Bowling Ball

One and one-sixteenth inches with a quarter inch reverse pitch; three quarters of an inch and thirteen-sixteenths-inch with a pitch.All tenpin bowlers should recognize that. It's the formula for drilling a bowling ball. The above measurements happen to be the ones that Earl Anthony used when he was at the top of his game.Drilling your ball properly is probably the most important thing to do to increase your average. It's more important than shoes, more important than the wrist-bands, maybe even more important than how much you practice.

Bill Boucher used to bowl when he was younger, but he hadn't played in years, he said. But when he saw a Nintendo Wii game set up at the Bain Center in Columbia, he decided to try a virtual version of the game. The 80-year-old Clarksville resident quickly got the hang of it, bowling strikes and splits by holding a remote control and moving his body as though he were really bowling. "It's a weird feeling, but fun," he said during a game last week against a few other players at the center.

A sixth of the Baltimore area's remaining duckpin bowling alleys went out of business during the holiday weekend, and another is switching entirely to tenpin lanes -- ominous signs that the game with midget balls and pins is fading from its nativelandscape.Slated to shut down by todayare three alleys operated by AMF Bowling: the Joppa Center in the 1600 block of E. Joppa Road in Towson, Harford Center in the 6100 block of Harford Road in Northeast Baltimore, and Middlesex Center in the 1100 block of Eastern Blvd.

Climb down the stairs past the neon blue and canary yellow walls and you'll find a slice of hon heaven. Short, squat pins fly here and there as midget balls glide along the wooden boards. But it's not just duckpin bowling, the game invented in Baltimore in 1900, that most of the clientele seek at Taylor's Stoneleigh Duckpin Bowling Center. They're drawn by the down-home, slap-on-the-back flavor of the 52-year-old alley. What makes the place unique, patrons say, is that this haven for a working-class game is in the middle of a Baltimore County neighborhood better known for its soccer moms, bagel shops and tree-lined roads.

What's it take to jump from the Young America Bowling Alliance junior bowling program to the adult ranks?Dedication and talent, for sure . . . and a tough mom for a coach."

Some bowlers remember the time when the only tenpin ball you could purchase was rubber. Some remember when only polyurethane was available. Some of the younger bowlers think that reactive resin balls always have been around."

The Pierce Cleaners team consisting of Jim and Debbie Doyle, Mickey Mathias and Dolores and Dan Spytowski recently won the Brunswick Normandy In-House Team Tournament.Debbie Doyle, daughter of the Spytowskis, has been bowling, off and on, for about 15 years. The Catonsville resident, wife of Jim Doyle, uses a 14-pound Burgundy Hammer bowling ball."Since I started using the new Hammer my average has jumped about 15 pins," she said. "I'm sure part of the reason is that now I'm throwing a fingertip grip [ball]

To practice or not to practice -- it's a question that keeps coming up time after time.On the one hand are the bowlers who tell you that without practice a decent average is impossible; on the other hand are the folks who don't practice and still put up the numbers. So far this season we have at least one of each at Brunswick Normandy -- Jeff Baker and Richard Lockie.Baker, a Nebraska native who lives in Ellicott City, bowls in three leagues -- the Thursday Mixed and the Friday BG&E at Normandy and the Monday men's league at Fair Lanes Kings Point in Randallstown.

County Lanes in Westminster was the scene for the Marc Rickels Memorial Fund Tenpin Singles Bowling Tournament. Five dollars of each entry fee was collected for the Rickels Fund.Seventy-two entries generated $360; a cake sale added $116, and 50-50 raffles sent the total over $500.When the last bowling ball rolled into the pit, four pins separated the top three competitors.Jennifer Roe fired scratch games of 211, 199 and 214 and added 141 handicapped pins for the winning total of 765. That 624 three-game set was a career high for the Westminster resident.

Nine years ago, Walt Cervenka crushed his bowling hand during a drag racing accident at Capital Raceway.The tragic episode ultimately propelled Cervenka into the bowling business and into developing what he says is the best system for fitting and drilling tenpin bowling balls.It's called Photo Fit. Cervenka, the owner of Cervenka's Pro Shop at Fair Lanes Ritchie in Glen Burnie, actually makes a photocopy of a bowler's hand to more accurately drill a bowling ball.But back when he injured his own hand, Cervenka didn't own a bowler's pro shop.

A sixth of the Baltimore area's remaining duckpin bowling alleys went out of business during the holiday weekend, and another is switching entirely to tenpin lanes -- ominous signs that the game with midget balls and pins is fading from its nativelandscape.Slated to shut down by todayare three alleys operated by AMF Bowling: the Joppa Center in the 1600 block of E. Joppa Road in Towson, Harford Center in the 6100 block of Harford Road in Northeast Baltimore, and Middlesex Center in the 1100 block of Eastern Blvd.

Grasping a 16-pound bowling ball close to his chest, the 13-year-old Columbia boy stared down the shiny lane. He swung his left arm back, then forward and the ball hurried down toward a precise collision with the pins. A strike.The fall of all the pins did not provoke a celebration from Bob Helman, an eighth-grader at Owen Brown Middle School, only a confident smile and an exchange of low fives with his teammates. At Helman's level of bowling, strikes aren't surprises, they are expected.Bob is one of the youngest of the 30 teen-agers in the junior-major division, age 13-21, of the Laurel Boys and Girls Club bowling league.

A group of fifth- and sixth-graders at Linthicum Elementary School turned classmates into robots and ran them into walls -- all in the name of science.Under the watchful eye of engineers from Northrop-Grumman Corp. Friday, the students guided their robo-classmates through a maze as they learned about computer programming.The youngsters are taking part in Discover E, a program started in 1990 by the National Society of Professional Engineers to encourage students to pursue careers in engineering.

Mike McKenzie will be 19 years old Wednesday. It also will mark the first season in an adult tenpin league for the Manchester native.On April 13 he made sure he received a great birthday present.McKenzie had a fine youth career in the Young American Bowling Alliance. He progressed steadily from his beginning as an eighth-grader, learning the fundamentals, practicing when time permitted, bowling every Saturday morning at Hampstead Bowling Center in the YABA league, building his average every year and finally competing in youth tournaments.

Anita Manger started bowling duckpins at Fair Lanes Middlesex when she was 5 years old.The Arnold resident switched to tenpins, fell in love with the game, and has never left it.Active in two leagues, the Thursday Challengers at Fair Lanes Southdale and the Tuesday Budweiser at Greenway Bowl Odenton, she currently is averaging 188."I think that my average will start to go up," Manger said. "When I changed to the Beast [bowling ball] a lot of good things started to happen."Until the past few months, she had been using a 12-pound Rhino; now the left-hander is throwing a 13-pound Beast.

Uppy Webb Jr. of Catonsville has been bowling tenpins for a long time and still doesn't completely understand the sport.Until April 5, his best game and set were 278 and 698, respectively. Not bad for a 190-average bowler, who bowls in only one league -- the Wednesday Special -- at Brunswick Normandy.Throwing a 16-pound Dick Weber Legend bowling ball (recommended, fitted and drilled by Howard Marshall), Webb pounded out his career-high individual game and set.His first game of the night was a 255; then came a disappointing 189. But Webb wasn't through.

Todd Schaeffer, Amy Rosenberger and Kevin McKenzie, youth bowlers at Hampstead Bowling Center, went to the Baltimore YABA Championship Tournament at Fair Lanes Southdale, to bowl against the best young bowlers in the Baltimore area last month.Schaeffer and Rosenberger captured first place in the Junior Mixed Doubles event. They dropped 1,266 pins.Schaeffer, with 2,037 pins, won the Junior Boys All Events title and was just four pins below the winner of the Junior Boys individual division, dropping 711 pins to claim second place.

Mike Blair finally had the night that all bowlers look forward to having some time in their careers.In his first game on Oct. 22, he put 12 balls into the pocket for 12 strikes and his first 300 game. He aded games of 201 and 225 for his highest three-game series, 726.He lives in Ellicott City and bowls at Brunswick Normandy, Monday and Thursday in the Howard County Employee Invitational League and Tuesday in the Happy Hour Doubles.Bowling for the past six years, he carries an average of 202 using a 16-pound X-Caliber bowling ball.

Barbie Bryant has been bowling tenpins for "about four or five years."The Ellicott City native now lives in Catonsville and bowls two nights a week -- Sunday's Colts and Fillies and the Wednesday Social Security league at Brunswick Normandy.For Bryant the league bowling is a way to escape the pressure of her work; she's a nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital in the intensive care unit.That doesn't mean that she doesn't take her bowling seriously, she does. You can't carry an average in the 190s without concentration and dedication.

That bowling looks so simple, doesn't it? You tune into a Professional Bowlers Tour event, see some apparently ordinary Joe or Mark or Bill roll strike after strike and immediately you think, "Gosh, I could do that."Well, don't kid yourself, rookie, says ABC bowling analyst Nelson Burton Jr. Knocking down pins in your Friday night league is one thing. Doing it on Saturday afternoon, as the professionals will do in the finals of the Greater Baltimore Open from the Country Club Lanes in Rosedale tomorrow (3 p.m., Channel 2)