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Post by Louis Capasso on Nov 11, 2005 12:00:03 GMT -5
lets start a new thread with everyone posting the best match they ever watched or, bowled in. this site was for that purpose so lets get it back to where it should be.... no more trash talking just good action stories...
my 1st action match was at kenmore lanes when i was about 14. les sager and steve fishman were bowling archie young and clarence and getting beat 2 games to none.steve was bowling terrible and les was bowling well.so i asked les if i could bowl with him and he really didnt know me then but agreed. the match was for about 400 a game. i was very excited and a bit nervous. but the shot was in around 4th and 5th arrow and i was very comfortable in there.plus the other three were only in about 12 or so none threw a strong ball. but we won the 1st game with a double in the 10th,i bowled anchor. then we blew them out in game # 2 .by the 3rd game they wanted to up the bet to 800 and we accomadated with les shooting 250 or so and i shot 2 teen or so. but they quit after 3.it was very exciting to bowl that night because there were alot of old timers there betting and bowling matches and it was my way into many a matches over the next few years.
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Post by Harry the Horse on Nov 11, 2005 22:49:12 GMT -5
Okay Lou. Here's a match I previously mentioned.
One of the best matches I ever saw at Gun Post in the sixties was a head to head match between Frank Medici and Howie Palefski. This one had promised to be a great one and it sure lived up to it. Frankie was simply a great, great bowler, and Howie had this nasty habit of burying everything he threw up there. They shot on a pair away from where the big action usually took place. This pair was over in a smaller section on the Gun Hill Road side. There was all kinds of action going on at the time, but this one drew a crowd. Howie and I had become good friends from Pel-Park lanes, but I put my money on Frankie, because you had to be crazy to bet against him. Well. Between them there were more strikes than the Teamster's Union. It was a heavyweight knockdown dragout slugfest. Here is what I remember: they bowled a lot of games, I can't recall how many, but as far as I can remember, every single ball thrown the entire time was either a strike or a ten pin. I can't remember any other leave but a ten pin. The numbers were in the stratosphere. I think that neither one scored a knockout, it went back and forth, and I seem to recall that Frankie came out a little ahead, but not by much. I wonder if anyone else remembers that match.
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Post by Louis Capasso on Dec 15, 2005 20:11:07 GMT -5
it's 1977 or early 1978 and it was an off day ,monday or so. joe hutchenson and larry lichstein were talking about some steakhouse, and larry's son and i were sitting listening. anyway lichy started to pick on my backswing then hutch chimed in so i started making fun of his game. anyway we ended it on the lanes. but the match was a doubles match. lichstein sr. and hutch against me and mike.mike lichstein was all of 10 at the time. so we bowled a 2 out of three match for dinner. 1st game mike needed a strike in the 10th for us to win ( yes i put him anchor against his dad)...... flushed it.....2nd game we won again. well anyway it wasnt a big money match but it was the best steak i had in a long time. funny thing was all the other bowlers on tour were watching and betting...and tormenting hutch.. you had to be there.
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Post by Louis Capasso on Jan 12, 2006 19:40:21 GMT -5
heres another good match. I was just a kid maybe 14 ,15or so and some guy walks into maple and challenges the house ,well i get that little nervous feeling in my stomach. and i turn to my father and said like let me bowl this guy.of course he doesn't know him and think's its risky. but man i wanna bowl this guy. he had long strangly hair big mustach and a week old scruff on him, little overweight. anyway one of the other bowlers decides to bowl him. this guys name is bill manieri a real good shooter from jersey in those days. and a friend after the matches were over when we bowled regionals . anyway he bowls this guy lenny from maple who bowled on my team. lenny was also high average in the house with 200. maple was a stone dead gutter shot in those days. and bill is playing between 8 and 10 and lenny is straight up 3,4,5, but manieri is going back and forth with him for about 5 games then as the lanes start to break down len goes lights out.bill shaking his head becasuse lenny never moves a board in all match. lenny wins the next three match over .by this time i had won a couple of hundred in the pot games and decide i wanna bowl this guy too. my father says go ahead now that he had seen him bowl. bill wouldnt agree to bowl me because he felt he would have an advantage over a 15 year old. so i said he 100 a game lets bowl dont worry about my age worry about getting ripped by a kid....his backer who hasn't seen me bowl yet gets a little pissed because i dogging his boy says bowl him... I let him pick the pai and we start to warm up. he is now playing the right shot the gutter. but he picked the toughest pair in the
house.27 and 28 . game one he goes first and bowls. i get up and decide i rather play 20 instead of the gutter no practice inside i let one rip around 22 out to abot 13 or 14 and flush it 10 in the deck. the backer looks at bill and cant believe the monster this kid just throws. anyway 1 and out is all it took. today maybe i woulda dumped 1 or 2 and looked for the big bet haha...
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Post by Louis Capasso on Mar 6, 2006 20:06:07 GMT -5
here is an awesome memory of the snake bowling rudy revs at woodhaven. i was not bowling at the time but snake told me about the match so i went . i had heard about some guy rudy who had a higher backswing then I did. anyway after watching the this guy warm up i couldnt believe the tank he threw. 1st game rudy wins but he is in about 25 or so and threw a couple of cross hits to beat snake,next game snake looses again but he finishes strong and I now believe this was the time to bet. so I bet on snake,now remember snake is going up 10 and rudy is playing 25 and deeper if he could. anyway snake shoots 250 250 240. rudy 180 200 160........ there was none better on a tough grind out shot then joe lorenzo aka the snake. he grew up on a shot that got oiled maybe twice a week at park circle lanes..he could hook it on oil and throw a bleeder dead straight on flyers. i always tried to bowl him on oil, i could open the lane more then he could. but always loved bowling doubles with him on any shot. I dont think we ever lost a doubles match. matter of fact we didnt.I may the 1st bowler with a high backswing but he was definatly the best frozen rope to the pocket when he needed it.
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Post by Harry the Horse on Mar 7, 2006 22:27:38 GMT -5
Hi Lou -
I never saw you bowl, but I understand you bowled in the seventies, so you couldn't have been the first bowler with a high backswing. In my action days in the sixties, there was an action bowler named Joel Meyers who had the highest backswing in the history of bowling. It wasn't just high - it was vertical. Not that it did him any good, he was all over the lane, but it sure was high. Any Bronx action guys from the sixties out there remember Joey Meyers?
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Post by Zoo Master on Mar 11, 2006 16:54:01 GMT -5
This is one night I was with Butch that I'll never forget.
The following was taken from Butch's soon to be released book.
It's 1966 and one of the toughest matches I ever bowled was against Richie Grossman, who would be found a few years later in the trunk of his car in Gravesend Brooklyn with a bullet in the head. It was a Friday night, A week before I would make the biggest mistake of my life, getting married, I left my future wife about midnight and walked the 5 blocks to the bowling alley. The night before, my crew, consisting of Paul, Doug, and Larry, had made a mid size hit of about eight hundred bucks, that was suppose to be our kitty for tonight's action. Paul wanted me to bowl Richie , Doug and Larry felt he was to strong because I wasn't bowling that much lately, and Richie was a workhorse. Paul immediately split the kitty up and told Doug and Larry to go get f**ked, he turned to me and said bowl him, you'll eat him alive.
It turns out it was my best night ever; my first three games were 290, 289 and 246. The first 15 games I averaged about 240 and we were up about eight thousand, by far the most money I was ever winning. Richie went broke, I paid for the lines, the match was over or so I thought, I was feeling great, couldn't wait to get out of there and split the money with Paul, in walks Sal the plumber. Richie talks him into backing him and here I am, back on the alleys with him again. It's now about 5:30 in the morning, all the people that were betting on me had gone home, we were covering Richie for about fifteen hundred a game all by ourselves. By nine thirty Richie completely wore me out, I quit winning 300 hundred dollars, Richie was pissed that I quit because he was still down thousands that the outside betters had left with earlier.
The next night I was at Leader lanes at about 1 am, I was still exhausted from the night before and swore I wouldn't bowl. My partner Doug begged me to bowl doubles with him. Relentlessly I gave in and bet only ten dollars out of disgust of what happened the night before, we went on to beating 4 different doubles teams, never lost a game all night, cleaned out the house, I never increased my bet past ten dollars, many thousands had been won, I made 170 dollars. I walked out the front door with my bowling ball in hand to the middle of Coney Island Avenue, made my approach, delivered the ball towards the sewer, which became my head pin, that was the last time I threw a bowling ball for quite some time. The following Saturday I got married and didn't even walk into a bowling alley for the next several years... butch
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