I really suck at bowling. The sport is mildly interesting for me, but beause I’m so lousy it gets frustrating. The concept of rolling a heavy ball to knock down pins seems simple, but a surprising amount of things can go wrong.
The best example I can think of is when a finger got caught in one of the holes at an inopportune moment, causing me to release the ball when my arm was making an upward motion. This essentially caused me to ‘lob’ the ball into the air :eek:
Amazingly, the ball managed to hit the pins and not lodge itself into the wall. The arc the ball flew in wasn’t that high, though when I saw it flying down the lane I nearly crapped my pants- I was certain it was going to smash through whatever it hit. When it did hit the back of the lane it made the loudest bang you could imagine.
Not really a mishap but just something silly I did last week. I, too, am quite pathetic at bowling, I enjoy it, but I’m crap. Anyway, nothing was going right for me for the first nine frames (is that what we call them?), so for the tenth frame I decided to bowl between my legs - and lo, a pair of strikes! I’ve found my secret weapon.
Have you ever thrown the ball * behind * you? I seem to do that a lot. My friends call my “style” the “charge-stop-dead-drop” technique. Either that, or “turtle”. I get a quickly walking start to the line, then just kind of set the ball down with a small roll. It’s slow, but accurate. Any faster, and it’s in the gutter. I also use an 8 lb. ball, which the guys say is cheating. I’d like to see them try to roll a 12- or 14- pounder with little girly wrists like mine.
Tip: don’t roll two balls down the lane at once. The lane’s owners will get mad at you, and it doesn’t help your game anyway.
Yeah, my friend had a company outing and his co-worker threw a ball in his lane after him. The ball shot past his own and he got a strike the lane owner fella was pretty pissed about that
I tend to pick a heavy ball, because the places we go usually go by bigger hands=heavy balls. So I was using the 16 pound ball and I hurl that sucker as hard as I can. However, it hits the pins so hard I rarely get strikes out of it (but the ball travels very, very straight, it goes right where I want to usually). When it connects with the pins, WHAM it just knocks a hole through the pins, usually only nailing 2 or 3 :rolleyes:
My friends get really mad at me 'cause I walk or run right up to the line, stop, then throw. It really frustrates them because I still manage to beat them even though that’s totally the wrong way to bowl. Ah well…
-Lil
I bowl a lot. I used to go about once a week, now it’s down to a couple times a month. I’m good, not great, averaging about a 120. Anyways, one night we’re bowling, and somehoe (I still don’t know how it happened) the ball, as I was bringing it down from behind me, slammed VERY had into my right ankle. It hurt like Hell, and I couldn’t even walk, let alone bowl, for the rest of the night. The next week I still had a pretty bad limp from it. Ouch.
My worst bowling incident wasn’t so funny, I just kicked the little step on the way to the lane and bit my tongue REALLY hard. Another time, I left my glasses on a chair and someone sat on them.
Bowling is one of the few activities that offers us relief from the endless parade of diners and Blockbuster nights, so we do that pretty often. I’m the guy, so I usually win. But one friend of mine embarasses herself on occasion. She’s pulled the famous “I go forward and the ball goes back” trick. We laughed like crazy, she said she thought that only happened in movies. The same day (I think), the ball got stuck on her finger and she flung it way up into the air. Everybody in the place turned around when they heard the ball land.
One of my brothers once bowled the worst frame ever. I was beating him by a wide margin, so he rolled two balls down the alley - and still managed to miss all the pins. He got a double gutterball. Twice.
I didn’t do it but a friend of mine did while I was there (honestly)
About 6 of us were bowning and the lane I was on was finished. I was waiting to leave on the lane next to him and he threw the ball into the air a broke a light on the ceiling.
Yes instead of throwing the ball horizontal he threw it vertical and hit the ceiling.
I’ll let that sink in for a second.
Are we ready for the explanation?
Ok good. Here is the official version of the events from my friend. He was attempting to bowl a normal ball when Whoops! thumb got stuck and the ball hit the ceiling.
Actual version of the events is as follows: The ball before his thumb actually did stick a little and he threw the ball a good 20 ft down the lane in the air and got a strike. I believe he was attempting to recreate the feat when he overshot his release point and the ball stuck on his thumb a little.
Needless to say I was in tears laughing and only laughed harder after he got kicked out. Good Times
I forgot to add one more story: this same friend and I bumper-bowled a couple of times last summer. Usually, we just happened to be at lanes where children had recently bowled, but I do recall one occasion on which we got up the nerve to ask the proprietor of the lanes to put up the bumpers for us. (We agreed to go to the desk together, but I hesitated and she asked.) He said we’d break the bumpers, at which time we had to admit we’d done it before and nothing had happened. We felt like complete morons, but we got our bowling in, and boosted our egos with a few triple-ricochet strikes.
Was bowling (offbreak’s & zooters) at Yanco Oval against the locals. We’d posted a good total but needed to knock them over for the win. The wicket was a dead mudheap that our seamers were unable to extract any life out from, so the skipper threw me the ball. They were coming out well, and going a long way, but only slow turn. Might just have been my day. Had a couple of the middle order back in the pavilion and we looked like cleaning up the tail by tea-time.
Anyhow, after their #6 was given not out the umpie by his brother, when plumb LBW, I was a bit ticked off. Consequently I dropped the next delivery a bit short and he gave it a flat batted tonk that came back like a bullet. I took the catch smartly but that wasn’t the problem. Our seamers had resorted to picking the seam on the six stitcher. The raised seam opened up both my thumb and index finger like sausages on a hotplate. Blood went everywhere and I had to leave the ground. Took 8 stitches in the thumb and six in the index finger. Got back from the hospital too late and they got a draw with nine wickets down. Bit of a bummer really.
There was the time I, a large hefty fellow, got dragged into bowling with a bunch of kids. Bumper bowling. Now, my usual method is the famous Hurl The Ball As Hard As Possible. However, on this particular approach, I screwed something up and the ball came off my hand wrong. By wrong, I mean almost sideways. The alley used some kind of metal bumpers and everyone nearby was treated to a wince-inducing CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! as it bounced off the bumpers like a pinball.
This from league play on a cold winter’s night. I left my ball and shoes in the car all day, got to the lanes in the evening. Put on the shoes and lined up for the first practice shot. My left foot, instead of sliding, planted itself firmly on the approach and I would up falling face first over the foul line. Turns out that condensation in the car had wettened the leather sliding surface of the left shoe, making it stick like glue. Never leave your stuff in the car in the winter!
I spent an entire summer bowling at a somewhat run-down alley, because they had good student prices. Now, as it is my habit to use the largest bowling ball I can find, I’d often take a few steps forward onto the lane itself just after letting go of the ball.
There was never any problem with this, because the lanes were never waxed. This eventually led to a particular “style(?)” which involved me slamming the ball down the lane, and letting the weight carry me forward a few inches.
So a few months later, I went bowling with some friends at the student union. At one point, I let the weight of my toss carry me forward a few inches.
Of course, the University takes better care of their lanes. I slipped on the waxed floow and flew into the air, landing flat on my ass in front of everybody. I was later told that my feet actually ended up over my head while I was in the air.
I have a used ball that was given to me. Amazingly it fits my hand, usually. On this particular afternoon, I decided since I hadn’t polished the ball since I’ve had it, I’d run it through the machine. Once you polish a ball, it changes the grip slightly. The ball slipped a little and strained the middle finger on my bowling hand and the knuckle started to swell, unnoticed. By the end of the game it had swollen enough that my finger stuck in the hole. When I released the ball, I felt a definate “pop” as the ball pulled my finger out of joint. Immense pain followed and my finger was swollen for almost two weeks. It’s been nearly three months and pain still hasn’t gone away completely.
Once I threw the ball too early (just as the rack came down to re-set the pins) and as the bar came down to sweep the lane I threw the ball and it hit the rack. My ball came rolling back towards me.
When I was about 11 (and my younger brother was 9 or 10), my mother dropped us off at the local candlepin lanes where the two of us were in a league (we weren’t good, it was just a way for her to be rid of us for a couple of hours).
Unlike 10-pin bowling, in candlepin bowling, you use smaller balls, and the pins do not clear between your three balls. You HAD to hit the button on the ball return to reset the lane after your third ball (and of course you had to manually keep score).
Well, my brother and I were paired up, taking our turns bowling (this league had no teams and all scoring was individual). My brother was not into it at all, as he much preferred playing pinball or eating french fries from the grill, so I constantly had to pester him to take his turn.
Apparently one day he gets a bit sick of this, so as I am making my delivery, he goes ahead and hits the reset button. My ball is making its way down the lane and I suddenly, to my horror, see the pin resetting machine and ‘guard bar/lane cleaner’ drop down. I am hoping against hope that the pins reset before the ball makes it, but it was to no avail. With a loud THWACK, my ball collides with the bar and ends up just sitting in the middle of the lane in front of a full set of pins.
For this to happen once was bad enough, as it got the attention of many other bowlers (and the management). By the time it happened the third time, our league days were… well, over since we were no longer welcome in the place. I hated having it happen, but short of hogtying my brother, I didn’t really see any alternative (in hindsight, hogtying may have been the way to go).
I accidently stepped over the line once when I was a kid and also went flying ass-over-teakettle.
More recently, upon releasing the ball my rear foot somehow slid out from under me resulting in a huge friction burn/scrape on my knee that took about 2 months to completely heal. Naturally everyone asked about it and were pretty confused to hear it was a “bowling injury.”
When I was a kid, we were having a pun time playing with the ball return. We threw shoes and other sundry items down into it. There was much merryment when the shoe would come flying out. My brother threw a pencil down. Which somehow got caught in one of the several moving parts inside. Have you ever heard a ball return scream? It’s not pretty. It was a forty lane alley, and we were on the far right. I’m fairly certain that even those on the far left had ringing ears for the rest of the day.
On another occasion, due to my particular bowling style (As mentioned by others, the throw it as hard as you can method) a pin had flown back towards me due to the massive collision, and sat in the gutter, beyond the reach of the sweep. We summoned the eager and attentive staff to clear the pin, and were ignored as usual. After a good ten minutes or so, we decided to continue bowling. After all, none of us had thrown a gutter ball. It was my throw, with all the strength of a slightly beered up power bowling maniac behind it, that acheived gutter ball status. The head was aiming at me, and the base towards the pins. The force of the collision sent the pin up above the pins, at nearly mach 1. The lights were shattered, several collisions were heard, yet not seen, and the pin did not come back down. Now broken glass and unidentified detritis littered the ground near the pins. We decided, for some unreasoned reason, to hit the reset button. Over and over. You’ll be happy to know that I got a strike, due to the sweep mechanism falling off after a large boom and rattle was heard. The workers did glare at us accusingly, but we feigned ignorance. They sent us to the next lane, and for the rest of the game I threw my ball with all the strength of a butterfly fart.
In college, one of the options for our physical fitness requirement was bowling. Since I and several of the other students were of legal drinking age, it was a rather popular selection. It’s informal name was “liquids and solids class”
This pales in comparison to some of the stuff in this thread, but I’d just like to say: I once bowled a gutterball - with bumpers. :smack: I didn’t know that was possible.
the lane owner fella was pretty pissed about that 
