Legends/Lane Masters today has only the name in common with the original Legends/Lane Masters.
They are two completely different company's without any of the same decision making employees or ideas.
That doesn't sound like a bad thing from what I have heard. There was a guy in charge, not Tony Martin, practically giving balls away and was doing some questionable things that brought the name down. At least thats how it was here in the Bay Area where the company is located.
Sorry, you have bad information. I live in Stockton California and know the most original owner group personally. The guy who was in charge before Tony Martin only left because of illness, but other than donating a ball here and there to things like Youth Bowling, Association Board Of Directors and Association Tournaments, he didn't give anything away.
The incident you have probably been informed incorrectly about was one of the employees decided to grab a pallet or two of balls from the warehouse. He was convicted of the crime and punished. He did sell some of these balls for cheap, but he wasn't running anything other than a pallet jack.
And the rest of the story as Paul Harvey used to say is this; the balls that were stolen were all rejects, x-outs and seconds that Legends/Lane Masters were not intending to sell anyway.
The original owner group were people like Sam Baca, Johnny Jones, Fred Bordon and Palmer Fallgren among others. There guys are/were straight as they come. The main problem they ran into was the decline of bowling in general.
