"Can you believe it? I never lifted in my life and now, at 83, I start this stuff," he said.
He tried golf once but gave it up.
"Once, in the 1950s, [teammates] Don Shula and Bill Pellington took me out to play golf for the first time," Marchetti said. "The first ball I hit must have gone 300 yards, straight as an arrow, and almost hit the green. But it took 10 putts to get it in.
"I never played much after that."
Bowling is more the style of the blue-collar Colt born in West Virginia. He carries a 175 average in his seniors league in Downingtown, where he flirted with that perfect game.
Marchetti rolled eight straight strikes before he sensed a hush in the house.
"I looked around and thought, 'God almighty, the whole bowling alley is watching me,' " he said. "My last ball hit the 1-3 pocket, a good hit, but when the 5-pin stayed up, I heard this big 'Awwwww.' "
Marchetti shrugged, as if he had missed making a sack by a whisker.
"Nervous? Hey, I didn't get nervous playing football in front of 57,000 wild people in Baltimore," he said. "After that, you're used to any crowd."
