Dick Allen Is BWAA's Kegel Bowler of the Month for April 2011

Congratulations to Dick "Ritchie" Allen for winning the April 2011 Kegel Bowler of the Month award from the Bowling Writers Association of America. Allen won the season-ending 2011 PBA Dick Weber Playoffs title.

If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you probably know that I'm not Mr. Allen's biggest fan, but I still want to give credit where credit is due.

You can read more about Dick Allen's award here.

A Modest Proposal for Next Year's Dick Weber PBA Playoffs

I've posted several entries on the televised Dick Weber PBA Playoffs that concluded last Sunday. Much of what I've had to say since Sunday has not been as complimentary as I would have liked it to be.

I criticized Dick Allen for acting like...well...a dick. I blasted the blaring "horns from hell" that marred what might otherwise have been good about the telecast. I voiced objections about the formats of the qualifying and final rounds. And I shared comments and criticisms from other people who watched Sunday.

About.com's Bowling Guide Jef Goodger has posted an excellent column (PBA Playoffs a Great Idea, But Could Be More Meaningful) that, among other things, offers suggestions about how the PBA might improve the Dick Weber PBA Playoffs to make them a better season-ending playoff event. Although I recommend that you read the entire column, here is the crux of his advice:

"Take the top 16 point leaders from the season and put them in the finals. This way, it's a true playoff...Give them all a payday and let the fans see the world's best go against the world's best for a few weeks to determine the ultimate PBA Playoffs champion."

What do you think of Mr. Goodger's suggestion?

Video of Televised Dick Weber PBA Playoffs Finals

Here are the three televised games of the semifinal and final matches of the 2011 Dick Weber PBA Playoffs that took place Sunday, April 17 in Indianapolis, IN. The first match featured Chris Barnes, Randy Weiss, and Dick Allen. The players with the two highest scores advanced to the final match consisting of two games.

Bowling Quote of the Day--Is it Dick or Ritchie Allen?

"What is Allen's name? He used to bowl as Ritchie Allen, but recently he said he wants to be called Dick Allen. We oblige, and he wears a shirt with "Richie Allen" on the back."

--Jef Goodger, About.com Bowling Guide

Dick Allen Lives Up to His New First Name in Season Ending Dick Weber PBA Playoff Finals

"Sometimes the villain dresses in white."

--Dick Allen

Yesterday's televised finals of the Dick Weber PBA Playoffs marked the end of the 2010-2011 PBA Tour season. I'm always sorry to see the season come to a close. But this year I'm especially sorry that it ended with the obnoxious blaring of vuvuzelas and a victory by a guy who lived up to his four-letter first name over the guy I wanted to win.

Even though I don't like his bowling style, I respect Dick Allen's bowling skill. I even respect the fact that when Randy Pedersen asked him after the match how he felt about Chris Barnes' two consecutive pocket 7-10's late in the second game, he told the truth. He said he loved it because it gave him the chance he needed to sow up the match.

What I didn't respect were his comments several weeks ago in the tournament when he crowed about ending Walter Ray's chances of extending his record string of consecutive years of winning at least one title, and his whole demeanor yesterday, including his taunting stare at Chris Barnes at one point in the match as though it were Wrestlemania instead of professional bowling, and his deliberately throwing his fill ball in the tenth frame off the wrong foot and striking after winning the first game, and then saying, "I like salt, especially in a wound."

To me, Dick Allen habitually acts like an obnoxious jerk. I don't know if he does it on purpose just to stir up himself and everyone else, or if it's just the way he is. But one thing's for sure. Whenever he bowls, I'll be rooting for the other guy (or gal).

I did chuckle at something Randy Pedersen said during the telecast. He said that Allen liked to brag about beating Chris Barnes ten years ago in a PBA regional, and that Barnes had responded by saying, "For Ritchie, that was the greatest moment of his life. For me, it was just a warm up for the next tournament." Well, I guess Allen now has a new "greatest moment" to brag about.

Random Thoughts

I wasn't thrilled with the whole format of this tournament. First of all, arbitrarily placing the bowlers in regions and then allowing only the winners of each region to progress to the final few weeks of televised play kept some of the best players out of the proceedings and made Sunday's finals a pretty lackluster affair. I've always liked to see formats which allow the proverbial cream to rise to the top, and it seems to me that round robin match play amongst the top qualifiers followed by a stepladder finals is the best way of getting the finest bowlers into the finals while still meeting the time constraints of television. On the other hand, without the format of this tournament, guys like Randy Weiss might well never have had the chance to make it to the finals and there's something to be said for giving guys like him a chance they don't ordinarily receive, and Allen and Barnes bowled well enough that they might very well have made it anyway.

A good thing about making the title match two games instead of just one is that it affords the best player that day a better chance of winning the title than if the match is decided by only one game. In one game, someone can get a good or bad break or two and win or lose more because of that than anything else, whereas two games makes it more likely that the person who actually performs better will win. But that's only if the match is decided by total pins. That's not how yesterday's title would have been decided if Allen and Barnes had won a game apiece, which they very easily could have. The match and title would then have been awarded to the guy who got the highest count on one ball in a sudden death rolloff, where, once again, a good or bad break rather than quality of performance might well have determined the outcome. So, I say if you're going to have the top two bowl a two-game match for the title, let total pins decide the winner.

One Thoughtful Commentator

A habitually thoughtful commentator had this to say in Pba.com's PBA Forum about Sunday's telecast:

"I think bowling should always be the most memorable part of a show, with individual bowling personalities behind that. But with this most recent broadcast, I almost don't remember the matches because there were so many distractions that took away from that. Here is what most comes to mind when I think of this last show from most memorable to least:

Vuvuzelas

The over-kill of shots of the purposely placed 'hotties'

Poor camera work

Allen's personality

The recap of the season

And oh yeah, there was bowling and the matches themselves

Bowling should always be the most memorable part of the show and any gimmicks come after that. It's one thing for bowlers to have personality on the show-I think that's a good thing, but the sport and the bowling itself needs to maintain decorum and a professional feel. We are already struggling with the perception people have of bowling, and this show didn't help that in my opinion."

You can read Bill Vint's Pba.com story on the telecast here. And if you missed yesterday's televised finals, I'll post videos of them in a future entry as soon as they become available online.

Bowling Quote of the Day--Jeff Richgels on Dick "Ritchie" Allen

"As a new dad, he might want you to call him Dick Allen now, but he'll always be Ritchie to me...And it was wonderful to see on Sunday that he continues to be the same basic guy I met long ago, whatever name he goes by...If you didn't see Allen's win in the Dick Weber PBA Playoffs on ESPN on Sunday, I'm not sure I can adequately explain in words what I mean. But if you saw the show, I know you understand. And I love it. Pro bowling — all sports! — needs more athletes who aren't afraid to openly be who they really are and say what they really think."

--Jeff Richgels

Vuvuzelas Almost Ruin Dick Weber PBA Playoffs

I guess I'll say congratulations to Dick Allen for winning the Dick Weber PBA Playoffs title today. I say "I guess," because I'm not Mr. Allen's biggest fan, and after today, I'm even less of one. However, he bowled well to make it into the finals, and he bowled well enough to win today.

But something else happened on the telecast today that I hope never happens again. In fact, if it does, I'll turn off the TV and do something else. People in the stands were blowing vuvuzelas. It sounded like a soccer match instead of a PBA telecast. One reason I don't like soccer is the fans blowing those horns from hell. I detest those horns and could not believe that some lamebrain from the PBA would say, "Hey, I've got a bright idea that will bring more fans to the telecast! We'll hand out vuvuzelas to the fans and let them go hog wild blowing them."

That guy should be fired. Well, maybe not fired, but his or her future 'bright ideas' should be regarded with extreme skepticism unless they're a whole lot brighter than the one that cursed the telecast today and almost sent me reaching for the medicine cabinet for a Bayer aspirin (one of the show's sponsors).

Here are what some commenters on Facebook had to say about those wretched horns on the PBA Facebook page:

"And people wonder why bowling isn't taken seriously..."

"you have got to be kidding me."

"It's gonna be a circus....bad idea...won't even watch it."

"Okay, I'll turn on closed captioning and turn the sound off."

"Terrible idea. But hey, we are just fans, what do we matter, right?"

"Yet another example of how the Industry has been slowly destroying itself for three decades now."

"whoever thought this was a good idea should be canned...immediately"

"Be nice everyone, the pba doesn't take criticism well. And this bad idea is just par for the course for these guys."

"What next? Pro Cosmic Bowling?"

"They were an irritant at the recent World Cup...and now this is in the PBA? What's next...turn down the lights,crank up the music,and make it 9-pin no tap?"

I'll have more to say about today's tournament and maybe a little more to say about the vuvuzelas in my next post, but I had to vent my spleen here and now about this aural outrage.

Bowling Quote of the Day--Dick Allen Knows

“I know my game. I know my equipment. If I make 36 quality shots Sunday, there’s a good chance I’ll be holding the trophy. I’m not going to worry about the guy from Columbia, or the guy who throws Columbia. You know the old clichés: it’ll just be me against the pins.”

--Dick "Ritchie" Allen, commenting on this coming Sunday's competition with Chris Barnes and Randy Weiss for the Dick Weber PBA Playoffs title

Videos of Episode 3 of 2011 Dick Weber PBA Playoffs

As promised, below are videos of the three matches televised yesterday of the Regional Championships Round of the Dick Weber PBA Playoffs. Match one features Randy Weiss vs Steve Jaros. In match two, Dick "Ritchie" Allen takes on Jack "The Ripper" Jurek. And the final match has Chris Barnes going head-to-head with twin-grip fireballer Jason Belmonte. Following those three videos is the PBA Xtra Frame post-game show in which "Bowling Doctor" Jeff Mark interviews the three winners.

Bowling Quote of the Day--Dick Allen's Proud He Beat Walter Ray

"I take personal pride in being the one who ended Walter Ray’s winning streak. I’ve never bowled him on TV before and I may never bowl him on TV again, so to be able to go through life saying I’m undefeated against Walter Ray Williams Jr. on TV is pretty cool."

--Dick Allen, after bowling a 289 and ending Walter Ray Williams' record string of seventeen seasons of winning at least one tour title

(For the record, I hope they do bowl against each other again on TV and that Walter Ray figuratively kicks his behind.)

2011 Dick Weber Playoffs: First Week's Telecast

"Why does that happen every time? Every time I bowl, it happens every time.”

--An understandably exasperated Ryan Shafer

I didn't get to watch the PBA telecast on Sunday. Actually, it was filmed long before that but broadcast Sunday. I don't know why they can't show these events live. I don't know about you, but it's much more exciting to me to see them live and not know who wins until it happens then and there than to know it was taped weeks or even months ago and who won. But if you do a bowling blog like this one or just spend any time online, it's all-but-impossible not to know who wins ahead of the showing, and that takes away from the whole experience.

However, given the format of this year's inaugural Dick Weber PBA playoffs, I guess they couldn't show all the matches on the same day. They had eighteen players, three in each of six different regions, competing against one another to crown the champion, and that takes more matches and more time than any network commanding a decent sized audience could hope to show in one day.

In any case, having aired my mild gripes about the Dick Weber broadcast format, I have to say that I did manage to watch a recording of Sunday's telecast yesterday, and I very much enjoyed the action. It took place at Woodland Bowl in Indianapolis, IN on the 39' Dick Weber oil pattern. Commentator Randy Pederson explained that the relatively short oil coupled with more than the usual PBA concentration of oil in the middle of the lane allowed the bowlers to "play to their strengths," "maximize creativity" and attack the pattern from "multiple angles." In other words, it made the lanes higher scoring than we see on tougher patterns.

But higher scoring made for a very entertaining 90 minutes. In the first match, the top three finishers arbitrarily assigned to the Eastern region--Scott Norton, Tom Smallwood, and Steve Jaros bowled one match to determine who advanced to the next round. Norton, the California native, part-time attorney, only lefty among the eighteen finalists, and son of female bowling legend Virginia Norton who seems firmly on track to win Rookie of the Year honors and who won a national title earlier this year in Dublin, CA couldn't buy a strike until the sixth frame, leaving four pocket 7's, while Smallwood opened with his first five before leaving a 10 pin and Jaros with his first seven before sticking a 10 pin. Jaros went on to finish first with a 258. Smallwood stepped up in the tenth needing a strike on the first ball to win outright and left a light pocket 7. He then needed to strike on the fill ball to tie and pulled the ball slightly leaving a four pin and losing by 1 pin to Jaros while Norton finished with a distant but respectable 224.

The next match featured South region contestants Tommy Jones, "underrated" Ryan Shafer, and Randy Weiss. Weiss first shot ever on TV was a solid strike while Jones kept getting tapped. All three were in the match until near the end when snakebit Shafer went into the tenth frame with a lead only to get shafted with a pocket 7-10, Jones doubled and left a four pin for 238, and Weiss needed to strike out to win by one and did, shooting a 239.

The final match of the telecast had Central region finalists Dick Allen (formerly Ritchie Allen until he decided that he should adopt a more adult sounding name after recently becoming a father), Player of the Year shoo-in Mika Koivuniemi, and Walter Ray Williams Jr. This was Walter Ray's first television appearance of the season and last chance to extend his record 17 straight year streak of PBA national titles. When asked why he'd struggled so much this year compared to his fabulous Player of the Year season last year, he surmised that his recent hernia surgery, shortened grip to lessen the pain in the knuckles of his arthritic bowling hand, and the fact that his old body was simply "falling apart" had something to do with it.

Nevertheless, he and Allen opened with five baggers before Walter left a stinging pocket 7-10 while Mika was never in it and Allen struck five more times before sticking a ringing 10 and sparing for a 289.

Next week, the finalists from the Midwest, Southwest, and West/Northwest regions will compete, and they include such luminaries as Bill O'Neill, Chris Barnes, Wes Malott, Jason Belmonte, Brad Angelo, and Jack "The Ripper" Jurek.

If I haven't spoiled it for you by recapping Sunday's highlights, or you'd like to see the telecast again, you can watch all of it in the videos below, and you can read PBA.com's official summary of the action here.