If you define "high-tracker" as someone who comes close to the finger and thumb holes, yes.
What determines "high-tracker" and "low-tracker" is the PAP and its relationship to tilt. I'll give you an example:
When someone says they have a PAP of "6 1/2 over," what's the first thing that pops into many people's heads? A high-tracker who comes straight up behind the ball. But it can also mean a very low-track spinner.
If your PAP is 6 1/2 over but you have 90 degrees of tilt, the centerline of the grip will be rotating around the ball's equator as it goes down the lane. It will have the same general track size as a true spinner, a person who has, say, a PAP of 0 over and no tilt (the delivery that produces such a spin for a 0/0 bowler would be akin to unscrewing the lid off a jar, or spinning a top). The only difference would be the location of the track itself -- on the 6 1/2 over, 90-degrees of tilt bowler, the track would be located on the side of the ball. For the 0 over/no tilt bowler, the track would be on the bottom of the ball.
Once you can make that make sense in your head, you can plot out anyone's track based on their PAP measurement and tilt numbers.
To answer the original question, let's take someone who has a PAP of 6 1/2 over, 0 up, with no or very little tilt -- i.e., the classic high-tracker who comes right up the back of the ball.
Now, assume you had a guy that had a PAP of 0 over 0 up -- but also threw with very high tilt. To do this would require a really strange delivery with the wrist in a funky position, but it's possible. And here's how you could do it:
Find a wall with a light switch controlled by a rheostat rather than a switch. Hold your right arm straight out in front of you and grab the rheostat. Now, while still holding the rheostat, turn your body 90 degrees left so that you're facing the wall to the left of the one on which the rheostat is mounted. Your arm should almost be straight away from your body, as if it were a bird's wing rather than a human arm.
Now imagine, as you stand there, that you are looking straight down a bowling lane. Now turn the rheostat back and forth. Take a look at the rheostat and notice what's happening.
If you could throw a bowling ball that way, what you would see on the ball is this: If you looked down at the ball from directly above, the center point of your grip -- the halfway point between thumb and finger holes -- would be like the center of the face of a clock. The oil rings would go around the entire ball like a circular frame and "frame" the grip -- the finger holes would be towards 11 and 1 o'clock, and the thumbhole towards 6 o'clock. The track lines wouldn't be close to either the thumb or the finger holes, but the diameter would be just as big as the that of the traditional "high-tracker's" diameter.
I have seen this track, or one like it, on a couple of bowlers, and both of them shared the same hobby -- third basemen on softball teams. Their natural inclination was to release the ball almost sidearm rather than a pendulum-style delivery. In their effort to put revs on the ball, they would turn their wrists over, counter-clockwise, at delivery, as if turning a rheostat or a knob on a radio. Neither were very good bowlers, but that's the concept in action.
Now, you can also have a spinner produce a track near the fingers or thumb, but you would have to have a PAP measurement of something like 11 over, 3 up or 11 over, 3 down, and the human wrist isn't built to do such a trick. It's not really meant to deliver a bowling ball at 0/0/90 or 6.5/0/90, either, but those two are at least doable.
Jess
Edited on 6/21/2009 1:55 AM
