December 2, 1902 – The Semi-Weekly Messenger – This Day in Bowling History

Orange, N.J. is facing a coal famine. Small quantities of coal are received daily, but the supply is not equal to one-third of the demand, says the New York Times. One man, a proprietor of a large amusement place, has succeeded in keeping his home warm in spite of the lack of coal.

For a long time it was a mystery how he managed, and at last one day, some one opened the furnace door and saw what appeared to be a lot of bottles blazing away furiously. Others were summoned to view the seeming miracle, and at last the proprieotor came along and explained that the objects that looked so much like bottles were in reality, tenpins.

He explained that in the years he had maintained bowling alleys in the place, an almost countless number of tenpins had become too battered to be serviceable. They were made of hardwood and were saturated with varnish, so that when fired they furnished a hotter blaze and lasted as long as a coal fire. The man says he has a supply sufficient to last well into the winter.

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ALVARADO, Texas. Ben Coleman and Sam Lane have just concluded a game of ten-pins here that is believed to be without a precedent in the history of the state.

The game lasted 25 hours without intermission, except five or six minutes at meal time. It began as such games usually do, but soon drifted into a test of physical endurance. When twenty-five hours had elapsed, friends intervened and prevailed upon the players to desist. They rolled 930 games and made over 2,300 ten-strikes.

Good feeling prevailed throughout. There was nothing at stake but the fees. Lane won about 65 percent of the games. Coleman is 51 years old and Lane is 38. There was no sign of weakening on either side and how long the game would have continued if the friends had not interfered, nobody knows. The staying qualities of both men are above par just now.

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It’s been 15 years since a team won back-to-back National Basketball Association championships (Boston, 1968-69). It’s been six years since a team won back-to-back World Series (New York Yankees, 1977-78). It’s been four years since a team won back-to-back National Football League championships (Pittsburgh, 1979-80). However, it’s only been a week since a bowler won back-to-back Super Hoinke Classics, and the feat will probably rank right up there with those of the Celtics, Yankees and Steelers, if only for the unique circumstances surrounding it.

By all rights, Tampa’s Larry Barwick, by way of Wauchula, should have never defended his title at Cincinnati’s Western Bowl last weekend and should have followed his doctor’s advice and stayed home. By all rights, Barwick should be $300 poorer, rather than $40,000 richer. By all rights, someone should have been saying rites over Barwick’s bruised and battered body days before he sailed through nine straight opponents, concluding with a 214-196 win over Louisville’s Alan Bishop for the grand prize.

Berwick’s successful march through one of bowling’s most prestigious tournaments was achieved despite a broken left collarbone sustained two weeks prior and despite the knowledge that no one, outside of perhaps the greatest bowler of all time. Earl Anthony, could participate in 18 consecutive one-game matches in two years and never lose. But, Barwick, who collected $30,000 for last year’s winning effort for a $70,000 haul In two years, did just that.

A few weeks ago, Barwick was participating in a Professional Bowlers Association tournament In Detroit, one of several on the PBA’s fall tour. Barwick and regular tour members Pete Weber and Brian Voss were leaving the lanes’ parking lot en route to supper when “I eased out In traffic too soon in the car and I got hit. I was thrown against the door, and I guess the pressure snapped my left collarbone.”

Barwick came home the next day, and his first question to the doctor was when could he return to the lanes. “The doctor said in two weeks if I could stand the pain,” said Barwick.

“I shouldn’t have been at the Hoinke,” said Barwick, “because I was still hurting from my accident, and the doctor told me the broken collarbone would take six weeks to properly heal. But, two weeks after the accident (the Monday before the Super Hoinke Classic), I went to Florida Lanes and bowled eight frames. I had to quit because I couldn’t stand the pain. On Tuesday. I bowled two games, and it felt a little better.

“1 called Tracy Hoinke (tournament manager) in Cincinnati, and he said he couldn’t refund my money. So, I decided to go up there anyway, just to see if I could bowl. I didn’t roll any more practice games between Tuesday and my first match on Friday in Cincinnati.

“When I arrived in Cincinnati, Hoinke told me he would refund my money. I couldn’t see traveling all the way up there and not trying to bowl, so I said no”.

“I won my first two matches on Friday, then drew a bye for Saturday’s action. On Sunday, because of the injury, I didn’t expect to win. I was relaxed and I believe the soreness actually caused me to slow down. I could concentrate better.”
As in all match plays, especially one-game affairs, luck must be on the side of the champion, and Barwick had two examples.

“I bowled a woman who rolled 201. All I needed was a mark to win. I decided to change my angle a little to the right, and I threw the first ball in the channel. Now, I have to strike for the spare in order to win. 1 did and barely won.

“Then, another opponent needed a strike and a spare to beat me by one pin. He got the first strike, then left the 3-6-10. He only got two pins on the fill ball, and we tied. In the roll-off, I spared, struck and spared for 40, and he struck and opened.” In the championship match, “I knew this guy (Bishop) was young and inexperienced and a little tight. He left five 7-pins.”

Now, Barwick is making plans for the 1985 PBA Winter Tour, in which he will room with good friend Tommy Crites as they travel from city to city. The $40,000 may make those long trips a mite cheerier.

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SYOSSET, N.Y. – Norm Duke won the closest Professional Bowlers Association final match in history when he defeated David Traber at the Cambridge Credit Classic.

Duke and Traber tied the final match at 245 and matched scores on the first two ‘one-ball’ roll-offs, 9-9 and 10-10. Duke won the third roll-off 10-9 and earned $40,000 for his 20th career title.

In the semifinals, Duke defeated Doug Kent 255-245 and Traber beat Hugh Miller 238-209.
Mike Wolfe of New Albany, Ind., lost his round-of-32 match and earned $2,250.

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BY RICHARD LORANT
Associated Press

BOSTON — Every Saturday morning for 38 years, thousands of New England TV viewers have been tuning in to watch a cheapo-looking production from a bowling alley.

Sweating contestants on “Candlepin .Bowling” vie for a share of $1,200 in prize money as their loved ones and other spectators cheer from a set of bleachers behind them.

But now the show is about to bowl its last frame. The beloved “Candlepin Bowling” is going off the air Jan. 27.

“Name another show that’s been on for 38 years. You can’t,” said Phil Rubin, who has produced it for most of that time. “Old Faithful the geyser is always there, and ‘Candlepin Bowling’ is always there.”

WCVB, Boston’s ABC affiliate, said it was forced to cancel the show to pump more money into its news operation. It’s shopping the show around to other stations, but there are no takers yet.

Candlepins is a regional variant of bowling that uses thin pins and balls small enough for an adult to palm. Players get three chances instead of two to knock down 10 pins, and pins in the alley are not swept away between shots.

News that the show is on its way out was met with dismay from dozens of league bowlers at Fairway Bowling in Natick, where the program has been taped for two decades.

“Everything stops at my home on Saturdays. I don’t answer the telephone anymore,” said Eleanor Bartholomew of Needham, one of the Ten O’clock Rollers who bowls every week at the 40-year-old lanes. “If I miss it, I tape it,” added Barbara Herber of Natick, another Roller.
Half the program’s audience consists of women older than 50, like Bartholomew and Herber, and nearly all the viewers are older than 35, WCVB says.

The show draws an average of 178,000 viewers and consistently rates in the station’s top 10 sports programs of the weekend, said WCVB research director Adri-enne Lotoski. Sometimes it draws more viewers than the Red Sox or the Celtics.

Part of the show’s appeal is that it has remained a constant in a changing world. Loyal viewers watched when Joe Cawlina hammered strikes in the 1950s, and when Tom Olszta picked up tough spares in .the 1990s. They watched all-time women’s standout Stasia Czernicki, and they’ll be watching her son John on the final broadcast next month.

And they watched Don Gillis, who was hired to do color for the first live broadcast in 1958 and took over the host’s duties a decade later. Gillis, still the host at 73, said he understands WCVB’s decision. In 1958, the station wouldn’t pick up the show until the Massachusetts Bowling Association agreed to underwrite part of the costs.

“The station said all right, but we’ll only guarantee it will be on 13 weeks,” Gillis said. “Here we are, talking about its demise nearly 40 years later.”

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Bowling in the Buffalo Recreation Club League of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, has almost become a case of the tenpin tale wagging the all-other-sports dog.

The tenpin bowling league, which began as a club activity in 1962, has fast outdistanced, in popularity, the other offerings’ softball, five-pin bowling and curling. The club is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 1973.

Officers credit the popularity of the club’s tenpin league to its unique features, including an inter-locking schedule, match point format, attention to the lower average members, newsletter, social events, instruction clinics and an annual tournament.

Since the club has both men and women members, the league is mixed, too, being 60 percent male and 40 percent female. Last season league membership had swelled to 200 regular bowlers, from 64 members 10 years ago. The league bowls at Birchwood Bowl and includes the manager and his wife, Hal and Pat Ross, who have been instrumental in promoting tenpins in Winnipeg.

The league has five divisions, each with eight five-member teams, all bowling on Wednesday evenings.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Tom Baker got a second chance in Saturday’s $150,000 Budweiser Classic bowling tournament, and he took advantage of it for his first victory in three years.

Baker, of Buffalo, N.Y., put himself in a hole midway through the title match against Storm DeVincent of Tamarac, Fla., leaving splits in the third, fourth and sixth frames to give DeVincent momentum.

However, DeVincent opened in the fifth frame, letting Baker back in the match. “After I left that third split, 1 thought I was done,” said Baker, who won his sixth Professional Bowlers Association event.

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December 2, 1960 – The Alameda Times Star – This Day in Bowling History

WATERTOWN, Mass. (LTD — The graying, distinguished looking man took the familiar, quick steps of the bowler and sent his ball racing toward the pins at the end of the alley. His aim was not quite perfect and as he waited for the returning ball and a second shot, he fingered a special electronic device at the alley’s edge.

BLIND FOR 32 YEARS
It was much more than just another bowling game. The man was Rhode Island Supreme Court Justice William E. Powers who has been totally blind for 32 years. Most of his audience’last night could no more see Powers than he could see the candlepins. They were the sightless youngsters of the Perkins School for the Blind. The crash of the pins told the story for them. Blind Justice Powers had successfully dedicated their new, specially equipped bowling alley and opened up another field of activity for the sightless.

With the help of an electronic device called “Bowlaide.” Judge Powers knew exactly where the
pins had fallen. The little box translates the action of the 10 pins into Braille. The bowler knows which pins are still standing and can keep score for himself.

VALUES WORTH WHILE
The alleys will permit the Perkins students to practice without aid from sighted friends. An improvement in their scoring will improve their confidence. “When we go to outside alleys now we won’t feel so strange,” one explained.

“It takes longer to be an effective blind bowler than a seeing bowler, but we feel the values are well-worth it,” said Perkins Principal Benjamin Smith.

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Duane Fisher captured his first Professional Bowlers Association title, edging Jess Stayrook 248-244 in the title match of the Budweiser Touring Players Championship in Taylor, Mich.

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. (UPI) — Mark Roth, Spring Lake Heights, N.J., all but sealed PBA Player of the Year honors Saturday when he defeated close friend Marshall Holman, 194-177, to win the $150,000 Angle Touring Players Championship. It was the fourth victory of the year for Roth and the 32nd of his 14-year career on the Professional Bowlers Association circuit.

The $27,000 first prize also gave Roth the 1984 earnings title with $158,712, second highest in PBA history.
Holman, Jacksonville, Oregon, finished second in the money race with 118,920, including the 15,000 he collected Saturday.

Pete Weber, St. Louis, another contender for Player of the Year honors going into the championship round, finished third, followed by Dale Eagle, Chicago, and Rickie Sajek, Tamarac. Fla.

Holman defeated Weber. 206-204, in the semifinal contest. Earlier, Weber had eliminated Sajek, 230-215, and Eagle, 200-167.

In the finale. Roth, 33, took command late in the game when he rolled strikes in the seventh and eighth frames — the only double in the match.

“Marshall is a good friend and a great bowler,” said Roth, who also won three consecutive Player of the Year honors from 1977-79. “But I just got lucky today and knocked down more pins. “Of course, you hate to lead a tournament and then lose it on TV.”

Weber, who earned $9,000 for third, finished the year No. 3 on the money list with $115,735. Eagle collected $7,000 for fourth and Sajek, a two-time winner this year, $6,000 for fifth. Sajek finished the year sixth on the money list with $103,455.

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