The Tenth Board

I just wanted to let everyone know that I attended the Brockton Bowling Association Hall of Fame Dinner last night, and I had a great time at the event. There may not have been many bowlers at the event, but it’s something I hope grows in the future. Ray noted at the start of the festivities that over 400 people annually attend the dinner for the Rochester (NY) bowling association (where Ray is from), and, while we may not have that many, I’m sure Ray shares my wish for Brockton’s event to grow.

I wanted to say that Fred Delfino stole the night, sharing his stories of bowling in the area back in the 60s, especially the open challenge match story about how his crew went to Albany, NY, beat the team there, and the Albany team refusing to come to Boston to complete the challenge. The BBA doesn’t have the link to Fred’s achievements up on the new web site (yet), but Fred is also notable for being a founding member of NEBA, which is the longest-running amateur scratch tournament organization in the nation. To top it, Fred had been the manager of North Bowl for 33 years, and was known there for his work with the youth league, which, at its peak, had 300 youth bowlers participating on Saturdays.

Here is the Brockton USBC Bowling Association Hall of Fame Class of 2009:

L-R: John Ellis, Steve Travers, Jim Ferguson, Fred Delfino

Links to the profiles of the three inducted for bowling achievement can be found on the association’s Hall of Fame page. Also, thanks to the Brockton Bowling Association’s officers and board of directors for organizing the night, especially Ray DiSanto Jr. for handling the minutia.

Today, I had another bowling outing with my brother. However, this time, we were joined by my sister, her husband, and their two sons, and we went to the Ryan Family Amusement Center in Raynham for duckpin bowling, something I had never tried, even though I’ve had occasion to previously.

It was interesting to me to see how my tenpin skills transferred to duckpin. My main problem was that, although I had seen enough duckpin bowling on TV in my youth to know that the game plays similar to candlepin (where you have to try to keep the ball straight rather than try to hook it), my ball still wanted to move right to left. I tried to combat that tendency by starting on the left side of the lane and trying to go over somewhere around the third arrow walking toward that spot, but I had too varying degrees of success to really score well.

This is not to say I didn’t have my moments. In the fifth frame of the first game, I had something that would be considered an unusual spare leave in tenpin and picked it up, and I had a “Brooklyn” ball (to use the familiar tenpin term) that might have been a strike except that I missed on the first ball, so that was only scored a spare. Toward the end, I had what I thought was my best moment. I had a perfect ball that hit the 1-3 pocket and left just the 10 pin, and I did what I do for my tenpin 10 pin: moved left, went over the third arrow, and (this time) kept it straight to pick off the 10 for a spare. My brother-in-law only paid for an hour and a half, so we had to cut the second game short.

The occasion was my brother-in-law’s birthday, so my brother and I gave him our gifts before leaving the place, and I told my sister that, although the outing was fun, it was my desire to show my nephews what I can do on a tenpin lane sometime in the future. I hope she listens.