Tuesday - May 18, 2010

Curses, out-tacticalled again

Summer bowling league started tonight. For the 4th year in a row we’re doing the Tuesday night group. Maybe this isn’t such a great idea, because it’s only 7 or 8 teams. The hardcore men’s league comes in on our heels, so the squeeze is on us to finish early and skeedaddle. Although with stale lanes, I can’t say just how really hardcore they’re going to be. Bunch of nonsense IMO, as our lanes were seriously breaking down after just 2 games. Hey alley folks, how about actually spreading some oil out there?

And we started the season off by losing. Hey, this is a different team. My wife and I, our friend Rex, and whoever. This year whoever is this fellow John. Together our team has a 694 book average. We played a family team tonight. Father, son, two daughters. We know these folks. Been bowling against them in leagues for ages. None of them bowled in a winter bowling league this year, but son bowled in a Sport Bowling league. And the USBC does not yet have the averages up for the winter season. ( Boo hiss, lazy ass USBC. Take our money, screw us over by eliminating lots of the fun awards we used to try for, and fall down on the job when we need you. ) But these folks have all been bowling for ages, and if you go back an extra year looking up their numbers, then their team average is 691. Just 3 pins less than ours.

Problem is, any league can write the bylaws that define entering averages, and the boilerplate bylaws for the summer leagues are really lazy. So they just say this year’s past winter league. And that’s as far as they go. They don’t count any summer league, or any winter league older than last season, or anything like that.

So the whole family had to “bowl for average”, even though we knew it was a total crock. And for extra fun, the league had voted at the start-up meeting to use a 90% handicap. So we bowled. Scratch points, we won the first game by a little bit. We were about 30 pins over average, they were about 24 pins behind us. Son bowled a 214. He’s a junior in college; I’ve known him since he was in high school. He’s a 200+ average bowler, always. We stayed pretty much on course for the 2nd game and their scores dropped. We were sitting down by the lanes, they were up on the tables behind us. We could hear them talking averages and running numbers on their cell phone pocket calculators. One sister even reminded the other, right on the approach, that they were bowling for averages. To put it bluntly, they totally sandbagged it. We took the 2nd game by maybe 50. Rex made the 6-7-10, and that’s a thing of beauty. No prize for that anymore. Son bowled a 179. We won the 3rd game scratch as well, but not by a lot. Our new guy is a major cranker, and he couldn’t adjust to the rapidly declining lane conditions and was over-hooking like mad. Having gone a mere 3 over average in the first 2 games, I finally got all my shit in one sock and threw 20 over for a 190. Happy me. Son threw a 114.

These kind of scores are pretty much expected; their team is just as good as ours is. It’s just that we had to bowl against our averages, and they didn’t. Because of loose rules. So when we added up all the numbers, their “actual” against our book, and took 90% of that, they got 47 pins per game. Which means we lost at least 2, possibly all 3 games, and they also took wood.

You know, I’m getting more than a bit tired of the BS built into league bowling. The handicap system, unless it’s 100%, is strongly weighted towards the higher average team. In a typical 80% handicap league, they can bowl below average and still win. The lower average team has to have a superb night just to break even. That can’t be right. It’s a false handicap. Hey, you can run the 100 yard dash in 5 seconds. I can run it in 10 seconds. Let’s race! But to make things “fair”, you’ll give me a 3 second head start. Nice. Who’s going to win almost every time we run? You are. That’s how bowling league handicap works. It only looks fair. It’s a sucker’s game. Even a 100% handicap still favors the better team, but it goes a longer way towards leveling the playing field than the 80% handicap.

And there has to be a way to stop this sandbagging. I don’t know what the solution is, but I’m mulling over ideas. Perhaps a universal rule for entering averages that a league can’t rewrite? “Any sanctioned league you bowled in, anywhere, in the last 5 years, as long as you bowled at least 21 games, we take that average and use it. And if you’ve bowled in multiple leagues in those 5 years, we take the highest average and use that. And that average will be your average for the first 4 weeks/12 games bowled for this league.” That would allow summer league averages to count for winter leagues, winter league averages from a couple years ago to count now, etc. Ok, maybe it should be only 3 years, or maybe only 2. But there has to be a fixed way that can break the fix. Or the fixing. Because, yes, sad to say but true, most folks are smart enough and immoral enough to use the rules, any rules, to their advantage. It isn’t honorable, it isn’t sporting, but it is legal. And everyone wants as much advantage as they can get, whether they need it or not.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/18/2010 at 10:03 PM   
Filed Under: • Bowling Blogging •  
• Comments (3) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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