Worldly event isn’t my dad’s pro bowling tour
It was just before 10:30 a.m. Saturday, and one suspected something dramatic was about to happen at the World Series of Bowling at the South Point, because dramatic music was playing over loudspeakers. It recalled the soundtrack from the original “Rocky” during the fight-scene montage, when the Italian Stallion and Apollo Creed were lifting each other off the canvas with haymakers.
Cut me, Mick. This blister on my thumb is making it difficult to pick up that 7-9 split.
The World Series of Bowling was a more literal description of what I was about to witness than the World Series of baseball, which is not open to the Saltillo Serape Makers and the Tabasco Olmecs of the Mexican League, nor the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters and the Chiba Lotte Marines of the Japanese Pacific League.
Conversely, the Don Carter Division of the Professional Bowlers Association World Championship — one of eight titles under the World Series of Bowling umbrella to be decided and 14 ESPN shows to be broadcast in the wee hours of the morning — featured two Englishmen, a Finn and a Jurek — crowd favorite Jack Jurek of Lackawanna, N.Y.
Alas, Jurek’s score through six frames was 81 while Dom Barrett’s was 169, and there went the Rust Belt’s best hope.
A total of 204 crankers and strokers and tweeners, representing a record 16 nations, are competing in the championships, which resume at 10 a.m. today in Exhibit Hall A — not the bowling center — on the South Point’s second-floor convention level.
This isn’t my old man’s PBA Tour. My old man’s PBA Tour was the guys the four divisions of the World Championship are named for — Carter (Don), Hardwick (Billy), Petraglia (Johnny), Aulby (Mike).
There weren’t any Englishmen nicknamed “British Beefcake,” which is what they call Stuart Williams of Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, on my old man’s PBA Tour.
(It should be noted, however, that with most of the beefcake hanging over his belt line, Williams would have fit right in with the guys from the mill and the lodge with whom my dad bowled on Monday and Thursday nights.)
The PBA in those days was much like the golf tour minus the sunshine and plaid slacks, plowing from one grimy town to the next.
During one stretch in 1969, when I was 12 and most enamored of bowling, the tour progressed — when it stopped snowing — from Paramus to Buffalo to Toledo to Milwaukee. After a respite to scrape ice and rust, it was on to Waukegan, Grand Rapids, Altoona and Newark.
Every one of those tournaments could have been called the Prestone Antifreeze Open.
To conserve time and money today, the world’s best bowlers convene in one place for multiple days where multiple “tournaments” are filmed for TV. Chris Schenkel or Bo Burton might not have approved, but these are today’s economics, and bowling isn’t immune to them.
Were my old man still around, he would take solace in the bowling tour having retained much of its beer-and-pretzels charm. When somebody in the crowd sneezed Saturday, the public address announcer said “God Bless You.”
Afterward, an attractive woman named Tina Stickney, the girlfriend of Stuart Williams, wrapped her arms around his ample middle, consoling him on his defeat and probably thanking Earl Anthony and the bowling gods they wouldn’t be driving to Altoona in the morning.
THREE UP
■ The Lady Rebels defeated Iowa of the Big Ten in a women’s basketball game last Sunday. It’s hard to say how impressive that will be at season’s end. But it looks sort of impressive now.
■ Former Lady Rebels coach Regina Miller has led Illinois-Chicago to a 3-0 start in her return as a college head coach with victories over Drake, Southeast Missouri State and Saint Louis. In another week, she also might have the “L” train Blue Line schedule committed to memory.
■ What happens in Las Vegas also happens in Homestead, Fla. If Carl Edwards holds off Tony Stewart to win the NASCAR Sprint Cup today, he will become the sixth series champion in the past 11 years to also have won at Las Vegas Motor Speedway during the same season.
THREE DOWN
■ Now he runs. Lon Kruger-coached Oklahoma (2-0) scored 92 points in a victory over Coppin State on Friday night, topping the Sooners’ season high of last year by eight points. Oklahoma scored 28 fast-break points, and OU fans are raving about Kruger’s up-tempo style.
■ After getting spun out by James Buescher in Friday night’s NASCAR Truck Series race, Kevin Harvick repeated four words to keep his anger in check. “Don’t be Kyle Busch … don’t be Kyle Busch …” It worked. Harvick didn’t retaliate. Not yet, anyway.
■ Anyone, anytime, anywhere … any lake. I didn’t know there was a college fishing championship, but that Fresno State had a commanding lead heading into the Western Regional final round doesn’t really surprise me.
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.
