Today, I made a purchase that I hope will help my bowling future long-term:  there was a deal on woot.com on a refurbished Canon ZR950 camcorder that I couldn’t pass up.  Being in possession of my own camcorder will mean I’ll be able to post video of my bowling online in the future (my best friend Ed gifted a Firewire card for my computer for Christmas, and I also found a deal on a Firewire cable to connect the camcorder today) for analysis and critique by my bowling friends online.  I will likely be posting on YouTube, though I also have other hosting available, which will allow me to link or embed the source video so that people can do stop-motion analysis of the video in a media player (likely Windows Media Player, as I only have Windows Movie Maker to edit the video with).

I haven’t really had anything to say until now about the recent controversy between PBA Tour star Wes Malott and Michael Wilbon of ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption,” so pardon me if any of this has been said before elsewhere…

My feeling is that two things can be done in an attempt to level the playing field for the proposed challenge match:

1. Have the match on something like the Ultimate Scoring Championship pattern (maybe even my house’s own Coke Classic League pattern).  This should provide enough of a challenge to Malott while giving Wilbon a decent chance of scoring.
2. Give Michael Wilbon the advantage of reactive resin and force Malott to use a plastic ball.  This has the added benefit of allowing Malott to show the world what he can do with the plastic stuff, which he didn’t have the opportunity to do when he skipped the Plastic Ball Championship.

My bet is on this happening two weeks from now at the Go RV’ing Match Play Championship…Malott will be in the vicinity of ESPN headquarters and studios then, which will allow Wilbon to not have to travel a long distance for this.

The PBA announced today that the upcoming Women’s Series Showdown will use a novel scoring format devised by PBA Hall of Famer Johnny Petraglia that ignores pinfall and instead counts the number of balls needed to clear the pin deck in each frame. The Petraglia System is similar to golf scoring: a strike counts as a score of 1, a typical spare 2, and something like a 7-10 split normally resulting in a score of 3, with misses escalating the total. As in golf, low score wins, and a perfect Petraglia System game is a score of 10 (a strike in every frame). It will be interesting to see how well-received this format becomes.

Just wanted to mention a few made-for-TV bowling events coming up during the spring:

• The PBA, in partnership with Strike Ten Entertainment, has announced a new five-week series called “King of the Hill” that will air on ESPN on Wednesday nights starting April 22. It will feature the top ten bowlers on the PBA Player of the Year points list, plus a wild card. Basically, it’s two one-game matches each show featuring two bowlers in the first match with the winner going on to face the “king” (the PBA Player of the Year will be the “king” on the first show) in the second match. There will be $100,000 in prize money up for grabs in the series, which will be contested at the Kegel Training Facility in Florida.
• The article linked above also mentions the PBA Women’s Series Showdown, which will feature the five winners in the regular PBA Women’s Series events, plus Missy Bellinder, who finished second to Michelle Feldman when the latter won her second title of the season. This will also take place at the Kegel Training Facility, with a format to be announced, and will air on ESPN on April 12.
• Finally, Bowling’s Clash of Champions will return for a second season, and will air on CBS on May 9. An interesting development is that the husband and wife team of Chris and Lynda Barnes will be in the field, setting up a potential husband vs. wife final match, which will prove very interesting if it comes about.

My brother called me around 10 this morning and told me he would be available for another bowling outing, so I took full advantage of the opportunity to get some practice work in, focusing on keeping my backswing short. To put it in brief, I had the best series I’ve had in a while, a 656. I still need to be consistent on my spares, however, as 2 open frames (a single 6 and a single 10) ruined a game in which I had the front 6 for a 234. I finished all 3 games (first a 217 and then a 205) strong, however, so that can be taken as a good sign.

Thought I’d note my bowling outing with my brother today: I was no great shakes, but did have one game (a 187) that was over my league average. He was consistently in the 120s, so he may have had his best series to date (though I told him I thought the one he had the 166 game in back in November might have been his best).

I’m likely not practicing on Monday because of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday (kids will be out of school, so the center will be charging their normal rate).

I could have posted this as part of the last post, but I felt I could devote a separate post to my new bowling shirt. I bought it at the pro shop for $35, but I also needed to take it to the local EmbroidMe to have the back work done, which cost me another $18 (so figure about $2/letter for the work). I wanted the shirt mostly for tournaments, but I figured I’d show it off tonight in league (I’ll have to do it again next week so Ray can see the finished product.). Photos below…

On the occasion of its approval by the United States Bowling Congress, I’d thought I’d finally get around to posting about Rich Jerome, Jr.’s perfect series. WJZ in Baltimore did an excellent piece on the feat, which may be the best piece on bowling done by non-bowling people that I’ve seen yet.

Congratulations Rich! 😀

All told, between my brother and sister, I received $80 in Westgate Lanes gift cards for Christmas, which should take care of practice for the near future. My sister also gave me a miniature tabletop bowling game (where you roll a steel ball on a miniature lane at miniature pins) as a stocking stuffer.

Last night, however, I saw Dave, Debbie, and Melissa, the bowling cousins, and Dave related to me that he recently shot his first games of 200 or over, so I congratulated him on the accomplishment. I’ve been casually following their Friday night TNBA League and I noted to Melissa the improvement she has made since the summer. I don’t know if the family is going to get together for bowling while my cousins from Texas are in town, but Debbie did tell me prior to Christmas that if anything happens, it would be something spontaneous and not planned. I did ask her, however, to call me if anything came up.

I had been contacted during the week that I was invited to the bachelor party, which took place today, for one of my high school running buddies. Although I learned later that part of the party had taken place at the mall before I joined them, I joined them at the lanes, as part of the party involved bowling. Not many of the others were good bowlers (though a couple of them had their moments), so it was pretty much a treat for them to watch me, and I tried to oblige them.

I had a first game in the 160s, hoping I could give them a 200, and after being notified that that part of the party was being cut short to 2 games, I buckled down (with some help from the fact that I was offered the chance to finish out for one of the other members of the party who was on my lane), and had only one open in the second game, giving a chance (with an earlier double and a strike in the 9th) to get a strike and count in the 10th for 200, which I had with my best shot of the day and a stone 7 on the first fill ball, missing the spare for a 204.

While I was still with the party, we visited a couple of other places in Brockton that were important in the groom’s life before repairing to the groom’s house for a brief acoustic jam session featuring a couple of members of the party, followed by a buffet dinner at one of the local Italian restaurants. The groom’s brothers met us at the restaurant, and my good game was brought up. I asked the organizer of the party what had been the inspiration to have part of the party at the lanes, and he told me the whole theme was stuff in Brockton, and that it was serendipity that one of the people in the party (me) was a good bowler. There would be more stuff for the party after dinner, but stuff I did not want to hang around for, and I took a cab home.

As this weekend’s NEBA tournament at Westgate Lanes was getting started near the time we had to leave, I was able to say hello to Alex Aguiar while I was there, and got him caught up a bit on my own bowling activity. I plan on going back to the lanes tomorrow to catch some more of the NEBA action.

Michael Fagan to appear on “Time Warp”

This should be a fun show to watch. Fagan is one of the higher-rev guys on the tour, and having the show’s super-slo-mo cameras catch his release could be instructive. The show airs on Discovery Channel @ 8 PM ET and will be repeated at midnight ET.

There was a possibility that my brother and I could go bowling today, and in his email message during the week, he told me that if he didn’t call by 3:00 PM today that I could assume that we weren’t going. When 3:00 PM hit with no call, I decided to go on my milk run. As it turned out, I met my brother on the way to the gas station where I’ve been purchasing my milk when my brother doesn’t bring it over, and we decided to go bowling anyway.

I could take a lane that has the Monday night shot on Monday afternoons when I practice, but I usually want the normal league condition when I practice, so I usually practice on one of the lanes near the control desk, which aren’t used by the Coke Classic League. Today, however, I decided to test myself, knowing the Monday night shot would be down for the People’s Tournament’s year-end special tournament this weekend, and asked for a lane with that shot. We had to wait a bit when we got there because the lane man hadn’t moved the cord to the oil machine in the process of putting down the tournament shot on the lanes that would be used by the tournament.

I got an encouraging sign in the series I bowled on the lane Junior put us on: 587, 47 pins better than my current league average on the normal league condition. As I struggled in the past trying to play an inside line on the shot, I resolved to try to play where I normally play the normal league condition (which usually has me starting standing on board 17, targeting around 6 at the arrows; the people seeing my league nights on BowlSK will know), and I was succeeding in spades. My first game was a 190, but I found a good groove in the second game, hitting on 6 in a row en route to a 221. Carry-down forced me to move a board further outside and try to slow down, but I had a few bad shots in the last game, and could only manage a 176. A lot of the time, I tried something “CoachJim” suggested…uncupping my wrist at release to give me an earlier reaction, and I seemed to learn it well. After this series, I’m much more willing to try a tournament again, knowing I have a chance to do well on the tournament condition.

I saw a few people I normally see while bowling on Wednesday nights, Sally Toppan, Ralph Marple, and Sean Richard, while bowling with my brother, and made sure they were introduced to my brother. I also made an introduction to Jon Corda in the pro shop while we were waiting for the lane, so if I mention any of these people to my brother when I’m talking about my bowling, he has an idea whom I am talking about now.

Today was the usual shopping day with my brother, but, as he was running late and we couldn’t hook up with our sister for lunch, we decided to have a late lunch without her and go bowling after shopping. My performance in the outing was pretty non-descript, with only one game over my league average, while my brother had 2 games 20 pins or more over 100, so he probably would’ve carried the day had I given him handicap. One thing I did get sorted out in the outing, however, was how to make my 2-4-5 leave, which has been giving me all sorts of problems. I missed one, but made an adjustment in my stance for two others, both of which I made.

This post is more about my brother than myself. We went on another bowling outing today, and, in the second game, I got more than I bargained for when he shot a personal best 166 game, and at that point, I needed to mark in the 10th to beat him. Always up for a pressure situation, I flushed three in the 10th for a 194, but I was proud of my brother for making things interesting in that game. He may be starting to “get it” a little bit. 😀

I had another bowling outing with my brother today, and, for the first game, anyway, it looked like it would be a repeat of my birthday outing, as I was clean with 5 in a row going into the 10th frame of the first game. However, I would leave the 4-6 split in the 10th frame for a 226 and I really wasn’t the same afterward, as I could only manage a pair of games in the 170s the rest of the way. My second game also only had one open, but it was a spare shooting show similar to what I had in league the other night. I would rather forget my last game, as I missed a single 4 and a 4-7; it seems my left side spares have been giving me more trouble than the right side lately. It was good fun, all the same, and my brother needed the outing after dealing with my father, who had been hospitalized, all week.

Just a few quick thoughts about today’s PBA Tour telecast opener:

• Of the NBA stars, I thought Chris Paul (of course) had the best form; he just didn’t get the breaks LeBron James did in the final match.
• I haven’t seen much of Jason Couch pre-knee-surgery, but this untrained eye couldn’t tell he had it. If he keeps up this level in the regular tour season, he’s going to be deadly once again.
• Finally, what is Ebonite thinking in their ad campaign? An annoying guy who only appeals to the dumb bowler stereotype. You’d think the #1 name in bowling balls could do better.