I recently had my fingers on Earl Anthony's balls.
Well, not on them. More like inside them. We'll get to that later.
St. Louis is a great sports town, and not just because its fans are able to muster a formidable amount of denial when it comes to the artificiality of Mark McGwire's achievements. It's a great football town, and a great hockey town (even with the NHL locked out, Blues paraphernalia can be found throughout the city's retail outlets; a far cry from, say, Washington, D.C., where the majority of the Capitals merchandise is being burned to provide warmth for homeless kittens.) It's also a great host for sporting events, as will be proven again this weekend at the Final Four.
My girlfriend and I road-tripped to St. Louis the same weekend the NCAA wrestling championships were being held. We were, in fact, staying in the same hotel — across from the hockey arena — as the majority of the competitors and their families. This became evident when the elevator refused to operate because the car was over its weight limitation ... and then refused to operate a second time even after some of the freight walked back into the lobby. It seems while the athletes must cut weight, their fathers have done the reverse since their final collegiate matches.
Instead of sitting through the symposium on cauliflower ear or the "Why Title IX is Satan's Favorite Bylaw" workshop, my girlfriend and I decided we'd go exploring. St. Louis is the kind of town where you have to peel away a few layers before you find the cool stuff. The Anheuser Brewery is a nice, free trip, but it's a tad touristy and homogenous when compared to other brewery tours you might take locally. The Arch is incredible, but it's sort of like the Empire State Building in that it's fun to look at, take pictures of, view from the top, walk through the lame museums, hit the gift shop, and then ... well, there's an hour and a half you'll never get back.
Sarah and I made two noteworthy sports-historical visits while in St. Louis that aren't necessarily on the typical tourist to-do list.
There was the Bigfoot Museum. As in the monster truck, not the mythical woodland beast that lived with John Lithgow's family. The museum is literally inside an old car dealership, right down to the water fountain near the waiting room. The highlight? Being able to climb inside the wheel of an actual Bigfoot monster truck outside the museum. The lowlight? Not being able to crush a line of '79 Buicks with said monster truck.
(Oh, and by the way, you haven't lived until you've seen the Bigfoot monster truck timeline, featuring its appearances in Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment and Police Academy 6: City Under Siege, as well a misspelling of "Thailand" as "Thialand.")
The other visit was to the International Bowling Museum, which is located right across the street from Busch Stadium. You begin the tour with a history of the sport, from ancient Egypt to ancient Rome to the barbarians, who may have been the first culture to invent moose pelt bowling vests. Later, there's a scene depicted in the museum of King George bowling in his castle while two children watched from the sides of the alley; well, we call them "children" ... George called them "bumpers."
There are two fragments of bowling history I'd like to highlight. First is the concept of "pin boys." (Don't let the name fool you: the majority of these boys were older men.) Back in the days before automation, pin boys were perched behind the pins, ready to reset them after the ball knocked them down. They would press down on a lever with their foot to force these spikes through the floor, and then set the pins on the spikes. (To this day, bowling pins have holes in their bottoms.) Once the pins were set, they'd release the lever and get the hell out of the way...
... but sometimes, it was too late. Sarah and I met a woman at the museum whose grandfather was a pin boy. (No word if her grandmother was a ball girl ... that'd sort of be a Gatekeeper/Keymaster thing, no?). She said he still has the scars from his days in the lane, where the bowling ball would crack him in the leg or the arm.
God ... could you imagine a job where a series of heavy balls are flying at you while you work? And that your name isn't Paris Hilton?
I wonder if the pin boys were guys who couldn't find work as javelin catchers?
The second noteworthy historical highlight was the concept of national bowling teams sponsored by major beer distributors. I'm fascinated by this — that back in the day, a bowling team sponsored by Coors or Miller would come to your town to take on the local all-stars. I guess it was sort of like the Harlem Globetrotters of bowling, only instead of someone like Meadowlark Lemon you were watching someone who looked like your Uncle Herb.
If they had these traveling teams today, would the teams match up with the sponsors? Would the Bud and Miller teams be like the Yankees and Red Sox, gobbling up the most popular players with the highest contracts? Would the Milwaukee's Best team be like the L.A. Clippers of bowling? Would the Colt 45 and the Kirin teams match up racially with their consumer bases? Would the Corona team have a blood rivalry with the Dos Equis team? Would the Pabst Blue Ribbon team be like the Chicago Cubs of beer-league bowling — a sentimental favorite because of its consistent mix of charm and mediocrity? Would bowling purists constantly complain about the economic disparity between the national distributors and the microbreweries?
The International Bowling Museum also features Halls of Fame for men's and women's bowlers. The men's Hall of Fame is a solemn room filled with trophies and great lighting; the women's Hall of Fame looks like a display room in an upscale carpet store. It also has these weird photorealistic paintings of its inductees that resemble the kind of portraits they hang in a bank to posthumously honor its founder.
After a brief trip through the St. Louis Cardinals museum (which is included in the price of admission, and which prompted my girlfriend to ponder, "Boy, they really have a hard-on for this Stan guy here, don't they?"), you actually get to bowl a few frames in the bowels of the museum. Next to the alleys are a collection of famous balls, including that of Hall of Famer Earl Anthony. For a boy who grew up watching his father watch bowling on TV, putting my hand on Earl Anthony's balls brought me a little closer to heaven that day.
(By and by the way: there isn't an induction day at the Bowling Hall of Fame. One of the worker bees at the museum told me they just induct people here and there during the year, with little fanfare. Imagine that: a Hall of Fame whose induction ceremony doesn't induce mass hysteria and critical lambasting from former fans. Nice...)
Sarah and I paid a few extra bucks to bowl a full game. Her main objective was to get through 10 frames without breaking a nail. She still managed to kick my ass ... and I'm pretty sure I ended up breaking a nail.
The International Bowling Museum is a must-see when visiting that wonderful town with the inferiority complex towards Chicago.
But one suggestion for the good men and women charged with chronicling bowling’s rich history: what about the movies? How can you have a bowling museum without at least one picture of Michelle Pfeiffer throwing in Grease 2? Or Bill Murray with the crazy comb-over in Kingpin?
One word, International Bowling Museum: "Lebowski."
Random Thoughts
Famed lawyer Johnnie Cochran died this week, succumbing to the effects of a brain tumor.
The brain tumor has reportedly hired celebrity defense attorney Gerry Spence to clear its good name...
The National Hockey League is considering increasing the size of its nets, rounding the goalposts so the net would look like this: ( )
It's a natural fit for the NHL, as most things found in parentheses are afterthoughts...
When, exactly, are the Red Sox going to remove David Wells's feeding tube?
The most ridiculous story of the week is this stuff about players from the Carolina Panthers taking steroids. Not that it isn't a valid story — a Super Bowl runner-up with doctor-prescribed juice in the locker room is pretty frickin' embarrassing for the Good Ship Tagliabue. But besides a pair of bloated linemen, punter Todd Sauerbrun was fingered by CBS's "60 Minutes Wednesday" as having used a testosterone cream. (Too bad for Todd, it wasn't Dan Rather who "discovered" the medical documents.)
A punter on steroids? Isn't that like finding out your middle reliever is juicing?
I mean, do they even test punters? For anything?
I suppose this is a serious story. I mean, who wants their kid watching punter Todd Sauerbrun and then deciding he wants to be a punter?
And finally, Catherine Zeta-Jones has denied reports that she is ready to star in a movie remake of the TV primetime soap opera "Dallas." Speculation had Zeta-Jones linked with the film, mainly because her husband's bones are about 10 years away from turning into crude oil...
Greg Wyshynski is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].
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