Sport: Congress Bowls

Judged by numbers, the U. S. Congress at Washington is a drop in the bucket compared to the Congress that assembled last week in New York. The American Bowling Congress is not only the biggest Congress in the U. S. but also the biggest sport event in the world. In the A. B. C. tournament, 22,000 bowlers, representing the cream of the country’s crop of 9,000,000, bowl for eight weeks to determine five-man, two-man and individual U. S. bowling championships. The Congress costs $100,000. Entry fees total $218,000 ($5 apiece from each contestant for each event) of which $145,000 will be distributed as prizes. Last week in the 212th Coast Artillery Armory, equipped with banners, grandstands, 28 brand-new alleys and a midway, New York’s plump little Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia bowled the first ball. It rolled ignominiously into the gutter and Congress was in session.

Congress Week. Not all of the 22,000 delegates to the American Bowling Congress bowl at the same time. They arrive in installments, bowl, post scores and depart. Until bowling alleys—pine, shellacked seven times—have been used for a fortnight or more, experts find them unsatisfactory. Consequently, earliest events scheduled at the Congress are those for the least competent entrants. Last week’s competitors were mostly “booster” teams, from in or near New York. Best individual score of the week was 690, posted by one Jim Reinsmith of Syracuse.

Bowling is almost as old as history. Ten pins, which is modern U. S. bowling, started when nine pins was declared illegal in 1875. Father of U. S. bowling was Joseph (“Uncle Joe”) Thum, whose two alleys under the German restaurant he ran on New York’s Greenwich Street in 1880 comprised the first U. S. “bowling academy.” He was the organizer and perennial president of the United Bowling Clubs which formed the American Bowling Congress in 1895. He died last January, just too soon to witness the first Bowling Congress ever held where U. S. bowling started.

Any bowler properly registered with the A. B. C. can bowl in the tournament by paying an entrance fee. If bowlers were allowed more than three games in each event the Congress would probably never adjourn. Since three games do not permit any more thorough demonstration of skill than nine holes of golf or half an hour of poker, a member of the small company of really top-class bowlers in the U. S. is not much more likely to win the individual championship than a member of the large class of able bowlers who can average 200 points a game. Delegates to the A. B. C. bring their own rubber composition bowling balls, with holes specially drilled to fit their fingers. The balls are carried in tailored leather or canvas cases.

Before the tournament ends, Congressmen will have used 40,170 Brunswick-Balke-Collender King Pins, changed after each team bowls. Bowling pins are turned from kiln-dried maple, cut from the ten feet nearest the base of old maple trees. They cost $11.85 a set of ten, sell—like the A. B. C.’s 28 alleys—at a discount when the tournament is over.

In addition to their own bowling balls, A. B. C. delegates have their own language. A bowler is a “kegler,” from Uncle Joe Thum’s German word for bowling, Kegelspiel. “Hitting the pocket” is bowling into the triangle of pins between the pin that forms the triangle’s apex and its right-hand neighbor. This usually results in a “strike”—knocking all ten pins down with the first ball. Twelve strikes in a row are a perfect game (300 points), of which there have been only four in the A. B. C.’s 42-year history. Ordinarily a bowler gets two shots (if necessary) at each set of pins. The two shots are a “frame.” A game is ten frames. Each pin bowled over counts one point. “Blowing a spare” is missing a pin left standing after a first bowl which failed to be a strike.

“Pinnage” is the aggregate score of a bowler.

Never a socialite sport, bowling has long since lived down the opprobrium it once enjoyed as bootleg nine pins. Currently, it is one of the innumerable pastimes of Hollywood celebrities like Carole Lombard, Gary Cooper, Lee Tracy, and Harold Lloyd. Less famed but far abler than such celebrities are bowlers like Mort Lindsey, Andy Varipapa, Jimmy Smith, Hank Marino, Barney Spinella, Joe Falcaro. They make a substantial living from a sport which makes no distinction between amateurs and professionals. Captain of a team entered in the current A. B. C. tournament by Jack Dempsey, to publicize his Manhattan restaurant, Mort Lindsey has an average of 201 for 23 years, has bowled 15 perfect games. Smith at 54 is the oldest top-notch U. S. bowler. He and Spinella are the only bowlers who have twice won the A. B. C. All-Events championship—for best total score for all three events. Andy Varipapa is the world’s ablest trick-shot bowler. Varipapa specialties: lining up 18 pins in two rows just wide enough apart to permit a ball to pass between them, making the ball swerve so that it knocks down the last pin in the left-hand row; giving a 16-lb. bowling ball so much reverse spin that it stops halfway up the alley and comes back to him; or setting up two pins in one alley and one in another, knocking down both pins in the first alley so that the first one pops into the next alley and knocks down its pin also.

Most unfortunate bowler at last week’s Congress was famed Joe Falcaro, who has bowled 37 perfect games in 24 years.

Eight years ago, beady-eyed little Falcaro, whose right thumb is approximately twice as big as his left, won bowling’s nearest equivalent to a true U. S. championship— the match-game title, for which claimants can challenge the holder. He promptly retired to his Manhattan bowling academy, hung up a sign advertising himself as the “undefeated match-game champion.” Eager to prove that a high-class bowler really can win the A. B. C. individual championship, Champion Falcaro last week set out for the Congress on the first day, fractured his wrist when his taxi hit another car. He got the date of his appearance postponed a month, went home to wait for his wrist to mend.