to watch but after thinking about it some more, the Chameleon pattern can do that: it can get ugly).

Scroggins has earned his accolades for being a very good bowler but my grades are high. Scroggins is not yet a great player but he keeps teetering me towards the other side of the beam. I do respect him because he has continued to perform at a high level for the last 7-8 years where most players get to this age and start declining in terms of performance. It has been a privilege to see him bowl on a tour where it is rev dominant and Scroggins is more speed/accuracy dominant. I do hope that he finds a few more wins in the last few years of his career, then I can write my Mike Scroggins Hall of Fame article on BP. But he is not getting any custom made shoes or wine or anything like that. Remember, I don't have CoCo's compensation pay.

Thomas Scherrer is a USBC Certified Level One coach and now is on the radio!!! Look him up on http://audiojournal.net/ by clicking on the "Listen Live" link. The show is every Wednesday from 7-8pm EST as I broadcast the Worcester Telegram and Gazette to inform and empower people who are blind, disabled, or are unable to read print or visual material.