Bowling Philosophy-July 2012

"Does greatness have a shelf life?"
By Thomas Scherrer

Resume: 10 PBA titles...1960 PBA National Championship....1961 ABC Masters champion....4 BPAA All-Star titles (pre-cursor to the US Open)...5 World Invitational titles (including 4 in a row from 1959-62)...leadoff bowler for the famous Budweiser team...Team Match Games champions ('58 and '59)...6-time BWAA Bowler of the Year...8-time Bowling magazine All-American...10-time Bowlers Journal International All-American...2 time PBA Player of the Year...ABC and PBA Hall of Famer and first bowler inducted into the Madison Square Garden Hall of Fame...Named Bowler of the Century by BJI in 2000...1962 season: record top five finishes in a season (18) and consecutive (7)...ranked 11th among "50 Greatest Bowlers in PBA History" in 2009.

By now, most of you who know bowling know who this resume (and an abbreviated one at that) belongs to.  If you are in your 60's or 70's, you still consider this man to be the greatest bowler of all time and really, nobody would argue with you.  After all, only Dick Weber, Earl Anthony and Walter Ray Williams, Jr. could even come close to replicating his accomplishments, so at the very least, he is one of the 4 most decorated bowlers in history.  If you are a younger fan of bowling, this resume belongs to the recently departed Donald James Carter, a.k.a., Mr. Bowling.  Mr. Carter's recent passing in January brought a slew of glowing testimonials from legends and icons such as Ray Bluth, Bob Strampe, Bill Lillard, and others stating his status as arguably the greatest.  Even in Bowling Execution by John Jowdy, Mr. Carter is on his top 3 list and, if he had two bullets, he'd snipe the other two rivals and declare  Carter the winner.  And we haven't even factored in Carter's overall promotion to the sport of bowling with his endorsements from Ebonite (first athlete ever to sign a $1 million promotional deal and this was in 1964, what?!?); commercials for Miller Lite, Viceroy, and Wonder Bread; and merchandising gloves, shirts, slacks, books, and yes, "Music for Happy Bowlers"-a freakin record.  Could you imagine Mr. Carter and Johnny Cash passing each other in a recording studio with The Man in Black kissing Don Carter's ring???  Such was life for Mr. Carter throughout his career.  

Look...I know that there might be some opposition to what I am about to say but when Carter was winning the 1962 World Invitational, the bowling world was different.  Much different.  True, repeatable styles and an adherence to controlling ball speed, adapting to lane conditions, changing axis rotations, ect. were all important 50 years ago as they were today, but...would Don Carter be anywhere near the same player today as he was then?  It is a fair question to ask.  After all, bowling has been around over a century and pretty much everyone will rattle off who they think is in their top 10 bowlers of all time.  Most diehards will do the roll call for you: Anthony, both Webers, Roth, Walter Ray, Duke, Holman, Aulby, Bohn, and Carter.  Nobody would argue with you at all on those choices.  All were iconic figures, ambassadors, and consistent-to-dominant bowlers.  Anthony, Dick Weber, and Carter for their Golden Age credentials, their great promotion of the game, as well as their historic runs.  Walter Ray and Duke for their unerring ability to stay relevant years after their peers have fallen away.  Aulby and Pete Weber for their major championships.  Bohn for his modern-day ambassadorship and his success the past quarter of a century.  Holman and Roth for their groundbreaking bowling.  I've touched on this before but as time move along, Holman and Roth might lose some historical credit but they shouldn't.  Both turned a lateral, up-the-boards, down-and-in game and transformed it.  Created rev rate with speed, powerful strikes, crossing boards...basically what you see from everyone in today's game can truly be traced back to what Holman did and especially what Roth did. So yes, being great and groundbreaking is important but why does history ignore groundbreaking?  Because we cannot count groundbreaking!  We have no titles to look at or major championships to discuss.  But Roth and Holman should always (repeat: always) be in a bowler's top 10.  You can pick Holman apart a bit, but if you try to even to pick Roth apart, he will come to your house and stick his cane up your ass.

Why don't we remember bowlers like Ned Day and Don Johnson?  Because for Day, nobody is still alive to remember how dominant he was.  Given Day was able to hook the ball and control speed on lacquer lanes, I can make a reasonable argument that Day, much like Pete Weber, would have made the necessary adjustments in his career and still be an all time great.  Johnson, like Duke got everything imaginable out of his body and used it to be one of the best ever.  He has the most iconic single game in PBA history-the '67 TOC 299.  He also owns a US Open title win at Madison Square Garden.  He won an Open in the same building Mark Messier won a Stanley Cup-that counts for something, no?  And we also forget he was a great coach in his post-career life.  Yet, history seems to place Johnson in the second tier of great bowlers with Brian Voss, Mika Koviuniemi, Jason Couch, Chris Barnes, Welu, and Hank Marino.  And it is patently foolish...almost as foolish as starting a sentence with "And", which I've done twice in the last few moments.

So...if you know me for anything, I enjoy a great argument.  I'd place Day and Johnson in my top 10.  There is no way we are replacing Roth, Anthony, or Dick Weber.  No chance I'm getting rid of Walter Ray, Duke, or Aulby.  Do I get rid of Pete Weber?  Um...NOOOOO!!!  Holman???  Surely Marshall Holman, whose career fell apart after the disgusting 1987 POY season and has been virtually irrelevant the last 20 years.  You're right!

No, you're wrong.  Bohn and Carter live outside the penthouse or at least a floor below it.  Bohn has won exactly one major (a fortunate win at best against Couch), much like Holman has seen a free falling of his career since his 2001-02 POY season-which was not debatable at all: it is one of the 5 greatest seasons in PBA history.  I like when guys win majors and Bohn's lack of major titles, coupled with a "been there...done that" type career of Aulby, who won a lot more majors (in fact, all of them), and Bohn is off the jet.  

So is Carter.  Why?  Have you seen how Mr. Carter threw the bowling ball?  Allow me to take an excerpt from Bowling Execution to hammer my point home along with a few other tidbits:

"Carter used a crouched position and shuffled to the foul line with his nose seemingly to the ground.  He kept his elbow bent through the swing and practically pushed the ball down the lane."

In today's modern game, Carter would statistically get blown away by today's power players with their free armswings and powerful releases.  Would he be accurate?  Surely.  In fact, his style would make him a great US Open player in any era so I'm giving him credit for that too.  Plus, all the recent testimonials about Carter was that he was a relentless practice bowler as well, perhaps as a byproduct of his unorthodox style.  So was Tim Criss, a 5 time PBA winner and 1999 PBA National Champion.  So if we were to switch Criss and Carter and place then in different eras, would Criss have won like Carter?  Not likely, but certainly more than he would have in today's game.  So, why do we just assume Carter would as well in a vastly different game?  I don't and you shouldn't as well.  I'd have bloggers and bowling purists skewering me if I said Tim Criss was a top 10 all time player in any era.  Still not convinced?  Let's try this final example on for size: would Don Carter in 2012 even have bowled?  As a teenager, Carter lettered in football, baseball, and basketball in St. Louis in high school, even pitching professionally after his tour with the U. S. Navy.  For his 13th birthday, his mother gave him 13 cents (yes, thirteen) to bowl one game of bowling.  Carter loved that one game so much that he enrolled in an after school bowling club, then was a pinsetter at his local bowling alley where he could...get this...practice for free.  Imagine a 13-year-old Don Carter in 2012 having to pay up to six dollars for one game, plus rent shoes.  Chances are, his mother would have shut her wallet to bowling.  Factor in that Carter did pitch professionally before bowling and it is likely that Don Carter would have never even considered bowling as a viable option, both professionally and financially.  Instead, he might have been a meddling triple-A pitcher in Des Moines or Scranton with the hopes of having a cup of coffee in the bigs (as well as a $500,000/year minimum salary).  And that, my friends, is a shame to think about. 

Factor all this in and Carter's position at #11 on the PBA "50 Greatest" list as being fair and as legitimate as it could ever be when you factor in everything.  So, when we ask if greatness has a shelf life, we have to look at so many factors that go beyond the scope of actual performance and accomplishments.  Was Don Carter better than say, Dave Traber or Michael Haugen in terms of the mechanics of bowling?  No way at all.  You'd rather take Traber or Haugen-better releases, mechanics, and overall form.  Was Carter more groundbreaking than both?  Absolutely.  And that is the beauty of the sport-any sport, in particular.  The debate as to who is better is always a subjective argument.  Groundbreaking versus better?  Same argument applies...and the answer is that they both matter.

For those with a love and knowledge for the Sport of Bowling...this IS Bowling Philosophy.  Namaste.