I believe the author was thinking that today only a league or two in the house would do this and that they would use their normal house shot.
While I agree that volumes are up today and the oil maybe slicker but I'm sure the proprietors would cut back on the oil volumes if all leagues would be using the old style balls, since the balls would not deplete them as in the past.
Also in the past on wood, the lanes around here would be stripped only once or twice a week, where today with the modern lane machines strip at least once a day.
Backends were generally pretty dead back then.