Back when keglers were TV sports stars
Thursday, February 24, 2005
He would approach the foul line from slightly left of center, sometimes far to the left if the lane conditions were "sticky."
That allowed him to impart even more spin — and therefore "sweep" — on his big "power hook."
Instead of a slow, measured, four-step approach to the line, the ball delivered a few boards left of the gutter, this young, slender and handsome kegler did it a new way.
He would glide to the foul line with a smooth five-step approach, his backswing rising to shoulder-level (the teaching pros favored a backswing no higher than your belt), and then would release the ball with a vigorous lift and turn.
That "big turn" was facilitated by a fingertip ball, also an innovation that he would popularize among all us amateur bowlers. The fingertip ball substantially elevated the average of players adopting it — some say by 10 pins per game or more.
The 16-pound ball would virtually fly down the alley, heading first toward the right gutter — had he made a mistake, the ball would actually fly into the gutter — and then turn left, heading at great speed for the right pocket.
And then — crash! — the pins would fly in all directions as if a small bomb had gone off among them.
Another strike, and another 200-plus game in the making!
Another 200-plus game, and perhaps much higher, for Dick Weber of St. Louis, the new king of professional bowling.
Dick Weber, whose death at age 75 was mourned in sports pages across the nation last week, was a completely new commodity in the conservative world of pro bowling in those days.
It was the middle 1950s, when the great professional teams from Detroit, St. Louis and Chicago ruled a sport that was only then catching on among millions of Americans.
It was a sport that had previously been viewed by many — especially in the religious community — as somewhat seedy and unsavory.
A sport that most often was associated with smoky pool and billiard halls, dirty basement or upstairs bowling alleys, beer and brawling and "pot games," in which whole weekly pay envelopes were wagered.
But times were changing for the game of bowling, mainly because of the advent of television.
One of the earliest popular televised sports shows in the 1950s, along with "The Friday Night Fights," was "Championship Bowling," which originated in Chicago and was hosted by "Whispering Joe" Wilson, a veteran sports commentator and a big booster of bowling.
"Championship Bowling" was an easy show to produce, because all it took was a couple of cameras, two lanes in some local bowling house and two top-flight pro bowlers going at each other in a three-game series.
My dad bowled in a Friday night league in the second-story six-lane bowling house in Frankfort, and he would take me with him to watch and, eventually, keep score for the games his Steck Furniture team bowled in the early '50s. And so when "Championship Bowling" came along, we were among its most avid early fans.
I can still hear Wilson, announcing one memorable match from just a few feet behind the bowlers, whispering hoarsely, "This, for 12 strikes in a row, a perfect game — and a prize of $100,000!"
(Maybe it was only $10,000. All I know is that for a breathless teenager, it was an enormous sum.)
At that time, the best bowler in the world was Don Carter, a big bulky guy who approached the foul line very slowly on his tip-toes, and then would sort of shovel the ball out down the right side of the alley. His accuracy was uncanny, his slow curveball rumbling among the pins that would sort of fold and fall.
A great bowler, yes; Mr. Excitement, no.
Then toward the end of the decade, along came Dick Weber. And his sweeping power ball that blew the pins to kingdom come.
And his wonderful personality: a likeable, even-keeled, quiet-spoken but highly articulate spokesman for his sport.
Surely it was not Weber alone that made bowling the most popular participant sport in America. "Championship Bowling," "Make That Spare," and other televised bowling shows certainly did as much or more.
But it was Weber and the new breed of bowling professional he inspired who raised the sport to new levels, in terms of performance, scoring and respectability.
All around America during the rest of the century new, huge and opulent bowling houses sprouted, thousands of new leagues for men, women and children formed.
As other spectator sports took over the tube — baseball, football, basketball, hockey and eventually "extreme" sports — pro bowling gradually took a back seat.
But the popularity of the game among ordinary Americans has continued to burgeon — an affordable, fun, clean game for the whole family.
I think Dick Weber had more to do with that than anyone else. An ambassador for the game until his totally unexpected death last week, he will be greatly missed by millions of us who loved to watch this guy bowl.
Dennis Wheeler may be e-mailed at dwheeler@starnewspapers.com. Or you may phone him at (708) 802-8092.
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Duke Harding
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The pins know when your swing is tight.
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