Don Carter, RIP

"I believe he was the greatest bowler that ever lived. He was a master of any condition, great in the clutch and great coming from behind. He had all the attributes of a great athlete. He was there to bowl and to win. I often thought that if I could build a robot of the perfect bowler, I would take most of the parts from Don Carter." ~ Churck Pezzano, PBA charter member and historian

"It's hard to explain what makes Don so great. All I know is that he's the greatest thing that ever happened to bowling. He's fabulous, above and beyond everybody in the game." ~ Dick Weber, 1962 Bowlers Journal story

"Don was one of the greatest bowlers who ever lived, but he had some other things that made him great. He was a great athlete. He won two 100-game tournaments in one year and I don't know how many other bowlers could take that kind of punishment. And he had the ability to focus better than anyone I've ever seen. On the lanes, he was in his own world, but off the lanes, he was a true gentleman. I had a lot of respect for him, as a bowler and as a man." ~ Carmen Salvino

Don Carter died last night at the age of 85.

If you're reading this blog, you've surely heard of Don Carter even though he retired from professional bowling in 1972 and was at his peak from the 1950's through the early 60's. But if you're my age or older and have been a bowling fan most of your life, the name Don Carter is almost synonymous with godhood. He was that revered by bowlers and bowling fans all over the world.

His bowling accomplishments are the stuff of legend. Between 1953 and 1961, he was six-time national Bowler of the Year. He won the BPAA All-Star Tournament (now known as the U.S. Open) four times. He won seven PBA titles of which five were "majors," five World Invitational titles, the ABC Masters, and four other ABC tournament titles. He was lead off for the awesome five-man Budweiser team of St. Louis that shot an incredible 3,858 series in 1958 that stood as an untouchable national team record for 36 years. He was the first president of the PBA. He became a charter member of the PBA Hall of Fame in 1975. Bowling Magazine ranked him as the Greatest Bowler of All-time in 1970 and the second greatest bowler of the 20th century in a 2000 poll. Bowlers Journal awarded him the title of Bowler of the Century in 2000, and in 2009 he was voted the 11th greatest player in PBA history. He also bowled the first 800 series on TV when he shot 809 on "National Bowling Champions." The list of firsts and other great accomplishments could go on and on.

Yet, there was more to Don Carter's glittering success story than his performances on the lanes and the accolades he received for them. He appeared regularly in TV commercials and, believe it or not, in 1964 he became the first athlete in any sport to sign an endorsement contract for $1 million. The ten-year contract was with bowling equipment manufacturer Ebonite. And prior to his focusing his efforts on bowling, he was a high school All-Star football and baseball player and signed as an infielder and pitcher with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1946 but quit because of all the traveling, which he hated, to pursue bowling full time. Chuck Pezzano also remembers this of Carter: "One thing that many people didn't know is that he was very compassionate and helped a lot of people who might have fallen on hard times during his career."

If one peruses the PBA message board, where irreverence toward bowling and even bowling's biggest stars seems to be the rule rather than the exception, one sees nothing but respect for Don Carter and sadness over his passing. But as commenter Fred Lowenhaupt puts it: "It's always a sad time when one of our bowling heroes passes away. But with Don we should be celebrating his long productive life rather than the sadness of his passing at age 85."

I agree in principle, but my heart is filled with sadness. For as another commenter in the forum says, "Bowling is running out of legends," and, I may add, at a time when it can least afford it.

RIP Don Carter, bowling's original superstar.

You can read Bill Vint's excellent PBA.com article on Don Carter's life here, Terry Bigham's bowl.com obituary here, and below you can watch videos of the great Don Carter's stellar career on and off the lanes.

Ray Bluth Bowling Videos

Yesterday's anecdote about an alleged confrontation between Carmen Salvino and Ray Bluth sent me looking for bowling footage of Bluth, whom I revered as a boy for his unique peekaboo stance on the approach and his meticulously scientific approach to the game.

I found two video clips of him on YouTube. One is an Ebonite ball commercial in which he appears along with other bowling luminaries of the day including Salvino and briefly exhibits his aforementioned peekaboo stance, and the other is an absolutely delightful introduction to bowling featuring a pre-peek a boo Bluth as a member of the awesome Budweiser All Star team that dominated team bowling competition of that era. You can view both below.

Carmen Salvino's Cure for the Uncommon Cough

You're probably tired of all the talk, here and elsewhere, about "Bottlegate," and, frankly, so am I. Even though I've been focusing more on how people reacted to it and to the PBA's handling of it than I have on the incident itself, it's probably time to move on, unless something comes to light that merits further attention.

However, before I move on, I'd like to share with you a Facebook comment that someone left on the PBA page soon after the "Bottlegate" story broke. The comment recounts a confrontation between the mercurial Carmen Salvino and the impassively cerebral Ray Bluth. I don't know if this really happened, but it sure sounds like it could have, and it's a delightful little story of a colorful confrontation between two bowling legends in a bygone era:

"This exchange between Brad and Belmo reminds me of an incident involving Carmen Salvino and Ray Bluth a number of years ago. Both bowlers were facing each other in a major tournament. Every time Salvino would get up on the approach and get into his delivery, Bluth would start to cough. Salvino figured Bluth was doing this on purpose, playing head games and getting Carmen to mess up. Finally, Salvino turned around, pointed his finger in Bluth's face and said: "You cough one more time, I'll punch you in the nose!" Bluth said calmly: "Go ahead, you'll hear from my lawyer!" The coughing stopped. After the match, Salvino goes up to Bluth and says: "You owe me money!" Bluth says:"What the heck for?" Salvino yells: "For curing your damned cough. Dr.Salvino will send you a bill!"

Bowling Quote of the Day--3/29/10

"I've come to define success not in terms of winning or losing, or meeting other people's expectations, but by how I perform relative to my own capacities. If I feel I have done my best in a tournament, or a relationship, I consider it to be successful no matter how it turns out. There are things a person can control and things he can't, and there's no use worrying about the latter."
--Carmen Salvino, from his autobiography Fast Lanes

Xtra Frame's Roth and Belmo Show

"I never heard of a hambone."
--Mark Roth

"What do they say about Walter Ray? He can't do it without resin? Guess what. He's on the show with plastic."
--Jeff Mark

If you still don't have PBA Xtra Frame, let me tell you a little of what you missed today.

You missed seeing some great bowling. And the greatest of it all was Jason Belmonte ending the Round of 32 with a 299 game and 815 series for the last three games and then coming out of the blocks with a 300 (his third of the tournament) his first match of the Round of 32, sticking a solid 8 pin on the twelfth ball of his eighth game for a 299, and then rolling a 260 in the position round game to take the top spot for Sunday's five man stepladder final.

Belmo beat Mike Fagan for his first PBA title last year in this same house, but that was on a dual pattern where he piped a plastic ball in from the outside on the right lane's Cheetah pattern and threw reactive resin from deep inside on the left lane's Shark pattern. This time he'll be throwing the special Mark Roth plastic ball on the modified Shark pattern on both lanes, and, as awesomely as he's bowling now, he's definitely the one to beat.

Speaking a moment ago of Mark Roth, today brought a huge surprise. If you're reading this blog, you probably already knew this, but Mark Roth suffered a massive stroke last May that left him virtually speechless and almost completely paralyzed on his left side. After that, he fought to stay alive, has struggled with intensive rehabilitation, and, until recently, was going to the emergency room almost every day with one serious medical problem after another. But a few weeks before the GEICO Mark Roth Plastic Ball Championship this week in West Babylon, New York, he became a man possessed with the burning desire to walk into his own tournament.

When I heard a few days ago that he was actually planning to make it to the tournament, I thought he might stand for a brief moment and then sit in a wheelchair looking frail and feeble and hardly be able to talk. Then I saw some photos of him at the tournament Wednesday and Thursday that thrilled me with how good he looked.

Still, I could never have imagined what happened today. He sat in with "Bowling Doctor" Jeff Mark and announcer Mike J. "Laneside" on PBA Xtra Frame for the entire Round of 16 this afternoon and talked about everything from the bowlers today and their games to the brightest moments of his fabled career to his stroke and rehabilitation. And let me tell you, his body may still be weak, but his mind is strong.

He closely followed the action on the lanes and had an uncanny knack for calling whether and which pins would be left on the first ball almost as soon as it left the bowler's hand, and he had incredible recall of some of his past matches right down to whom he bowled, what games he shot, and which pins he left standing in this frame or that.

As much as I used to watch Mark Roth bowl on TV, and I've seen virtually every televised appearance he made, I got to know him far, far better today than I ever knew him before, and I was very gratified to hear him sound so good. It was also nice when his wife Denise sat in for awhile with him and talked about how grateful she and Mark were for all the help they've received during their arduous ordeal and how happy and uplifted Mark was to attend the tournament.

Let me tell you something else. Mark Roth is a man of strong opinions, and he doesn't hold back from expressing them. For instance, he doesn't approve of the two-handed game. "That's not the game I grew up with," he stated. He also doesn't like "hambones," he thinks the PBA should put the brakes on ball technology run amok and make competition more about the bowler's skill than about whether some ball rep puts the right ball in his hand, and he thinks Chris Barnes has a great physical game but needs to work on his mental game and stop "over-thinking" what he's doing on the lanes. He also said that Carmen Salvino was the guy who inspired him most to take up bowling and to hook the ball as much as he did, even though he had no sense at the time of his dominance on tour that he was changing the game as much as we can now see that he did. He also said that he never feared anyone when he bowled and that when you do fear your opponent, you've already lost.

Mark sat there for almost 2 1/2 hours smiling and looking happy, telling wonderful bowling tales, commenting on the matches taking place and the players bowling them, bluntly expressing opinions, and answering viewers' questions. It was a great time for everyone, myself included. And if you don't have Xtra Frame yet, I strongly suggest that you get it and watch today's Round of 16 on demand.

The five bowlers in Sunday's stepladder final will be, in ascending order, Michael Machuga, Wayne Garber, Walter Ray Williams Jr, hometown favorite Brian Ziesig, and, of course, the dazzling Jason Belmonte. What a fascinating mix of styles. What a promising field. And the incomparable Mark Roth will be there to oversee it all.

Does it get any better than that?

Bowling Quote of the Day--3/12/10

"I'd rather share memories about the matches I lost, because they were so few and far between."
--Carmen Salvino

After Round 2 of the TOC

I enjoyed watching some of the qualifying rounds of the TOC (Tournament of Champions) yesterday on PBA Xtra Frame. It was great seeing old timers such as Dave Soutar, Carmen Salvino, Ernie Schlegel, Johnny Petraglia, and Don McCune bowling with the youngsters. Surprisingly, Hall of Famer Wayne Webb is in eighth place after two rounds (16 games) of qualifying.

I'm pulling for Wayne, not only because he's always been one of my favorite bowlers and is a fellow Sacramentan, but he was also my ball driller until he left his Sacramento pro shop to bowl full time on the senior tour. Two years ago he watched me bowl, suggested a ball for me, drilled it the way he thought was best for my ball roll, and I took it right out of the box and shot 812 with it in league a few nights later. That ball fits me better than any I've ever had and works very well for me. Thank you Wayne, and hang in there this week.

Another surprise is that Kelly Kulick is in sixth place after two rounds. I'd like to see her make it to the televised finals and challenge the men for the championship. But she may have to get past the likes of Rhino Page, Pete Weber, and Tommy Jones--first, second, and third place respectively after the second round--to win it all. And Walter Ray is, as usual, still in the hunt in 14th place. Yesterday I saw him move from an outside line in the first round to more of an inside line than you almost ever see him play and still hit the pocket consistently and carry pretty well. That may not be his A game, but he usually finds a way to get it done no matter what. I'd like to see him win it all this year and add to his resume what has so far been an elusive championship.

I don't know what's been happening with Norm Duke lately. We've heard nothing from him since his Cheetah Championship win at the WSOB in Detroit, and he had to pull out of the competition yesterday after the 12th game. That must have been very difficult for him seeing as how focused he is on winning majors. But I hope to see him back at his best soon.

Later today, the bowlers will complete the final 8 game round of qualifying and then the top 24 will advance to match play this evening. Match play should be a lot of fun to watch tonight on Xtra Frame with all the expert commentary that will go along with it.