When Bryan, our oldest child, who turns 28 this month, was in kindergarten, he came home one day with a flyer in his backpack. The flyer invited kids to try bowling at one of the local alleys. The fee was $4 a week and there was no upfront cost. We decided to give it a go.
Little did we know that we would be spending nearly every Saturday morning for the next 17 or so years (our younger two kids took up the sport, too) in a bowling alley. Bryan took to the sport immediately. So much so that we were eventually traveling around the country for tournaments, watching him nab second place in the state high school tournament, and cheering him on as he bowled for Wichita State University—the most decorated collegiate program in the country. On his 16th birthday, he earned his silver level coaching certification, something he wanted far more than he wanted a driver’s license.
I mention all this not because I am nostalgic for those days of watching my kids bowl (though I am), but because Bryan recently happened upon a 2012 article in The New York Times titled “When Thugs and Hustlers Ruled Dark Alleys” by Gianmarc Manzione, which described a period of bowling history with which we were unfamiliar. And that led us to Manzione’s 2014 book, Pin Action: Small-Time Gangsters, High-Stakes Gambling, and the Teenage Hustler Who Became a Bowling Champion.
As the title suggests, Pin Action details a sordid—and fascinating—period in the 1960s and 1970s when bowling alleys in New York City and elsewhere were open all night so that “action bowlers” could compete for money. Often a lot of money. And because there was a lot of money at stake, various shady characters—including the bowlers themselves—found ways to tilt things in their favor. That meant everything from manipulating the bowls, pins, or even the lanes themselves to leaning into various deceptions and intimidation tactics. It could be violent—even deadly—and Manzione brings it all vividly to life.
At the center of the book is Ernie Schlegel, who took up action bowling as a teen, navigating the dangerous world with luck and skill and no small number of close calls with mortal danger and the law. As the Professional Bowlers Association became a cultural phenomenon, Schlegel was eager to go legit, but he had plenty of hurdles to overcome. And once he was on tour and appearing regularly on television—often in flamboyant costumes intended to increase his stardom while distracting his opponents—he struggled mightily to capture his first title.
Manzione details it all. Occasionally, passages feel overwritten or unclear (and I imagine particularly unclear for those who aren’t steeped in the world of bowling). By and large, however, the action of the “action bowling” is described in propulsive language, and Schlegel’s hero’s journey in the PBA is absorbing and satisfying.
I will always be grateful that Bryan grew up bowling in smoke-free alleys and far from any seedy underbelly that was once part of the sport. Still and all, I enjoyed peeking in on the darker side of bowling and witnessing the ways in which participants in that world made the transition from the shadows to the center of American culture during the golden age of televised bowling.