Post by Harry the Horse on Nov 13, 2006 19:33:18 GMT -5
Well, nobody is posting anything any more, so this site looks dead. So long - it's been fun. But for my last hurrah, I'll do one last post.
About a year ago I accidentally caught the PBA on TV, not having seen it for many, many years, and at that time I commented that they looked like a collection of rags. Last Sunday I stumbled onto it again while surfing around, and they looked just as bad. The problem is - they're STUPID. They don't have the slightest idea what they're doing, and they don't know the first thing about bowling. Start with the line everybody seems to use on all lanes, anywhere, anytime, all the time. They move ALL THE WAY to the left, practically on the adjoining lane, and throw a preposterous line ACROSS the lane. EVERYTHING is wrong with this kind of line. First of all - even when they manage a pocket hit - which I should add is nowhere near as often as it should be - THE BALL HITS THE POCKET AT THE WRONG ANGLE! It hits the pocket straight on, almost the way a straight ball would hit it. A properly thrown ball hits the pocket COMING IN FROM RIGHT TO LEFT. A 160 bowler knows that much. So here's what happens because of this wrong angle - much of the time they don't carry the five. It's perfectly obvious why not - coming in on that angle, when the head pin deflects the ball to the right, frequently the ball simply goes to the right of the five. Next - on a light hit they can NEVER carry the five. I actually saw so-called professionals leaving full buckets. Buckets! They left five or six of them. A LIGHT HIT WITH THAT LINE CANNOT CARRY THE FIVE, DUMMIES! Next - with a line like that you have to be much more accurate - there is NO margin for error. With a traditional outside line, even if the ball hangs a little, the worst that happens is a light hit, and you can still strike with a sweeper or mixer. With the ridiculous line they all use, because of the angle, frequently when the ball hangs, they actually miss the head pin. Unbelievable! A professional missing the head pin! I saw three or four washouts. Not one bowler ever tried what should have been done - simply speeding up the delivery and using a normal outside line starting from the center instead of two lanes over. One guy named Jaros or something was throwing a fairly weak ball, but strong enough to carry had he simply used a regular outside line. In fact, with this particular guy's ball, he should even have moved to the right a little and just gone up and in. But things like this don't seem to occur to these clowns. They just keep on doing the same wrong thing no matter how bad they shoot, and they never make any attempt to adjust, or to analyze what they're doing wrong, or anything. They just get up there and shoot. Maybe they think the ball will make some adjustment on it's own. This guy shot a 179. 179! In my action days in the sixties if a guy shot a 179 he would have to slink out of the house, and not show his face for a week. Either that, or we would kick the shit out of him for dumping. 179! I understand this same guy once shot a 129 - on television. Here's what the other two losers shot - 188 and 196! Three of them didn't even break 200. What a joke! Then there's this idiotic idea of throwing a straight ball at spares. A straight ball is the WORST kind of ball you can possibly throw at a spare. I pointed this out a year ago, so I'll just copy here what I wrote then: "Now - back to this stupid idea of throwing a straight ball. Take a piece of paper and draw a picture of a lane. Then make a dot to represent the five pin. Then make another dot dead center on the foul line to represent the point of release of the ball. Now take a ruler and draw a straight line from one dot to the other to represent the path of the ball. Perfect hit. Spare! Right. NOW - keep the ruler right on the foul line dot, and move the other end just a little bit to the right. You see immediately that while the space between the original line and the edge of the ruler is small near the foul line, it gets larger and larger as you go down the lane, and when it gets to where the five pin dot is, that space is very large. This illustrates what I said: when you throw a straight ball, if you are even a little off your intended line, that little gets more and more off as the ball goes down the lane, so you really have to be extremely accurate when you throw a straight ball. As I explained, you have much more margin for error when you throw a hook. The ball comes in on a wide angle from right to left, and you can't possibly miss, unless you're a 160 bowler. But even a professional can miss with a straight ball, because you have to be much more accurate." . . . And sure enough, this guy Jaros actually almost missed a SEVEN pin with a straight ball - it barely clipped the seven as it was falling in the gutter. When you throw a hook at a seven it's IMPOSSIBLE to miss it. You can make it blindfolded. So I'll repeat - A STRAIGHT BALL IS THE STUPIDEST BALL THAT YOU CAN THROW AT ANY SPARE - except a ten pin. It also forces you to use a completely different kind of delivery. Incidentally, it was bad enough that these turkeys left full buckets, but then they actually even shot THOSE with a straight ball, which is positively a ridiculous thing to try - a hook coming in full on the two-five will carry everything, whereas a straight ball with the same hit will probably leave the eight, which in fact is exactly what happened.
Well - Goodbye everyone. If you're ever in the Bronx, and you find yourself driving past the intersection of Gunhill Road and Boston Road, look to the Northwest corner. That's where Gun Post Lanes used to be. Where in the sixties there was REAL action, and REAL action bowlers, who really knew how to bowl.
HARRY THE HORSE
About a year ago I accidentally caught the PBA on TV, not having seen it for many, many years, and at that time I commented that they looked like a collection of rags. Last Sunday I stumbled onto it again while surfing around, and they looked just as bad. The problem is - they're STUPID. They don't have the slightest idea what they're doing, and they don't know the first thing about bowling. Start with the line everybody seems to use on all lanes, anywhere, anytime, all the time. They move ALL THE WAY to the left, practically on the adjoining lane, and throw a preposterous line ACROSS the lane. EVERYTHING is wrong with this kind of line. First of all - even when they manage a pocket hit - which I should add is nowhere near as often as it should be - THE BALL HITS THE POCKET AT THE WRONG ANGLE! It hits the pocket straight on, almost the way a straight ball would hit it. A properly thrown ball hits the pocket COMING IN FROM RIGHT TO LEFT. A 160 bowler knows that much. So here's what happens because of this wrong angle - much of the time they don't carry the five. It's perfectly obvious why not - coming in on that angle, when the head pin deflects the ball to the right, frequently the ball simply goes to the right of the five. Next - on a light hit they can NEVER carry the five. I actually saw so-called professionals leaving full buckets. Buckets! They left five or six of them. A LIGHT HIT WITH THAT LINE CANNOT CARRY THE FIVE, DUMMIES! Next - with a line like that you have to be much more accurate - there is NO margin for error. With a traditional outside line, even if the ball hangs a little, the worst that happens is a light hit, and you can still strike with a sweeper or mixer. With the ridiculous line they all use, because of the angle, frequently when the ball hangs, they actually miss the head pin. Unbelievable! A professional missing the head pin! I saw three or four washouts. Not one bowler ever tried what should have been done - simply speeding up the delivery and using a normal outside line starting from the center instead of two lanes over. One guy named Jaros or something was throwing a fairly weak ball, but strong enough to carry had he simply used a regular outside line. In fact, with this particular guy's ball, he should even have moved to the right a little and just gone up and in. But things like this don't seem to occur to these clowns. They just keep on doing the same wrong thing no matter how bad they shoot, and they never make any attempt to adjust, or to analyze what they're doing wrong, or anything. They just get up there and shoot. Maybe they think the ball will make some adjustment on it's own. This guy shot a 179. 179! In my action days in the sixties if a guy shot a 179 he would have to slink out of the house, and not show his face for a week. Either that, or we would kick the shit out of him for dumping. 179! I understand this same guy once shot a 129 - on television. Here's what the other two losers shot - 188 and 196! Three of them didn't even break 200. What a joke! Then there's this idiotic idea of throwing a straight ball at spares. A straight ball is the WORST kind of ball you can possibly throw at a spare. I pointed this out a year ago, so I'll just copy here what I wrote then: "Now - back to this stupid idea of throwing a straight ball. Take a piece of paper and draw a picture of a lane. Then make a dot to represent the five pin. Then make another dot dead center on the foul line to represent the point of release of the ball. Now take a ruler and draw a straight line from one dot to the other to represent the path of the ball. Perfect hit. Spare! Right. NOW - keep the ruler right on the foul line dot, and move the other end just a little bit to the right. You see immediately that while the space between the original line and the edge of the ruler is small near the foul line, it gets larger and larger as you go down the lane, and when it gets to where the five pin dot is, that space is very large. This illustrates what I said: when you throw a straight ball, if you are even a little off your intended line, that little gets more and more off as the ball goes down the lane, so you really have to be extremely accurate when you throw a straight ball. As I explained, you have much more margin for error when you throw a hook. The ball comes in on a wide angle from right to left, and you can't possibly miss, unless you're a 160 bowler. But even a professional can miss with a straight ball, because you have to be much more accurate." . . . And sure enough, this guy Jaros actually almost missed a SEVEN pin with a straight ball - it barely clipped the seven as it was falling in the gutter. When you throw a hook at a seven it's IMPOSSIBLE to miss it. You can make it blindfolded. So I'll repeat - A STRAIGHT BALL IS THE STUPIDEST BALL THAT YOU CAN THROW AT ANY SPARE - except a ten pin. It also forces you to use a completely different kind of delivery. Incidentally, it was bad enough that these turkeys left full buckets, but then they actually even shot THOSE with a straight ball, which is positively a ridiculous thing to try - a hook coming in full on the two-five will carry everything, whereas a straight ball with the same hit will probably leave the eight, which in fact is exactly what happened.
Well - Goodbye everyone. If you're ever in the Bronx, and you find yourself driving past the intersection of Gunhill Road and Boston Road, look to the Northwest corner. That's where Gun Post Lanes used to be. Where in the sixties there was REAL action, and REAL action bowlers, who really knew how to bowl.
HARRY THE HORSE