Only the dead don’t bowl. Everybody’s tried it, anybody can do it, nobody wants to see it. Would you pay to watch bowling? Of course not. Not if the match featured the greatest bowlers of all time. Who are the greatest bowlers of all time? Who knows? As a spectator sport, bowling isn’t much. Most bowlers don’t pay much attention to their own game much less anyone else’s, especially after a couple of beers. That’s the downside of bowling’s great accessibility: even when you’re good at it, nobody cares.
She grabs a pale-pink eight-pound ball with her right hand, lays her left lightly on an aluminum rail, and glides slowly to the line. She flicks her wrist and the ball rolls away. She turns around immediately, gripping the guide rail tightly now, and heads back to the scorer’s table. She’s back a moment after the ball hits the pins. “What’d I get?” The scorers says strike. She claps her hands. “Strike? Hot damn!”
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Beverly Wike lost a little sight every year for 32 years, until her eyes finally shut off for good in 1984. But the alley isn’t entirely dark. Like most of the blind bowlers, she can see light and use it. “The pink color is just horrible, but with all the black balls at least I can tell it’s mine.” Unlike most of the others, she’d practically never bowled before she joined the league a year and a half ago. “There are times when I get to the line and become disoriented, I feel like I’m in a great big space out there. I mean, I know it’s a small area but it feels like it goes on forever.”
Enunciating each syllable, he announces slowly, “seven–eight–ten,” and says, “I was born three months premature and received too much oxygen, which caused me to lose my vision before leaving the hospital. I weighed two pounds and two ounces.” His partner Sue Travers, pitches in, “Hey, what happened?” “Yes,” he smiles, “everyone wants to know that. I can’t see anything, the dots on the floor or the pins at the end of the alley, but I have a picture of them in my mind. I know how they’re set up. the eight is behind the two, the nine is behind the three, and so on. I can tell by the sound which pins go down, and I can visualize which pins are still standing.
“We need a four pin over here.” Mark replaces the pin, and points to the name “Mark” sewn in flowing script over his heart. “I thought something was up, but who’s Mike, I thought?” Fred Nickl says, “Thanks, whatever your name is.”
There’s been a steady stream to the bar, but even among those who don’t drink the scores drop off as the day goes on. The third game is the worst. Diane hasn’t struck once since the first. Howard hasn’t yelled “Mark it!” in a while, either. Beverly dropped from 104 to 46, around Andre’s average. Her partner Jim Regan, the only bowler wearing shades (besides Kai Okada, who can see), rolls at the same time as Andre, who says she can’t tell which pins go down “but I can hear a gutter ball pretty well.” Regan’s roll was his last of the day, and he says it didn’t make any difference that Andre was on the line next to him at the same time. Bowling in tandem doesn’t bother the blind bowlers.
“It’s like you’re not there–”
