Saturday - April 23, 2016

another season of league ending

Yup, we’ve come to the end of yet another year of bowling league.

This year’s team managed to fight our way almost to the bottom, and secured that plummet Friday night by losing all 7. We had a good time, but the bowling was almost all pure suck.

OTOH, I did convert the 4-7-10 split. First time ever. In more than a decade of bowling, I’ve made one 6-7-10, the right handed version of this split. And now one 4-7-10, the left handed one. One of each. In how many thousand games? It’s hard to do.

Once upon a time, back in the day when the sanctioning body, the USBC, was the old ABC there may have been a patch award for this. But the USBC has gone super cheap, and all the “fun” awards are gone. They want all the money for their super center bowling alley (one bowling alley, thank you, albeit a big fancy one) and the rest of the country can go screw. You know, I’m kinda pissed off at that.

We used to get a monthly bowling magazine delivered, at least 10 times a year. Gone. Now they have some .pdf thinger online, some jazzed up crap that “turns the pages” when you click the mouse. Bandwidth sucking garbage IMO. But they must be saving a fortune on printing and mailing.

We used to get annual awards for accomplishments, like the above split, or the Big Four split, or an All Spares game, or a Dutch 200. That died a slow painful death. Once upon a time the award was an embroidered iron-on patch. They couldn’t make up their minds with the designs, so some years we had key chains with lovely cast bronze 3D coin sized award fobs. Some years we got a POS clear plastic fob and the award was a slip of paper that went in the middle. Crap. Luggage tags. Zipper pulls. Patches. One year we had gorgeous enameled lapel pins. Things degraded further, and it became a simple rectangular refrigerator magnet. But at least those were annual awards, so you got something for your dues. Now they’ve decided all that “bling” is lifetime based. Bowl a 600 Series, get the patch once, and that’s it. No recognition ever again. And that’s sad, as I really like the lapel pins and wanted to complete the set. But now it’s over’ once you’ve been in a league for a few years and reached your level of growth, you’ve won pretty much every award you’re ever going to get. I don’t think our secretary handed out a single patch pin or magnet this year. Not one. This kind of sucks.

Oh, but sanction your league because of the insurance!! Insurance?? Yes, your secretary will be bonded, so in case they get mugged with the league cash, or run off to Tahiti with the prize fund money, your league is covered. Dude. Dude. Seriously? I doubt if there is a bowling alley in the country that doesn’t work as the banker for every league that it hosts. Pay your dues every week into the little blue envelope. The treasurer takes the cash, counts it up, and delivers it to the front desk. Who immediately take their linage fee, duh. And then put the rest in your “account” in their safe. And if they get robbed, they have business insurance. So the bonded/insured thing is a dud, and no reason to be sanctioned.

Oh, but we’re the keeper of the rules! We make the rules! If you weren’t sanctioned, how could you enforce the rules? Well let’s see ... oh, this is a tough one ... um ... as honest adults, we could all agree to abide by the rules, and if we had to we could argue it out. Or ask mommy. I mean, make an Appeal To Authority and get the judgement of the bowling center owner. And that’s good enough.

Oh, but tournaments! You need to be sanctioned to carry and official national average and do tournaments!! True. You are correct. So the one guy in 300 bowlers who actually gets involved in tournaments, let him get sanctioned. The rest of us can use the money to fill up the gas tank.

Hey, don’t forget 300 games! Those rings! That bling! The fame, the glory!! Eat me. You stopped giving away 300 rings years ago, even the cheaped out rhodium ones. Your own stats say that more than 50,000 300 games are thrown every year. And with the price of gold being what it is, and the introspective awareness that bowling is, well I don’t want to admit it but, rather a sad activity most of the time ... Not too many people are going to drop a grand or more to get a big jock ring to celebrate the one perfect game they’ve thrown. But one of those enameled pins would be nice, thanks.

Actually it may be the case that USBC never has had an award for the 6-7-10, only the Big Four.

Oh shut up Donny.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/23/2016 at 06:49 PM   
Filed Under: • Bowling Blogging •  
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