Friday - February 10, 2012

Almost A Clean Sweep

Another great week for my teams in bowling league.


We won 5-2 in Greed League, in yet another position round against Team X and my nemesis Andy. I covered him in the first game, but then he got hot and blew me away in games 2 and 3, bowling in the 250s and 260s. Good for him. Lucky us in game 2, that no matter how many strikes he threw his team didn’t seem to be opening any kind of a lead. That’s because our guy J was busy throwing strikes of his own, rolling a 289. Awesome. So we won the first two. I rallied in the third game with a 215 but that wasn’t quite enough, and we lost it by 3 pins. Oh well. The wins keep us solidly in 3rd place, and open a pretty large margin (18 points) between 3rd and 4th. With 10 weeks left and 2nd place just 5 ahead of us, let’s see if we can claw our way into the really big money.


We won 7-0 in Cheap League, making this our 3rd or 4th week in a row that we took all 7. We are in 2nd by another fat margin, and only 10 behind the killer 1st place team. We had fun hanging out with our opponents this week, although only half their team could make it. There was a Valentine’s candy goody bag up for grabs (M&M Mars has a factory in the next town over, and they have promotional handouts for some of the employees, and I guess one of them is on our league. Sure seems to be a lot of M&Ms around all the time) for the 4 highest survivors of an elimination bracket. With her new all-of-a-sudden improvement in bowling, she’s been throwing a weekly series 100+ over, so with the low average handicap she still carries she was able to take high total score and win the biggest bag. Unfortunately the Skittles Card Box and the giant bag of Peanut Butter M&Ms seem to have gone to work with her today. We won the beer frame in game 2 without realizing it, and that was also the Strike Ball frame for last week’s highest over average series for men and women. Which was our guy J, but not my wife this week. She had it last week, and with this week’s 112 over series she’ll probably have it next week. And he got the strike, so he got a handful of cash and we got a free round of beers. And since he used to date the alley’s beer girl and they’re still on good terms, we got Blue Moons instead of Bud Lights. With orange slices, classy. So overall, pretty darn good. Cheap League is the antithesis of Greed League. It’s the lowest cost league, and has the smallest end-of-year prize pot. Instead they have a couple of little prizes every week, along with all the side games (brackets, poker, etc) that most leagues do on the side. It’s a fun league, and they make a real effort to keep it fun.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/10/2012 at 04:37 PM   
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   Friday - February 03, 2012

On a Roll

We won 5-2 Tuesday in Greed League, which keeps us in 3rd place by a small margin. Only one spectacular score; the wins came from good teamwork where we all rolled well. Next week is a position round so we’ll have to do our best then too.

We won 7-0 last night in Cheap League. Same as last week. This lifts us into 2nd place and closes us to 10 points behind the leading team. Nice. We were supposed to play a team of beginners, and we would have given them a handicap larger than their best bowler’s average, but they didn’t show and they didn’t pre-bowl. So we had a bye, and we had to “earn the points” by bowling close to our team average, which is how forfeits are handled in bowling. So of course my team threw excellent games and we finished the first two games more than 100 over each. Heck, in game 2 we were only 1 pin below our record high game, which is tops in that league. Duh. Strategery? Not. At least we managed to roll poorly in game 3, finishing just 6 pins higher than our minimum required score. I was 55 over with a 235 in game 2, and my wife fired off a 215 that was 65 over her average. She’s suddenly figured out how to put some muscle behind the ball and has taken to rolling 5, 6, or more strikes in a row to start the game. That tires her out though, so she can’t keep it going for long. We’ll have to figure out some strength training exercises for her, so we can unleash her as our secret weapon. I really want her to blast past the other ladies on the league and have high series, high game, and high average for the season.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/03/2012 at 09:58 AM   
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   Thursday - January 26, 2012

Glue Ball

Strange weather this week for being in the middle of winter. What bit of snow we got the other day is gone, and it’s been cool and rainy all week. The weather affects the lane conditions, even though the alley is climate controlled. I’m pretty sure that is why the lanes were like glue this week, for both leagues I’m in. I wasn’t seeing much in the way of oil pickup on the ball, and the level of accumulated grime wasn’t too bad, but the mid lanes were like bowling through rubber cement. The balls weren’t turning early, but they sure did seem to slow down, and had the energy sucked right out of them. The only answer to that is to throw harder, and that’s a challenge to do accurately and with the proper amount of hand. Too easy to blast a shot down your line and have it not break at all, or break late. So I took a more inside line, and tried to loft the ball as much as I could. “Git ‘er out there”. Meh, that mostly worked. Mostly.

I bowled a bit over average all 3 games on Tuesday’s Greed League, and we won all 7. I was 35 under the first game tonight, 44 over the second, and 17 over the third tonight in Cheap League, and we won all 7 of those against the top ranked team. They beat us 5-2 last week in a position round, but this week their one power roller couldn’t get it together so they went down in flames. Big flames; we beat them by a total of over 300 for the night. Overkill, but we might just float back up to 2nd place because of it.

Right now my arm is really tired and my fingers are burning, so I’ve decided to soak them all in rum. From the inside. As a remedial treatment of course.

No phone call from the MIL either today or yesterday. Guess she’s happy with her new toy and has nothing to complain about. Phew.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/26/2012 at 10:54 PM   
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   Friday - January 20, 2012

One Up, One Down, One Sandbagger

Greed League: 5-2 win this week
Cheap League: 2-5 loss this week

I think I have developed a working hypothesis that a bowling average is an honest indicator of your ability until that average hits about 205-215. After that your average becomes more of an indicator of your ability to manipulate a number to give your team the best handicap advantage. Case in point would be the guy on the team that beat us on Cheap League last night, who carries a 224 average, yet threw a 760 series. He’s actually a 260-class bowler (a 279 is a perfect score except for 1 throw); we see him in tournament situations all the time, every week, where he throws 800+ series. It’s part of the strategery of league play, and his 1st place team is still 20+ pins ahead of even the 2nd place team (which right now happens to be us).

In a perfect world with an infinite supply of bowlers, leagues could put average caps on the memberships, and the top players would be excluded from the lesser leagues, forcing them to go compete in the hardcore leagues which are often run without handicaps of an kind. Scratch bowling, just like the pros do on TV. Alas, the world isn’t perfect, the economy is in the outhouse, and every bowling league in the country is super glad to have anyone who shows up and pays the dues every week.

Since this was a position round in Cheap League this week, next week we go back to the normal rotation, which means we play this team again next week. Let’s see how they do then.  In Greed League we’re hanging onto 3rd place.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/20/2012 at 09:55 AM   
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   Friday - January 13, 2012

Movin on up

Last’s week 7-0 win at Cheap League vaulted us right up the pyramid. We’re tied for points won with 2 other teams, but since our team has the most scratch pins of any team, that breaks the tie so we come out on top, in 2nd place. For now. And last night we won 7-0 again. I’m doing much better now that the deep oil is out of my ball and the surface is fresh. That ball is getting old, and it’s starting to crack in places. Hope it lasts out the season. Next week we’ll have another position round, where we’ll face the 1st place team, a group of lefties who are 20+ points ahead of everyone else. But they may be in a slump, and we’re ascendant, so we’ll see what happens.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/13/2012 at 10:09 AM   
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   Friday - January 06, 2012

It feels so good to finally have clean balls

Bowling has been a tad frustrating the past couple of weeks. My games have been well below average and my teams have lost because of it. Almost always until now I have blamed myself for having a bit of down scoring, and tried some extra practice to alleviate it. It hardly worked this time; the only time I could throw a series of games in the 190+ zone was when we practiced in the afternoon when the lanes were burnt to a crisp. So I bit the bullet and took my balls to the pro shop. I got a couple of new fingertip inserts and had my strike ball baked again. That ball is several years old, and it really does need to go through the rejuvenation process every 30 to 40 games. Steam the oil out and get the surface sanded. I’ve rolled close to 100 since I last had it done. It was time. Had my spare ball refit and steamed too.

And, oh my, what a difference. I was throwing some great hook last night, and turned in 3 good games for a 587 series at Cheap League. Truth be told, I wasn’t really even trying much, because we played a lesser team and I was trying to shave points. Um, “do some tactical bowling” I mean. Whatever. We gave them 126 pins for handicap - that’s like adding a whole extra bowler to their roster - and we beat them handily, 7-0, winning the wood by almost 200 pins. 

Posted by Drew458     on 01/06/2012 at 02:20 PM   
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   Friday - December 30, 2011

A Close Match

We went 4-3 against the 3rd place team at Cheap League last night. Our wins from the previous weeks has moved us up to 4th, pushing the old 4th place team down to 5th, and we were 3 points behind the 3rd place team. Now we’re 2 points behind them. We’re about halfway through the season, so the competition is starting to heat up nicely. Tonight’s split opens the gap between the top 4 teams and the lower places a little more.

The 1st place team is still way out ahead, more than 20 points beyond us. Funny thing: the 1st place team in Greed League is the same way; many points ahead of everyone else. Both teams have had a huge lead on everyone since before Thanksgiving, perhaps even since before Halloween. All the more reason for a split season I think. Heck, in my bowling daydream leagues only run 16 weeks start to finish, with no position rounds at all. Leagues start in September. A week off 12/24 to 1/1, then another 16 weeks, then another week off the end of April, then another 16 weeks then 2 weeks off the end of August. Follow the college semesters; Fall, Spring, and Summer. Teams may change, some may come and go, but each league goes on forever, and your average rolls forward from semester to semester, but not your pin totals. Average reported to USBC is (Fall+Spring)/2. Holidays? Well, that’s just one week less for that league that semester.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/30/2011 at 09:38 AM   
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   Friday - December 23, 2011

Fast Bowling Post

Cheap League: 7-0 for another week, this might move us into 3rd. Gotta go now!

Posted by Drew458     on 12/23/2011 at 11:17 AM   
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   Wednesday - December 21, 2011

Moslty Lame

A pretty lame night at Greed League. Injuries and absences. We won, 5-2, but that will leave us in 3rd place by a point.

I cut my thumb a little while carving away some of the old epoxy on my car mirror yesterday. Nothing major, but I opened a flap of skin right on the ball of my thumb. Right where I grip the bowling ball. I wore a bandage all afternoon, but I had to take it off to bowl, and by the third throw it was starting to bleed. I tried using some of that stretchy thumb tape on it, but that was even worse, and I threw 0-0, 0-9, 3-4 for the first three frames. Simply awful. I got some liquid bandage from Joe on the other team. White hot pain in a bottle, but bowlers have been using this stuff for generations to overcome cuts and blisters. It stopped the bleeding, and the pain was gone by the time it dried, but I still couldn’t get a good grip on the ball. So my bowling sucked the whole night. Really sucked. I might have made a 400 series, but then again I might not have. Awful.

Glenn’s knee was out, so he sucked too. One of our guys was out cuz his kid was sick. Three of the guys on the other team simply didn’t show up. No surprise really; it’s right before the holiday and nobody has time to spend a whole evening bowling. Duh. So with only 6 bowlers instead of 10 we were done really early, and what with the injuries and so one neither team really cared too much about it last night. So we took the first game by 130, won the second game by 34, and lost the third game by about 15. I kind of blame myself for that one, bowling more than 40 under. But Glenn was just as off. Last night was another one of those bad nights, when the winners are the team that sucks the least.

I did the full-on liquid bandage thing, complete with the little bit of very fine gauze cemented on. It’s still there, and I’m going to leave it there for another few days.

And that’s about all the blogging I have time for today. Too much to do around here, not enough time. Which is typical holidays, right?

Posted by Drew458     on 12/21/2011 at 01:57 PM   
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   Friday - December 16, 2011

A Bad Case Of Glue Ball

Our team went 7-0 last night at Cheap League. We are in 5th place in a league of 12 teams. Last night’s win will not move us up, but it will bring us closer to the lead teams and widen the gap between us and the teams below us. Last night’s win puts us over the 50% win line. Yay us!



Happy happy joy joy. We only gave out 4 pins in handicap so it was pretty much a heads up match. We were on the lanes up against the wall, which had been used for open bowling before our league started. Conditions were absolutely rancid last night, but this time my team sucked less on them than the other team. There were no awesome games. The lanes were like glue, the back end was dead, the edges were wet, and the pins seemed to be Velcroed on. We won because we left easier spares and made them more often than the other team did. I threw a 548 for the series, a whacking great 8 pins over average. 185, 172, 191. We got the wood because we won the first game by a huge amount; our opponent’s team relies too heavily on their one awesome bowler, and he was 100 pins down that game.

And that’s about it. Sure, you get to be a great bowler with a really high average by stringing lots of strikes together all the time. But when the foo hits the shan, you win by being able to hit the 10 pin or the 7 pin almost all the time to make the spares, by rolling 8 or 9 when your first ball doesn’t strike, and by throwing a moderate line that doesn’t give you strange and impossible leaves and splits when the strikes won’t come. And that’s what we did.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/16/2011 at 10:37 AM   
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   Wednesday - December 14, 2011

The Battle of the Andrews

What, you thought I forgot to make a bowling post? Ha!

Once, at band camp, Last night, at Greed League, we went 5-2. With our guy Bob back in Texas for his business, we had to get Andy from last’s years angry team in to sub. Actually he subs for us quite a bit, and with the better mix of guys we have this season it turns out that both he and his itsy bitsy girlfriend are Ok folks. That’s good. So anyway, there was me, there was Andy subbing for us, and there was Andy on the team we played. Three Andrews, oy vey.

It wasn’t heads up bowling. We got a 47 pin handicap, but their guys are usually much better bowlers than we are. Lucky for us we had a good night, even though Joe was absent because of traffic. We have a very diverse team; one guy is rich, one guy is so poor he can’t hardly afford soap, one guy works his tail off driving a truck, one guy has a cushy job being the IT dude for the local high school, and then there’s me. Not that any of that matters because we’re all in it to bowl. But Joe drives a local big rig for a living, and he was hours behind because of traffic. So he was out for the night. His absence cut our handicap down to about 28 pins. Not quite heads up bowling, but it wasn’t a whole lot of handicap.

So we went at it. Our team has fallen into 3rd place, and we want to get back into 2nd in the worst way. I don’t know what place their team is in, but it’s lower than 4th. Their Andy and I don’t get along too well; we were officers together on some dying league a few years back, and we had some strong differences of opinion ... long story, not germane to this one. But it was kind of a grudge match, at least him vs me, and we’re both the lead-off bowlers for our teams.

We won the first game by 27. I rolled a 208, which was good enough to cover my man, beating Andy. Haha. Our Andy, nominally a 205 average bowler, threw in the 180s. We were in the lead for every frame. Nice, but that made the other team wake up for Game 2.

We won the second game by just a little. 13 or 14. I threw a 206, but I got 5 strikes in a row to rally us. The lead changed places about 4 times, but in the end we squeaked one out. Their Andy was way off, throwing down in the 140s. Neener neener neener!

Game 3 was a nail biter. We were ahead, then behind, then ahead, then tied, then behind ... they opened with a barrage of strikes while we threw soft the first two frames. We never really rallied, but threw steadily the whole game. And our Andy was suddenly hot, throwing strikes almost the whole game. As late as the fourth bowler in the 10th frame it was anybody’s game, but even with our Andy chucking a 251 they hammered a bunch of Xs onto the end of the scoreboard and pulled ahead to win by 11. Their Andy rolled a 224, and all I could manage was a 185. Still, that’s over my average, so I’m not complaining, though I blew it in the 10th, missed my spare, and dropped what could have been a 200+ game. So I rolled a 599 for the night, once again just shy of the 600 series hurdle. Not that I’m complaining, but I really would like to roll 600+ all the time. I was the only bowler with a score under 200, so it was a big scoring game for both teams, a really good game, and they absolutely earned that win. Lucky for us we were up in total points from the first two games, so we got the wood.

Going 5-2 is better than 4-3, and far better than 3-4. But I think that we’ll need to do that well or better again next week to get out of 3rd. Maybe for the next few weeks. The 1st place team? Phooey. They’re so damn far ahead of everyone else that it makes my idea of a split season make sense.  And it’s been that way for at least 4 weeks now.  This league runs until May, but I doubt that we’ll be able to catch them even then, nor will anyone else. Those guys have only lost 6 or so points, and we’re in week 16. Untouchable.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/14/2011 at 03:30 PM   
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   Friday - December 09, 2011

Under Pressure

We lost 3-4 in Cheap League. That really bugs me.

We played the half team in a position round. Instead of 4, they have just a father and his son and 2 vacancies. Vacancy scores never help your team any when things go right, but they’re a blessing when things go wrong. A steady 130 pins each per game, no matter what.

So we gave that team a big fat handicap, something like 108 pins. So they got 36 or 37 pins per frame for free. That can make a psychological barrier that’s hard to surmount, but I don’t think it did. I think my team just had a crappy night. I threw Ok in the first game, going a few points over average, and we won that one handily. I threw great in Game 2, scoring a 210, and earning myself $8 in strike ball which I qualified for from last weeks 258 ( highest over average game each week bowls for a prize next week. For a chosen frame, a strike gets you $20, or else $1 per pin. I threw an 8 ). But the rest of my team didn’t rise to the occasion and we lost.  At that point lane conditions went south, and Game 3 became a nightmare. I could not find the right adjustment, so even though I was throwing the lines I was trying for, and hooking the ball right into the pocket time after time after time, I wasn’t getting any strikes. Worse, I was getting nasty splits and odd single leaves. This turn it was the 10, next time the 4, then the 9 the turn after that, followed by a 2-9 split. I made most of them, whoopee, but it was most vexing. And this was happening for everyone. Once again the other team muddled through better than we did, so they won that one. The best we could fight back was to limit their lead so that we wound up taking the wood by a mere 17. Arrgh. Rotten night.

I don’t know how to beat the lanes when this kind of thing happens, and that’s quite frustrating. Damnation! I was putting the ball right into the pocket every friggin’ throw, with a good angle and with a decent amount of turn on the ball. And crap was the result every time!! GRRRR!!!!  And it is difficult to slough off that frustration, because I’m highly competitive. But I did my best to do so. If I can manage it I’ll try to get up there today for a bit of practice, and maybe I can find somebody to show me the way if it exists. Maybe I should just bite the bullet and use my spare ball to throw a straight ball game in those conditions. I’d hate that, but you do what you have to do.

After league we played a quick game on another lane that hadn’t been burned up for the leagues. We all threw great. So it’s a matter of our team learning how to bowl more effectively when the lanes are stale. 

Posted by Drew458     on 12/09/2011 at 11:03 AM   
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   Wednesday - December 07, 2011

Stable as a table

Another boring bowling blog post.

We split 4-3 last night on Greed League. Our opponents were the team full of ringers, 3/5 of whom work for the bowling alley and thus practice constantly. We took the first game by 11, and took the second game by about 30. Then they really pulled the stops out while two of our guys slumped, and beat us by 160 in the third game, so they got the win and the wood. But to get that win they had to bowl their best, and that’s going to hurt their averages. Oh boo hoo.

I didn’t throw anything spectacular but I was fairly consistent and over average, so I was definitely contributing. I threw a 594 series, just missing the 600 mark. 218, 192, 184, so I was about +/- 16. Not too shabby seeing as I’m carrying a 166 average in this league. I only muffed two throws the whole night, one of which was a spaz ball in the 9th of the third game, a 5-4 open that cost me the 600. Rats. But my 10 pin corner throws were 100% for the night. I didn’t miss a single 6-10 or a 10 pin shot. I’m happy with that. My other flubbed shot came in the second game, when whatever the heck I threw left a really strange leave, the 1-2-6-8-10. Weird. That’s a dogleg of pins on the left with a pair of pins off on the right with a big hole in the middle. Never saw that one before, so I had no idea what to throw to make it. But I remembered the old advice that if you’ve still got the headpin it’s a strike ball, so that’s what I threw; the ball turned into what was left of the pocket, pins went flying, and I made it. Cool.

I think we’re still in 2nd place. I didn’t check the standings sheet. We need to do better than split 4-3 to keep that. Some 7-0s and 5-2s would be better.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/07/2011 at 09:46 AM   
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   Friday - December 02, 2011

Tough Night

We were up against the 2nd place team last night at Cheap League. Out of a dozen or so teams, we’re somewhere down around 10th place. It was pretty much straight up bowling; we got a whacking great 9 pins worth of handicap. This makes for a highly competitive night.

I did OK the first game, rolling in the mid 180s. We won that game by about 30. The other team poured it on in the second game, but we answered the challenge. Or at least I did; I rolled a 257. Yay me!! So we won that game by about 11. Lane conditions just went to Hell in a hand basket in Game 3. What little oil was out there was gathered into 2 clumps, and the back end was breaking evilly and early. This made for some awful bowling from everyone, with splits and strange leaves all over the place. All over the alley actually, up and down all the lanes. Nasty. Their team adapted to this better than ours did, so they took that game by 50 or so, which gave them wood. I threw 20 or so under average, so what coulda/shoulda/woulda been a 700 night didn’t even break 600. Close, but no Monica. Rats. On the other hand, I figured out the right adjustment midway through the game, so I recovered from throwing utter crap to making 5 in a row from the 7th frame, which brought our team’s total really close to theirs at the top of the 10th. I thought we had a chance, but my squad just didn’t have their game face on so they plooped out while our opponents rallied. Damn. So we split the night 4-3. I don’t know if that will bring us up, bring them down, or just leave us both in the same place in the standings.

I’ve said it many times before and I’ll say it again: I swear you win or lose because of your attitude. My guys had a bad case of the “I can’ts” ... and they couldn’t. I wasn’t exactly thrilled with my performance in the first half of Game 3 either, but instead of sulking and hating on myself I set out to find the fix. When I threw a squirt ball in the 5th after having guttered in the 4th, I figured out that my inserts were oily and I couldn’t hold onto the ball. So I went and washed my hands, and took a rag to the finger holes. Then I held the ball with a bit more authority. This caused me to hold onto it a touch longer, which gave my throw a bit of extra loft and speed, so it went deeper. Right past the quagmire zone in the back end, and right into the pocket at a good angle. Strike. Strike. Strike. Strike. Strike. 3. Drat. That 3 in end of the 10th was because I was cracking up from overhearing some really dirty funny comments the other team was making to each other. Some kind of Navy joke about some sailor called Seaman Stains. Cracking wise is a better way to deal with the stress and frustration than having a sulk or a hissy fit. And that’s probably why they won the third game.

Next week is a position round. This league has lots of them; 6 I think for the year. It’s not up to me, but if it were I wouldn’t have any. I think position rounds tend to glue the teams into the standings slots they’re already in, and in this league the first place team is already up 13 points.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/02/2011 at 08:43 AM   
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