History - Dizzy Doings of the Dodo

The loaded ball of unpredictable behavior was a favorite with the hotshots in the early 1900’s. If you were challenged to a bowling match 50 or 60 years ago, chances were about even that your opponent was an expert in the delicate art of controlling a dodo ball.

The dodo, or loaded, ball isn’t yet as rare as the extinct dodo bird but it’s rapidly approaching that distinction. Fifty years ago, however, there was much long, loud, hot argument over legalizing the dodo. That controversy was fatally crippled in 1913 when the ABC outlawed the dodo, a stunning setback to some of that era’s hotshots but one of the more important single steps in equipment standardization.

Some of the earliest dodos were simply far over the present 16 pound maximum weight. Two well known Chicagoans of the early 1900’s, Bill Lee and Gus Steele, used 20 pound balls, although neither man weighed more than 120 pounds. Some men were even using a 22 pound ball.

The extremely heavy ball, called a "phony" at, the time, gradually disappeared as bowlers discovered the greater effectiveness of an unbalanced ball. The most common practice in loading a ball was called the "7-9" combination; half of a 14 pound ball cemented to a 18 pound half with the extra weight on the left.

Nearly everyone used a two-finger ball in those days and to make the dodo as effective as possible, the holes were drilled the same size so the bowler needed only to reverse his grip to change the' action.

Despite the advantage of using a dodo ball, by someone who knew how, that is, the loaded pellet wasn't universally popular during the early years of this century for two reasons: the difficulty in controlling it and a spreading desire for fair standard conditions brought to the game by the ABC.

Good bowlers in 1960 throw the ball with speed that fits their own style and lane conditions. They give the ball lift to get a working "turn" as it hits the pins. Not so with the dodo.

It can easily be imagined what would happen if a ball weighted an extra two or three pounds on the left side were given a little normal lift: it would be in the left gutter in no time. To compensate for all the natural left turn built into the dodo, bowlers had to keep the fingers perfectly straight when releasing it and kill any tendency to follow through.

Now instructors constantly stress the value of the follow through. In 1902, if you used a dodo ball, follow through was definitely a handicap. Phil Wolf of Chicago had a ball so heavily weighted on the left that most bowlers couldn’t keep it on the lane no matter what they tried.

The dodo presented still another little problem to its adherents; the "dodo split.” What is now popularly called the "washout" was originally a "dodo" since it was a common leave when the ball was thrown too fast and did not come up to the headpin.

In one of the early ABC tournaments, a well known bowling of the time drew 12 dodo splits, the 1-2-4-10 as often as the 1-2-10. Legend has it that this performance quickly converted the man to a legitimate ball.

Cleveland, Chicago and Louisville were the centers of the hot dodo ball competition from 1900 to 1913. As the influence of the ABC efforts towards standardization spread through the game, the bowlers in these cities divided into factions, either supporting or opposing the use of dodos.

The 1913 ABC convention ended the controversy, officially at least, as the delegates adopted a rule limiting the weight of a ball to a 16 pound maximum and requiring that the ball be evenly balanced. The rule ran into stiff opposition at first, but by consistent enforcement and the prevailing trend toward fair standards, the dodo gradually disappeared.

One of the early dodo experts, Louis Levine of Chicago, gave up his loaded ball but then became so good at hooking a legal ball that he often had trouble convincing people he hadn't returned to the dodo.

The present balance scale used by the ABC was only a hopeful dream when the Congress began enforcing its balanced ball rule. In the early 20s, a Philadelphia man patented a balance scale that helped somewhat. It required some calculations and moving balance weights but did the job.

Abe Langtry, ABD secretary from 1907 through 1932, would have given a lot for the balance and gross weight scale now used at the ABC tournament. The weighmaster has only to shift the ball in a balance cradle, glance at the indicators and he knows precisely how the ball is balanced.

Elmer H. Baumgarten, who succeeded Langtry and now is secretary-emeritus, likes to tell about a Sunday long ago when he was supervising the Illinois state tournament in Chicago. Two men, both notorious dodo experts, came in to bowl doubles. The scale said each man's ball was legal, though, so they started bowling. Early in the second game spectators thought a shotgun invasion had come and the pinboy was sure of it. One of the suspects had run out of luck. A plug came out of his ball as it hit the pins, spewing a buckshot load through the pit. That night the same thing happened to the other man in the team event. Both were suspended.

Most present day bowlers have probably never heard of a dodo ball. Still, a man occasionally shows up at the ABC tournament with an unbalanced ball, hoping to get it past the weighmaster. But anyone who thinks there's some advantage in using the dodo could take a tip from today's stars.

Without exception they ask "Why?" when someone brings up the loaded ball issue. It's difficult enough learning control and accuracy with a legal ball, they say, without the extra hazard of trying to control the unbalanced kind.

Article originally published by Bowling Magazine – November 1960

Water Walker

I think that in order to give this story as much credibility as possible, I am going to have to brag a little. I have been involved in doing the lanes with the PBA for over 800 tournaments, which included the National Tour, the Senior Tour and all seven Regions of the Regional Program. I am the only person who has done lanes for every bowler that is in the PBA Hall of Fame. In other words, I have seen them all. And, perhaps, I am really the only person who knows exactly what they bowled "on", as far as lane conditions go.

My personal All-Time Top-10, includes; Dick 'Water Walker' Ritger. You talk about TALENT. Dick was unbelievable. He was a world-class bowler, a world class guy, and later became a world-class coach. Without question he was one of the coolest, smartest, shot-makers in the history of our great sport. He could bowl on anything.

I have literally hundreds of stories of some of the tremendous feats that were performed by the greatest bowlers in the world; those that are in the PBA Hall of Fame.

This particular story took place in the early 70's. We (the Tour) were at Cranston Bowl in Cranston, Rhode Island. The weather was absolutely miserable as it had been snowing for about a week before we got there. It was 10-degrees outside when I got off the plane. Not only that, but my job as laneman was going to be a lot tougher this week because we knew in advance that the place was in bad condition because they hadn't resurfaced in a couple of years and all of the league bowlers had been complaining. And it was an old, drafty two-sided house and each side played drastically different from each other - as well as each pair playing differently from each other. I knew that I was going to hear about that.

After the first day of qualifying, Ritger was in the lead, which wasn't unusual for this 20-time champion (at the time). Almost every bowler was upset with the lanes and I had to hear about it.

That night at 2:00am I went in to do the lanes and it was now 19-below zero. There was so much snow in the motel parking lot, that and I couldn't find my car and had to walk about a mile to get to the bowl. About 15-minutes after getting there, part of the roof on the high-side (the real tough side) caved-in from the weight of the snow. It was a disaster. The janitor called the head mechanic who in turn called the Manager. He called everybody he knew to get in there to help clean up the mess. I called Harry Golden (the Tournament Director) to let him know what had happened. I cleaned and oiled the low-side then went over to take a look at what was going on over on the disaster side. There were about 20 people cleaning the water, snow, ceiling tiles and other debris off of the lanes and approaches. You could see the sky through the hole in the ceiling. I remember thinking: "I'm sure that the guys will blame me for this, too."

There were buckets on the lanes that were still catching water from the drippy roof. It was now 6:00am and the Pro's were scheduled to bowl at 9:00am. At that point I thought that there was no way. I started cleaning and oiling the part of that side that wasn't under water. When I got to the part of the house that had caved in, a "Miracle" happened. It had stopped raining and the dripping over the lanes had stopped. I cleaned and oiled the rest of the lanes. There were still some drips coming down over the lanes, but "Miracle number 2" was that the drips were only over the gutter gaps and the buckets that were placed there were catching all of the drops. It was about 8:45am now, and I took the lane machine to the back. The mechanic and all his helpers were back there huddled next to a little heater he had, and they were all trying to dry out.

When I came out of the backend, I saw about 20-bowlers standing in the settee on 31 and 32. I went over there to see what was going on. The only drips that were still coming down were over the approach on that pair and because of the full field, they had to use that pair in the tournament. Harry made the decision to leave the three buckets where they were on the approach. It was either that, or put 5 on a pair, and none of the bowlers wanted that. The buckets were to stay in place for BOTH squads.

I stayed around to watch the 1st squad bowl. After they bowled their 6-games that morning, the high game on the pair was 149. It was impossible for the players to walk around the buckets that were there to execute any type of normal shot.

Now the next squad came in to bowl. Ritger was scheduled to bowl his 2nd game on 31 and 32. It would be interesting to see what he could do there and not lose too much of the lead that he had enjoyed. When he got there for game 2 of this second day, there was a huge crowd in the bleachers, and standing behind the bleachers, as well.

I watched him (with no practice balls) alter his approach by snaking his footwork around the three buckets in a serpentine manner. I couldn't believe my eyes. He shot 279 like it was nothing. It was ridiculous.

One World - One Game

It has been almost ten years since John Davis (Founder of the Kegel Company), called together a group of experienced lane men in an attempt to further research the on-going lane conditioning problems with our Sport. It had become apparent that too many tournaments were deemed unfair by the participants and tournament organizers.  Bowling ball technology had rapidly advanced and it was getting next to impossible for the lane man to do the job without some sort of social controversy.  After that five day meeting in Sebring, Florida, Davis promised to undertake the huge task of taking care of lanes at every major tournament in the world and then posting those results on The Foundation website for the whole world to see.  Davis and The Foundation came up with their initial slogan which was: “One World – One Game.”
 
The Foundation also coined two other phrases:
 1. "You don't need to be a lane man to know that there are problems, you just need to be a lane man to know how bad the problems are."

 2. "If not us, who? If not now, when?"
Early on, a series of scratch tournaments were developed, called: The Foundation Games.  These events were held in this country (and abroad) with some promising results.  They were unique by featuring ‘multiple conditions’ in an attempt to further challenge the participants by having more than one lane condition to compete on.  Challenging oil patterns were used (both long and short) that required the athletes to compete on different lengths of oil during competition.

In 2000, Dr. P.S. Nathan, then President of the World Tenpin Bowling Association (WTBA), held a World Bowling Seminar in Malaysia and Davis was invited to attend along with many other bowling leaders from around the world.  At that week-long educational meeting, it was unanimously decided that in order to find out who the best players were at any given event, the athletes needed to be challenged with these ‘multiple condition’ type tournaments.

The WTBA then formed a Technical Committee (TC) to continue researching the problems on a world wide basis.  Since then, different tournament formats have been tested along with bowling ball restrictions (amount of balls used in the events) which were instituted.  It is quite clear today, that some of the underdeveloped countries are at a disadvantage regarding bowling equipment. 
 
For many years now, numerous thoughts, opinions and feelings about lane conditioning have been constantly expressed on most every bowling websites discussion groups.  Depending on the average person’s position (agenda), most blame the problems with our game on various aspects of the game, including; pins, oil patterns, balls, kick-backs, flat gutters and an assortment of other things.  Most have never done lanes and have no idea what that particular job entails.
 
Today, even with the use of different formats and multiple conditions, problems still exist in our great sport.  The WTBA Technical Committee feels that it is time to try a different approach.
 
 
"One World - One Game - One Ball"
 
In 2003, Davis was named as Chairman of the WTBA TC, and Kegel was still taking care of all the tournaments for the WTBA and developing countless oil patterns.  It became obvious that the lane man still could not do his job without some social unrest.  Something else was needed.  
 
The WTBA TC decided to research and test a type of bowling ball that would not mutate the oil patterns as much as today’s High Tech balls do.  Davis was put in charge of doing the research for this project.  Days, weeks and months went into this very technical testing, using CATS data.
 
A ‘prototype’ bowling ball was developed which showed encouraging results.  During the week of April 17-22, a Bowling Writers meeting was scheduled in Orlando, Florida (which is only about 80 miles from Kegel’s Training Center), that was combined with the USBC Annual Meeting. 
 
The WTBA TC also scheduled a meeting at this time and this was a chance to announce this new theory.  A small scratch tournament would be held and the results would be shown to the world.  Many top players from Florida would participate along with some other top amateurs and former PBA Tour champions.  It was an eight game event that was bowled across eight lanes.  The amount of oil that was used was 7.140 mL, which is an amount that was used in the early 1970’s.
 
 
Those results (total pin fall) were: 

1. Bob Learn, Jr. (1880)
 
2. Vernon Peterson (1770)     

3. Matt Gilman (1715) 
 
4. Bob Handley (1675)  
 
5. Mike Purdy (1671)
 
6. Larry Barwick (1670)       
 
7. Rob Comito (1666)  
 
8. Steve Johnson (1660)        
 
9. Neil Stremmel (1655)   
 
10. Storm DeVincent (1627) 
 
10. (T) Sami Luoto (1627)
 
12. Chris Chartrand (1612)    
 
13. Dennis Davis (1598)  
 
14. Craig Auerbach (1596)
 
15. Saul Insignares (1573) 
 
16. Tony Lavance (1572)   
 
17. Ron Dixon (1523)
 
18. Jose Rodriquez (1514)
 
19. John Forst (1513)
 
20. Dennis Psaropoulos (1512)
 
21.Tony Crews (1477)
 
22. Bill Blackwell (1454)
 
23. Pekka Korpi (1383)
 
24. Josh Moore (1354)
 
 
Each player paid a $100.00 entry fee to enter the tournament, and that included a bowling ball.  Each player had a choice of 15 or 16 pounds to use.  Except for that weight difference, all of the balls were made as similarly as humanly possible. Davis donated an additional $2600.00 for a total Prize Fund of: $5000.00.  Learn earned $2000.00 for the win along with a very nice banner that was signed by all of the participants and those on the WTBA TC.  In all, 12 players cashed. 
 
When asked if he wanted the banner, Learn said, “Certainly.  It will go in my trophy room with all of my other cherished awards.”  He added, “This was great.  ALL tournaments should be like this one because I really think that it was the fairest tournament that I have ever bowled in.”

After the event, all the players were asked to fill out a detailed questionnaire that had a multitude of pertinent questions regarding the tournament.  Those queries are currently being analyzed.  
 
All in all, it was deemed a tremendous success by the Players and Officials.  All results of the CATS data (from every shot, from every player) are also being analyzed.  When completed, a detailed report will be sent to WTBA President Heikke Sarso for review.
 
 
STAY TUNED!