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.  

Bowling Philosophy-February 2012

One for the Thumb

 PDW=GOAT?
by Thomas Scherrer

Going into the the 69th United States Open Championship, I asked a few people that I trust with giving honest and candid opinions on bowling as to who they thought were on the list of the 10 greatest bowlers ever.  Once I write the paperback version of the 20 Greatest Bowlers in a few years when I need a quick influx of cash to help my bowling habit going, I will seriously look at this generation of bowlers with more scrutiny than I would have the previous generation for two reasons: 1) being I born in 1984, I cannot fairly evaluate the Roth/Anthony/Holman Era on titles money alone.  I would need more a little more background info on the players and their full impact on the game.  For instance, there is no question that the best player pre-1984 in PBA History was Earl Anthony.  How can any one argue with 43 titles, 10 Majors, 6 Player of the Year awards, and countless stories of how fans went wild for Anthony during qualifying when he threw a double.  Not match play, not shooting a 300, not a TV finals match, but like the 2nd game of the first block of qualifying.  
But is Earl Anthony the most important player pre-1984???  Not even close.  That belongs to Mark Roth.  All one needs to do is evaluate bowling's modern game and see that it is a game of power mixed with speed control, axis rotation, and insane angles I can only dream of and look back to when a young man from Staten Island decided to cock his wrist outward, take 6 rapid steps, wait, and uncork the ball at pins that had never seen anything close to what Roth was trying to accomplish.  He wasn't trying to strike...he was trying to massacre the pins.  Nowadays, everyone does that.  It is the ones who stroke the ball with finesse, touch, and accuracy are looked at like they are lost in the Delorean.  I will now promptly go wander into downtown Worcester traffic.  Holman was unique in that his career should matter more but he is more known for his antics, temper, and the rather depressing way he vanished from being a competitive bowler in the blink of an eye.  Plus, you'd never teach his style of game to anyone today where Holman slid after he released the ball.  It would almost be impossible in today's game.

As for the post-1984 bowlers, all of them for the most part could bowl in any era and be professional bowlers...it is the great players from this era that matter.  Walter Ray matters, Norm Duke matters, Mike Aulby matters, Parker Bohn III matters, Brian Voss matters, Chris Barnes matters (OK, he should matter more), Jason Couch certainly matters, and Pete Weber matters.  It is likely Duke and Williams would still be legends if you stuck them in the 1960's through the 1990's, Aulby's game was more tailored to the 80's and 90's and his record reflects that, Couch and Barnes would have further enhanced the 1970's power game revolution and would matter maybe even more than they do today, and Bohn and Voss would have been great players no matter what era they bowled, but in this generation, they would have been criticized for only winning one major each.  They are lucky for their legacies that they came along earlier (and yes, neither Bohn or Voss would be in my top 10 despite everything I just said).  Which leaves us with Pete Weber...

We have never seen anything like Peter D. Weber in our lifetimes: a 5 foot, 7 inch bowler who acts like he is 6'5".  He bowls with a noticeable passion that is reflected in most every shot he throws.  While we see players like Williams, Voss, and Couch react on the lanes but Weber reacts as if every shot is life or death.  No player polarizes fans more than Weber-he's almost like a battery, running off both positive and negative energy to create electricity-or makes them come out of their seats faster.  He has always lived in his father, Dick's shadow, and the more he escapes that shadow symbolically, he physically resembles his father in looks.  The more he tortures himself on the lanes, the more control he gains over the moment.  Nope, we've seen some pretty unique people who are blessed with The Gift, but no player has truly possessed The Curse of bowling like Pete Weber.  He owns it, he shapes it for all of us to see.  We all know Barnes is tortured inside for his numerous failures in the big moment, but with Weber, we see it.  He took bowling fans on a 90-minute roller coaster this past Sunday in winning his record setting 5th Open championship, but the internal hell he was waging with himself-the struggle we never see or witness-must have been more gut-wrenching.  

In one week, Weber set several milestones with his 53 game marathon performance.  Aside from being the only man alive to win 5 Open championships, he became the oldest US Open champion ever, at 49 years of age.  He also won his 9th Major title, moving him one behind Anthony for most majors in a career and in the process, he went past Anthony.  Lost in the shuffle of all of this was that Pete Weber has won more Triple Crown events (9) than Anthony (8) or Walter Ray (5) or Duke (6) or anyone...ever.  Counts for something, no?  He now is already locked into the top 32 for the Tournament of Champions, where he has recently bowled very well...who's to say he cannot win another one and win Major #10 and totally throw the 20 Greatest Bowlers paperback into a total frenzy?

You see, the dirty little secret of Pete Weber's career that isn't really a dirty little secret is that we are always going to feel that Pete Weber never reached his full potential as a bowler.  Sadly, Weber left something on the table.  It is almost like Weber had the potential to get a PhD from Harvard but instead settled for a PhD from Stanford.  Still pretty damn impressive but not as good as it could have been.  When Walter Ray, Duke, and Bohn were beginning to peak in the early to mid-90's, Weber took a few steps back, struggled to acclimate to a changing game, admittedly drank too much, and contemplated quitting the game and going back to school to work on a trade.  His wife, Traci, wouldn't let him, told him to get his head out of his ass and be Pete Weber.  While he slowly returned to being Pete Weber, the PBA thought otherwise and suspended him in 2000 when he got confrontational with a fan for the remainder of the season, even when he had won 2 of the first 5 events that year and allowed Norm Duke to heist a Player of the Year award (in fairness, Duke's 2000 season is pretty good: coming within a pin of winning two majors and firmly establishing himself as one the game's greats).  

Everyone reflects on the 2001 Great Lakes Classic where he shot 299 against Steve Wilson, then crushed Bohn in the title match, and tore the roof off Spectrum Lanes in Michigan with every strike and emotion as his finest performance on TV.  Others look at the 2004 bowlersparadise.com title over Ryan Shafer as his seminal moment-his first win since the passing of his father.  Some will look at this recent win over Shafer and young studs Jason Belmonte and Mike Fagan as his greatest win.  I look back to the 1999 PBA National Championship as his greatest performance.  Shooting 290 against Hall of Famer David Ozio and erupting with each strike and the crowd responding.  Ozio has zero chance.  He even flashed an nWo "4 Life" symbol and a DDP Diamond Cutter for good sports entertainment measure (this was before he did the DX "crotch chop" and the PDW/RVD mimic in 2001) during his victory celebration.  The point is that when Weber put it all together, there wasn't a thing alive that could stop him. Not a suspension, not guys 20 years younger than him, not mourning his father's death, hell, not even a great big game bowler like Ozio.

So, where does Weber rank as far the all-time greatest bowlers go?  He is certainly a top 10 bowler, no question.  But do you penalize him for leaving something on the table or do you give it back to him for his tremendous television performances, along with his Major championships and this sustained mid to late 40's run he has had?  Is he the greatest ever?  I suppose it all depends on what your overall take of bowling should be.  If you like consistent and dominant runs, you choose Walter Ray.  If you like Major titles and overall adulation from fans, you choose Anthony.  If you like the underdog to Goliath story coupled with similar fan adulation plus performance, you choose Duke or Don Johnson.  If you like importance to the game as a whole that goes beyond wins, you choose Roth, Aulby, or Dick Weber.  If you cared about on-lane performance and seeing being entertained on a level you thought you could never be, you choose only one person: P...D...W.



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