Jamski

Hi everybody. My name is Jim, call me Jamski, and I'm a BABe.

I suppose I should explain that. My other big passion--and I have had a lot of them--is Model Rocketry. In rocketry, if you've been out of it for a while, say, since you were a kid, and you come back to it, you're a BAR: a born-again Rocketeer. So it only stands to reason that if you do much the same in bowling, why, you're a BAB. Or a BABe, if you want it to sound funkier, and of course I do.

So. I got back into rocketry because I thought my young son would enjoy it. Why not? Smoke, fire, the occasional explosion, things flying into the sky...that's what I lived for as a kid. But oddly, it never seemed to have much attraction for him. Bowling though...that he enjoyed. And again, what's not to like? Rolling a big heavy ball down a lane and causing much havoc for ten oddly-shaped lumps of wood. Things flying in the air, the occasional explosion. No smoke and fire since they banned the gaspers in the alleys, but that's a good thing. As a kid, he used the bumpers and had a grand time. I was surprised and delight then when he asked for his own bowling ball for Christmas one year. Why not? We got him fitted with a Maxim and he was off. The bumpers soon weren't needed, and we had the occasional fun outing.

I'd been around the sport since I was a kid myself because my parents both bowled, and my Dad was quite good and always seemed to have his name up on the Honors board. I played in a youth league (my first ball was an AMF Classic Pro Roll) and averaged around 120 with a couple of high games in the 190s. I watched the PBA tour with Dad religiously, and if you were a girl at my high school and I dated you, chances are that first date was at a bowling alley.

By the time I joined the Marines I lost interest in bowling though...a new love had entered my life, and it was auto racing. Now I spent most of my free weekends at the track chasing tires, changing gears, loading and unloading trucks, whatever. I went home dirty and tired and I loved it...it was a pleasant change from the life of an air traffic controller. But it was seasonal, and it was expensive. So bowling came back again; I had brought my ball and shoes with me to my duty station as soon as I knew they had a bowling alley, and I began playing again. Not very well, but I enjoyed myself. I even rented my own locker. And then they renovated the alley, cleaned out the lockers, and lost my gear...

Fast forward another five or six years. I am even more deeply immersed in racing, as an official now, and I occasionally would sub on our track's bowling team. I enjoyed it, but I was never very good. But then I never had any instruction, and I had a ball which could be best described as "department store", a Brunswick All-Star I'd bought for twenty bucks including drilling and the bag. I always figured were I to get better I'd probably enjoy it more, but somehow I never got the "wanna" necessary to undertake such a project.

Now I am a Father, and that "wanna" had arrived in the form of my son, who had seen an ad at our local center promoting an upcoming adult-youth league. He was 13 at the time, and at the age where kids tend to push their parents away. I figured this might be a good way to discourage that, and maybe introduce him to a sport he could love the rest of his life.

About that time I got a wonderful gift from a man I'd never met. I knew him through my love of Indy Cars, and we'd conversed a few times about our common love of bowling. I would occsionally lament my lack of training and my second hand gear, and apparently he decided to do something about it. One day at work I got a phone call from him, asking for an address and then telling me to expect a package from him. He didn't say much else, just, "I'm sure you'll put it to good use." When it arrived, I was astonished to find a new Ebonite Clash, a Storm bag, and enough money to have it drilled, along with some left over for practice. "Here you go," the enclosed note read, "You have a proper ball now. Have it drilled and fitted properly, learn how to use it, and spend some quality time with your son." Well, I was bowled over, no pun intended. I always considered him a friend, but I could never have imagined anyone doing something like that for me.

I have always heard that accepting a gift honors the giver, so I did just that. I had the ball drilled fingertip at the best pro shop I knew of in the Nashville area, and I practiced. And practiced. And practiced. And admittedly, it took a while. Remember, I had no training at all...my Dad, bless him, was a gifted bowler, but not so as an instructor. And with him being a southpaw, I found it tough to watch and learn that way. So I turned to the source I usually do: a book, in this case David Ozio's "Bowl Like a Pro", bought at a local used book store. I read that thing from cover to cover, then read it again. but it emphasized things in a different way.

Armed with my new knowledge, I attacked the lanes. Slowly I began to improve, and by the time my son and I were midway through our first league together, I was rolling in the 170s and 180s fairly comfortably, and my average was up to 140. We won more than we lost, and ended the season fifth of 14 teams. Not a bad start!

Now we are in our second season. We have practiced a lot, and refined our techniques. May 27 of this year I finally got my first 200+ game, and not quite a month later I rolled ten strikes in a row on my way to a 286, my high game to date. 200s are still an event for me, but now they're an expected event. My average is in the 170s, and a bad league day is series under 450 and I am disappointed. Funny how standards change! And now my son has his average up from a 104 in the winter league to 122, and he will likely finish in the high 130s. He works himself harder, but he knows when he makes a bad shot that it's not the end of the world, and it's still fun.

And that, after all, is what it's all about. The late Dr. George Sheehan, the "Running Doctor", famously described sports as "play", and that's essentially true, and it applies to bowling as well as it does to running marathons. When we bowl, we play. And as I played with my son when he was a child, as a BABe I hope to continue playing with him long after he enters manhood.