Stuff You Should Know - Why Bowling is Awesome

Episode Date: July 14, 2022

Bowling is awesome. It just is. And if you don't think so, maybe take a listen to today's episode. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Find the Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever

you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here. All of us are wearing bowling shoes. Our feet hurt. They look kind of weird and we're ready to go. I want to shout out.

This was a genuine listener suggestion. Oh, nice. What listener suggested this? Mark Bowles. No. Not B-O-W-L, it's B-O-L-E-S, but still kind of funny since you're talking about bowling. I watched a video on automatic pin setters by a kid named, well, a guy named Matt Bowlin and he's a pin setter technician, so there's some weirdness going on here.

I had a dentist named Dr. Tuggle. That sounds painful. He just made my scrotum shrink up into myself. My proctologist is Dr. Finger and Butt. What? Isn't that weird? This is his first name Finger and his middle initial is N and then his last name is Butt. No, his whole last name.

I think his name is Robert Finger and Butt and I think he's fit. Oh, yeah, Dr. Finger and Butt. Yeah, maybe Finland or something. I don't know. I just call him Robert. Bobby. Bobby Fingers. Yes.

But Chuck, the hilarious thing is we're not talking about proctologists right now. Not at all. As a matter of fact, I'll be very surprised if they come up again in this episode because instead of talking about bowling. That's right. And big thanks to Mark Bowles for this. He just simply wrote in and said, hey, I bet you bowling has a pretty interesting back story and it kind of does, I think.

Yeah, it does. Mark Bowles was lazy and wanted us to do it for him and here we are. And we want to also give an even bigger thanks to Ed Grabinowski for helping us out with this one. Yeah. And before we get to that interesting history though, bowling seems like the kind of thing we could just say, hey, we're doing one on bowling. Everyone knows what that is, right?

But at the risk of not covering our bases, we can very quickly just sort of describe the game, right? Oh, yeah. I think that's a good idea because 10-pin bowling, which is what we're talking about, there's tons and tons of different variations on bowling. But 10-pin bowling is specifically what we're talking about and it's an American invention. So it's entirely possible that there's people out there who listen who have never played 10-pin bowling.

Who knows? I'm making it up. But it's a good guess, I think. All right. So what you do here, and Ed is keen to point out and we'll also get to this in the history that bowling is a variation of just a game, which is, it seems like kind of one of the earlier kinds of games, which is throw something at those things, whether it be cornhole or horseshoes or any kind of rolled object at a club or a pin or something.

And 10-pin bowling is a variation of that, where there are 10 pins arranged in a triangle starting at the head pin, so you got your one and then you got two pins and then you got three pins and then you got four pins all in rows. So it forms a nice little triangle and you throw a bowling ball down a lane that is 42 inches wide and 60 feet long from the foul line to the head pin. Yeah, and the entire lane itself is 62 feet and 10 and three 16th inches long to be precise. Yeah, something no one ever needs to know. Right.

Well, I mean, somebody put it out there, I wanted to know, so I've got hats off too. I can't remember what site helped me. But so at the end where you're rolling the ball, where you, the player, the bowler is standing, there's a line, it's a foul line. And if you cross it, you just gave up any points you might have accrued for that shot. You blow up, you explode. Yeah, and then just to make it even harder, that would be amazing, kind of like a running man version of bowling.

Yeah, or a squid game thing. Yeah, the new running man, frankly. Yeah, to bring it into the modern era, it kind of hurts in some ways. Yeah, yeah. And then to make it even harder, in addition to the threat of exploding if you cross the foul line, there are these troughs on either side of the lane that your ball can easily move into, they're called gutters, and balls are usually about eight to eight and a half inches in diameter.

Gutters are a nice snug fit. They're usually about nine and a quarter inches in diameter. So there's a little bit of room for the ball to move along, but it's snug enough that it's not coming out of the gutter once it goes in there. Almost always. I've seen some aggressive bowlers have one pop out of the gutter if it gets a nice rock going. Wow.

But, you know, I think that's sort of like hitting a seven-tenth split, put a bend in that. Yeah, exactly. A bowling bend. Nice foreshadowing. And even if you had never bowled, you've probably at least heard the term gutter ball. It's just kind of a catch-all term for things that stink that happen to you, whether you like it or not.

Yeah, and these days they have, if you go bowling with your younger kids or just someone who really wants to make the game a lot easier, they have these little gutter guards, little gates that lift up automatically. If you so choose, or not automatically, you trigger it to. And then that way your six-year-old can throw a bowling ball down and it'll just go side-to-side hitting those things all the way down. Right. Yeah, and they might get lucky and ricochet it right into the pocket, which is the sweet

spot between those pins, between the first pin and either one of the two behind it, depending on whether you're a left-hander, right-hand bowler. Yeah, I mean, it's good that you brought that up, that if anyone ever didn't bowl much and thought, well, why did those pro bowlers and certain jerks at regular bowling alleys really try to spin that ball hard so it kisses that gutter and then flies at an angle, they discover that is the best way to knock down all 10 pins for a strike is to come in at that sort of diagonal between the head pin and the pins behind it. Right.

They're not doing it just because it looks cool. No, no, that's basically how you bowl if you're actually trying to. Do you try to spin? I haven't bowled in a while, but yeah, I definitely tried to spin because you don't want the ball to just skid along without rolling on the lane you wanted to spin, you know? I never tried to spin. I was never strong enough or good enough, but I was an okay bowler in my bowling heyday. Same here.

I definitely peaked at bowling in about sixth to seventh grade when I was actually in an after-school bowling program. I was much later. Oh, okay. Well, I also peaked at basketball in second grade when I played on the Maroon team and the Royal Blue team at the YMCA. Were you taller earlier? No.

I was just less afraid of getting an elbow in the face, so I was way more aggressive taking it to the basket. My whole secret when my bowling game was on, and I wasn't going out there and bowling like a 220 or anything like that, but if I walked out of there with a 180 on any game, I've considered that a really good score for me. My whole trick was to just bowl it really, really straight. I was pretty good at that and to not launch it three or four feet down the lane, it was a very smooth action, making contact with the floor kind of right at the foul line,

and it all resulted in just a pretty true throw. Nice. So that's really good. So that's 180. Non-professional game. That's really good. Okay. But yes, 180 is definitely, I mean, I wouldn't go around boasting at it in some random bar

you just walked into, but it's still, you could probably impress your closest friends with that, you know? And that's probably like my best score just to be clear. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. And speaking of scores, Chuck, today, if you go bowling, a computer keeps score for you. You don't have to score.

Thank God. And that's actually a huge relief for a lot of people because scoring in bowling is really complicated. And there's actually, I've seen a theory or hypothesis, I guess, that one of the reasons why bowling has become less of a thing in America over the years is because it is computerized scoring and people don't understand the game like they used to when you had to keep score yourself. Well, yeah, but the goal for every single time you throw the ball is to knock the pins

down. Right. But if you don't, then you've got a problem on your hand. And even if you do knock all the pins down, you don't, so that's a strike, by the way, for those of you who've never played 10-pin bowling. If you knock all 10 pins down in your first throw, you get two throws per frame. There's 10 frames per game, right? In any given frame, you have two possible throws.

If you knock all 10 pins down with your first throw in a frame, that's a strike. And you're done. Okay. No, are you done? Well, you're done until your next throw. If it's one through nine, you're done, and in the 10th frame, you get those bonus balls, which we'll get to. Gotcha.

So with scoring, since you knock all 10 pins down, you think, oh, okay, you get 10 points per frame. If you bowl the strike in every frame, you'd have 100 points, like that's the maximum number of points. It's actually not correct. There's bonus points in bowling, so that if you bowl a strike in any given frame, then the number of pins you knock down in the next two frames affect your score in that first frame that you bowl the strike in.

Okay. I told you, it's really complicated. And scoring strikes is easier than scoring spares, which I'm hesitant to even get into. But the upshot is, is there are bonus points in scoring a spare. And a spare, by the way, is when you knock down all 10 pins, but it takes you both of your throws in a single frame, right? Right, which can happen. You can knock down one pin and then nine pins, or you can knock down nine and then one or

any combination therein. Yeah. As long as all of the pins are knocked down by your second throw, right, that's a spare. And then your next throw in the next frame, those points get added to that frame previously where you threw a spare, the frame before. It's way more nuanced than that actually, but that's, frankly, I'm very relieved because that's a pretty good overview of scoring and bowling. Yeah.

A couple of days when we were growing up pre-computerized scoring, I felt like there was always somebody in the group that knew how to do it. They were kind of the de facto scorekeeper. And you would indicate a strike, and it still indicated via computer, with an X and a spare with a slash mark through the square. And of course, now with the computer thing, you can, you know, when you bowl a strike, they flash your name up there. So people inevitably list their name as, you know, Chewbacca or Fartface or something.

Yeah. Something really fun. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of incumbent upon you to come up with a silly name. Unless your name is Dr. Finger and Butt, and then you definitely just use your real name. Right. So you've got, like, the scoring with the spare, scoring with the strike.

Those are exceptional. Those have bonus points. If you take two throws in a frame and you knock down two pins and then in your second throw, you knock down five, there's nothing special about that. That's seven points for that frame. Boo. But the thing is, if you notice, when you throw a strike, the next two frames scores are added to that frame where you score a strike.

If you score a strike in every frame, it just keeps going down the line to where you end up eventually with 30 in each frame. And then by the time you get to the 10th frame, since if you roll the strike in that 10th frame, you actually get two more throws because you're basically adding two more frames or one more frame. And if you bowl a strike in every single one of those, including your two extra throws, you will have just bowled 12 strikes in a row and you will have accrued a score of 300, which in bowling is considered a perfect game.

That's right. In bowling is all about those strikes and spares and those bonus points. If you want to score high, because if you think about it, if you, if you knock down nine out of those 10 pins, you might think, wow, that's pretty good. But if you do that 10 times, you've only scored a 90. So you really need to hit those strikes and spares, or ideally a turkey, which is three strikes in a row, at least at one point during the game. And you really, really want to, that money ball is that last frame.

That's where you can really add a lot to your final total. Right. Exactly. So I mean, this isn't meant to be like an exhaustive primer on bowling scoring. I think if this episode like gets you into bowling, like you'll probably need to look up some more, you know, explanation of the rules or have it taught to you or something like that. But that's, that's generally like how it works and it is really, really kind of difficult

to understand, but it also like kind of, to me, it's a throwback of when the general public was a little smarter because we didn't necessarily rely on computers for stuff like this. We had to do it ourselves. Right. And then in Chewbacca, then you can bowl. It's misspelled. There's like a capital letter randomly in the middle of it.

All right. I think that's a good break, right? I think so too. Chuck, we're in sync right now. Yeah. Let's do it. So we'll come back and we'll talk about all kinds of fun stuff, bowling gear and more right after this.

You know, you're like, what do we do? You've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh God, seriously. I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yeah. We know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

So tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikala, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology,

but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're gonna get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars

if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down.

Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology? It changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are gonna change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here's to the great American settlers. The millions of you who settled for unsatisfying jobs because they pay the bills and you just kind of fell into it. And you know, it's like totally fine. Just another few decades or so and then you can enjoy yourself. Of course, there is something else you could do

if you got something to say. You could, oh, I don't know, start a podcast with Spreaker from iHeart and unleash your creative freedom and spend all day researching and talking about stuff you love. And maybe even earn enough money to one day tell your irritating boss

as you quit and walk off into the sunset. Hey, I'm no settler. I'm an explorer. Spreaker.com. That's a S-B-R-E-A-K-E-R. Hustle on over today. All right, Ed wisely points out that there's quite a bit of bowling gear

for a game that you can play in short pants while drinking beer. We'll talk about the ball in a second, but, well, let's go ahead and talk about the ball. Yeah, what are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for?

What are you waiting for? I don't know. The original bowling balls were wood. It was a hardwood native to the Caribbean in South America called Lignum. I even looked it up, Vitee. Yeah, or the G-A-Con, Gia-Con tree. Oh, is that the tree?

That's the tree. Yeah, you said the Texanic name. I think one of the common names is Gia-Con. Okay, but it's a very hard, you know, dense wood and that worked out for a little while, but then the 20th century rolls around and they said, hey, we got new things like rubber. So let's make them out of rubber.

And they had a core which was either one or two piece that would be connected by pegs and then like a one inch outer shell. And then Brunswick came along. The Rubberman was the crew that worked on this project and developed something called a mineralite bowling ball in the 1910s, which Ed couldn't figure out what that was. And from what I saw, I don't know if you did any digging,

I found that it wasn't a substance, but it was more of a process, right? Yeah, and I think that the process resulted in a hard rubber ball. Right, but it was a ball that floated in liquid mercury that they would continually kind of use to tweak the ball. Is that right? I didn't see that.

That must have been amazing and dangerous. Well, that's what I saw because mercury would be the mineral. So I think it's a process of making the bowling ball using this liquid mercury. And we should say bowling balls didn't used to be made out of like bouncy rubber. That would be an entirely different game from what we're talking about.

This is like hard rubber, like a hockey puck. Yeah, or flubber. You don't want that. No, Chuck. And by the way, if I'm wrong about the mineralite, it is pretty hard to find out a lot about that for some reason. Yeah, I don't know either. If I was wrong on that and someone knows what it is, please let me know.

Right, and then also Chuck, the balls eventually were made from plastic, polyurethane, and then resin took over in the 90s. And the 90s were a decade, like each decade basically brought along a pretty big sea change with bowling balls, but the 90s are arguably the decade of the most change because with that resin, they started messing around with different coatings on the outside of the ball, the resin.

They called it reactive resin, I think. And it would actually kind of grip. It would give the ball some grips. And all of a sudden, you could control that ball way better. And because of that change in balls, Chuck, the number of perfect games exploded starting in the 90s. So, look at this. Yeah, in the 1968-1969 season,

the U.S. Bowling Congress, which is this umbrella organization that covers all bowling from people who just show up at a lane to the highest-paid pro bowler, the USBC recorded 905 perfect games in the 1968-69 season. Okay? Okay. 30 years later, in the 1998-1999 season, there were 34,470 perfect games.

Are you kidding me? Yes, and not only that, so that's a 3,700% increase, but not only that, there were two-thirds fewer bowlers bowling in that season than there had been in the 1968-69 season. Bowling tech, thank you, right? Yeah, I mean, but that's what the change in the balls did. It just completely revolutionized the game. It made it way more easy.

You could also say a lot more fun for the average casual bowler. Yeah, I would say so. It's interesting if you look inside a bowling ball on the internet, like a cross-section, they do have a core, but it's not round, and it's really kind of strange. There are some interesting and kind of odd shapes that are inside bowling balls in different shapes of the core. We'll give it different characteristics as it rolls,

or as spun, or not spun, what do they call it? Hooked. Hooked, thank you. Hooked down the lane, and then you've got your cover stock, and that is the final outer layer that is now that reactive resin that apparently changed the game. Yeah, totally. And if you want to make sure your bowling ball is regulation,

you want to get yourself one of those things they use to measure, what's it called? A caliper. A scale. You want to get a caliper, and you want to measure and make sure it's between 8.500 and 8.595 inches in diameter. That's a regulation-sized bowling ball. There's no minimum weight, but the maximum it can weigh is 16 pounds,

which hurts my elbow just thinking about that. Yeah, were you a heavy ball guy or not? Medium, for sure. Medium to light. Yeah, I was light to medium. Okay. Yeah, I think it's the same thing we were just going in opposite way. I mean, I definitely prefer lighter.

I was in Stalama weakling, so a big heavy bowling ball just, it was no good for me. No, it's not that fun. And then the last requirement for a regulation bowling ball is that it has to be gaudy. Yeah, I mean, some of them are kind of crazy looking. I mean, you can get all kinds of, like if you're a real bowler and you want to buy some weird specialty bowling ball

that has a crystal skull in it, you can. But, you know, they have the plain black ones, but they also have all sorts of fun marbly colored bowling balls, and those are always kind of fun. I found the one that Bill Murray bowled with in Kingpin, the clear one with the rows in it. Oh, okay, was it a rose? I couldn't remember.

Yeah, and you can get it for like 250 bucks online. I mean, not the one he was bowling with, but, you know, a remake of it. It's out there for sure. Okay, I just might add that to the old Christmas list for a certain special podcaster. Nice. I hope you're talking about me and not Ben Bowling.

Ben Bowling? Right. Yeah. And my mind just went there. That's funny. Should we talk pins? Yeah, there's not a lot of interesting things about pins as far as I'm concerned, except for the fact

that they have to replace them about once a year because they get so beat up. Yeah, and they're not a single piece of wood. They used to be a single piece of solid maple carved out, but since the 50s, they've been glued together in sections. Right. And then also the lane itself is its own kind of piece of masterwork because it looks like, you know, individual pine boards.

And the reason that it looks like that is apparently they, it's an homage to how lanes actually used to be built, which was individual pine and then maple boards, depending on what part of the lane you were talking about. You put maple at either end, because that's where most of the heavy action was going on. And then in the middle, you would make it pine, but there were little tiny lengths of boards

that were nailed down and screwed down to like plywood, basically, that was on top of heavy beams. And that was your lane. And you had to varnish it and then sand it and varnish it and varnish it again, maybe once or twice a year, just to keep the thing, you know, intact from all the wear and tear. Yeah, and we should say that they use pine in the middle because pine is really soft.

If we have pine floors from the 1930s in our house, and they're just, if you look at it wrong, it can dent and scratch. So it's not a very hardy wood. So that's why they had the super hard maple where you're throwing that ball down at the beginning and at the end where the pins are exploding after you throw your 16-pound ball down there. Steve Reich! But nowadays, bowling lanes are synthetic, isn't that right?

Yeah, and again, it's funny that they make it look like they're individual boards because it is, it's all just synthetic. Apparently the manufacturers of lanes keep their exact recipes as trade secrets, but Ed turned up one that described its substance, that it made the synthetic substance that makes the lanes out of is phenolic, which is a kind of synthetic resin made from formaldehyde. So it's not, it ain't pine or maple anymore is basically what I'm saying. Yeah, I like the fact that they do make it look like the olden days,

but I think they could get a little more creative in some bowling alleys and just, you know, they're trying to get people bowling again and I know they're doing all kinds of fun stuff with, you know, cosmic bowling and all these kind of crazy ideas, but I think they could make the lanes look really interesting. Sure, remember those, you remember that whatever that substance was made out of didn't find around like a brass bowl in the 90s, but it was all sorts of different weird colors mixed together? Sort of.

Okay, something like that, or tie dye, why not do tie dye bowling lanes? Like it's synthetic, you could make it look any way you want it, or maybe like the Sistine Chapel ceiling, who cares? Oh, you know what would be fun? You know people do that sidewalk art that makes it look like the sidewalk is crumbled away, the 3D art? Awesome. That would be so cool. So Chuck, I think we should talk a little bit about lane oil

because it's kind of interesting actually and it kind of changes things. Are you cool with talking about it at this point? Yeah, yeah, the whole deal from the end. Yeah, totally. So despite it already being made of pretty slick material, a bowling alley lane is actually coated in mineral oil and it's coated in different places and not just across bowling alleys,

like a different bowling alley will have oil in different, they apply it in different patterns in different ways. Yeah, and this is the reason why, and Ed sort of posed the question, if a Shmo like me can go out there and bowl a 180 and the average professional bowler bowls between 210 and 220, like I might think, hey, I'm pretty close to that score, like I could do this a couple of times a week and I could be a pro bowler. And apparently that is not the case because of the fact,

this one fact that standard bowling alleys where Shmo's like us bowl, we get the mineral oil application and pattern that is the most forgiving and I guess the easiest and most geared toward amateur bowlers. Right, so like if you get a gutter ball or you just somehow miss all of your pins, you have really failed at a just normal bowling alley because they're actually setting you up as best they can to get a strike every time. So you're actually really working against the workers at the bowling alley at that point. But the upshot of it is that like it's geared toward making the casual bowler a better bowler.

If the casual bowler stepped out and started bowling on the lane that had a PBA professional bowlers association approved oil pattern, you would be totally lost. You would probably get a gutter ball every single time. And that's like you said, that's the difference between the casual bowler and the pro bowler. It's so much harder to bowl in the pros because of that oil that they put in different kinds of patterns depending on the tournament, depending on the alley, depending on sometimes probably bowlers' preferences. Yeah, and there's sort of the simplest way to describe it

without getting too dense into the patterns themselves. If there's less oil, then it's not going to be a slick and it's going to have a little more grab. So if you get the house oil treatment, which is what they call the standard treatment for amateur bowlers, there's going to be less oil along the edges and along the sides near the gutters. So hopefully if it veers that way, it'll grab and try and veer itself back toward the center. And it's not, you know, I think it's fairly subtle. It's not so much that you can just obviously throw one up there and it'll just sort of ping pong down there toward the middle because of the oil application.

But apparently the pro patterns, which have animal names or they're named after famous bowlers from the past, like there's a scorpion pattern, stuff like that. Apparently that stuff is, there's a lot of nuance to how you bowl on those and those PBA bowlers are great at it. Yeah, and so like at a PBA approved tournament or championship, everybody's bowling on the same oil pattern. The oil pattern is established at the official practice and then they reapply it throughout the tournament, but it's the same type of pattern. So they've got these patterns down so well that, you know, after a day, the oils worn off, but they put on the same exact pattern that night.

And to the bowler who comes the second day, it's like bowling exactly like it was the day before. That's how exact these patterns are. I saw that some like the oil is applied, the measurement that they use are like microliters. Like that's how exact these oil patterns are. And there's actually one I saw checked that's named after Chris Paul, the NBA player. He's that much of a bowling enthusiast. He has his own oil pattern named after him. I didn't know he was into it. I love that. I like Chris Paul.

Yeah. Oh yeah, he's huge into bowling for sure, but he's still an amateur. And also the pro bowlers will maybe dial in a certain ball. Like they might have several balls in their arsenal and depending on what kind of pattern they get, they may use a different ball and they may, you know, they may throw it and hook it a little bit differently. Or they invariably will depending on what kind of pattern, but they know the patterns and they know what to do. Right. And then lastly, Chuck, the accoutrement that you want to make sure you're outfitted with if you're going to bowl are bowling shoes. And if you're a pro bowler, your bowling shoes are rather different from the kind that you or I would get

from a guy who just sprayed it with some weird disinfectant and handed them to us. Those are not normal bowling shoes. Yeah. That's such a classic part of bowling. It's just seeing them grab those and spray it in. Right. Yeah. Who was it that did that for a living in some movie? I don't know. I don't know. I want to say there was a heist movie where one of the characters was like a bowling shoe hander outer.

Okay. I bet you somebody all right. And I would like to know that too, because that sounds for me. I would too. I would too. But the bowling shoes that you will be probably renting unless you do bowl a lot. If you're in a league, you probably have your own shoes. But they have the right amount of slip and grip to send you gliding down the floor, but not slipping all over the place. And they are in fact made ugly and uncomfortable so you don't take them home. That's a true thing. That's awesome.

But people still do take them home. I mean criminals. I think I did that once in my 20s when it was kind of cool to wear bowling shoes around. Shame, shame, shame Chuck. Whatever became of them, did you take them back? Oh, who knows? You know that stuff in the 20s. It's ephemeral. Did you wear them out? Yeah. Yeah. I would wear them out in Athens and be like, hey, he's chucking his bowling shoes.

Man, you are such a hipster. And the last bit of equipment we can mention is if you're a pro bowler or maybe if you have like even wrist problems, or if you're just a league bowler who's highly enthusiastic, you might have a wrist brace and maybe a rosin bag to dry your hand off, even though they do have those great little air blowers at the ball return station. Yeah, they really do. It's pretty great. And we're going to talk about that in a minute, Chuck, because I propose we take a break and come back and talk about one of the most profound developments in the history of bowling, the automatic pin setter. Love it.

Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one.

Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikala. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology.

But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology,

my whole world came crashing down. The situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you've got something to say, you could start a podcast with Spreaker from iHeart and unleash your creative freedom and spend all day researching and talking about stuff you love.

And maybe even earn enough money to one day tell your irritating boss as you quit and walk off into the sunset. Hey, I'm no settler. I'm an explorer. Spreaker.com. That's a S-B-R-E-A-K-E-R. Hustle on over today. So, Chuck, for this first part, I want to direct everybody to our 2018 episode, Jobs of Bygone Eras, because we talked about something that really ties into bowling, which was pin monkeys or pin boys. They were human people who would stand at the back of a bowling lane. Sometimes they were responsible for one lane, sometimes for two.

And then as people bowled, they were responsible for removing the knocked over pins called deadwood, leaving the other pins up, and then when a frame was done, resetting the pins. By hand, they would just set the pins out in a triangle. They would also take somebody's ball and roll it down a little incline back to them. That was a human-based job for a really long time, actually. That's right. Then they advanced it a little bit to where there was a machine that would position and set the pins, but there was still a pin boy because it wasn't fully automated.

They would use a lever to lower it down, but it was still like a mechanical machine that was helping getting them in the exact correct position, eliminating human error, I reckon. Yeah, sure. But also making it a lot faster, too. Oh, yeah, way faster. And then they finally, I guess this was the early 1900s, they tried to automate it a little bit more, never really caught on that well. And then a gentleman named Gottfried Fred Schmidt from New York State figured out a machine that would actually clear the pins, lift them up, set the pins, and it was bought in 1941 by the American Machine and Foundry Company, which if you don't think that sounds familiar, if you go to any bowling alley, you'll see a lot of equipment with AMF branded on it.

And that's where it comes from, American Machine and Foundry Company. Yeah, and that was a really, really good purchase of those patents by AMF. They opened a factory in an old, I think, bicycle factory in Shelby, Ohio. They started out with 200 employees, and those 200 employees could make 200 of these automatic pin setters a year at first. But they caught on so quickly, and the pin setter changed the game so much that they just started hiring and building more and more and more, so much so that from 1950 to 1958, 40,000 AMF pin setters, and a pin setter is a huge machine at the back of every lane in a bowling alley, 40,000 of them have been sold or leased out to bowling alleys just in the United States alone. So it was like a revolutionary shockwave that went through bowling, because bowling was no longer a slow and unpredictably paced game anymore.

It was fast, and it had a rhythm that you could get into. As a matter of fact, AMF touted that this was a new type of bowling. It was rhythm bowling, because it was automated, so you could kind of determine when the ball was going to come back, when the pins were going to be ready, and it was just much more fast paced than having some kid hand setting up pins in the back, which is what it had been like just a decade before. It's interesting you mentioned the rhythm. You don't really think about it, but even an amateur Schmo like me, when the thing messes up or when your ball doesn't come back right, you do feel a little put out, like, oh man, I was feeling things, I was in my groove,

and now I got to push that button to make the person from the front desk come over and talk to it. Yeah, that's funny, because I don't feel disappointed. I feel like I did something wrong and I'm about to get in trouble for doing something to their ball. That's how I always felt. Really? Yeah, I'm coming to realize that that's like a hallmark of my entire life that I really need to get past. It's not your fault. You don't need to hide in the bathroom. Thanks. I wouldn't quite hide in the bathroom, but I wouldn't make eye contact with the person who came over and fixed it.

Well, you were probably at a scarring thing at a young age where someone came back and went, would you do that ball? I'm crumbling right now. That was like such a perfect impression of Todd Gack. You didn't do anything. Thank you. I'm rocking back and forth. So we're going to get into not the weeds, but we're going to get a little bit into the nitty gritty of the modern automatic pin setter, which is just a truly amazing machine. If you like watching how it's made or any of those shows about like factory mechanical processes,

then look no further than the automatic pin setter. And I can recommend, I think we both can, a YouTube video from a gentleman named Jared Owen Animations. He just looked up Jared Owen Animations pin setter and he does his great animations of mechanical processes. And this one was so cool and fascinating. It's nuts how amazing it is, how great this animation was. And then also I want to just re-recommend pin setter operation video, kind of a sterile title. And it's live action. It's not animation by Matt Bolin, again, who's a pin setter mechanic. And he took apart all sorts of different components of the pin setter to show how they worked and operation and explains it.

So both of those videos are really good at explaining how pin setters work. Right. And one last thing before we get into it, I did think of a lot of ideas along the way, like the, you know, the plaid bowling lanes and things to get bowling more interesting again. I say get rid of the facade in front of these machines and let people look at them. Amazing looking and it would be super cool. It would be super cool. But one of the things that's really critical on those facades is another AMF invention that helped change bowling. What's called the Magic Triangle, which shows which pins are still standing in their location on that facade so that you know how to throw your ball.

Oh, that's true. Let's get rid of that. They could put that somewhere else. And apparently AMF really tried to call this thing the Pindicator and it never caught on. Everybody called it the Magic Triangle. I like Pindicator. I'm surprised that didn't, that didn't catch. It did not catch. All right. Should we get into this?

Yeah. Also real quick shout out. I think it was RichmondCountyHistory.com, which was all the info I got that Shelby, Ohio, AMF info from. All right. Shout outs over. Here we go with automatic pin setter. One of humankind's greatest inventions. The first thing that's going to happen, you're going to throw your ball down there. And hit pins. And as soon as your ball crosses that little threshold where the pins are, there are sensors on both sides that tell the pin setting machine, hey, the ball has passed through.

It's time to go to work. Right. So a bunch of things happen initially. Like obviously when you throw a ball really fast that weighs up to 16 pounds down 60 feet of lane and it knocks into a bunch of wooden pins that suddenly go flying. You need some sort of backstop or barrier. And they have that. They have like some sort of tarp or sheet that covers rubber stoppers that are mounted to like a wood panel. And that's like the backstop.

And then directly below the backstop between it and the end of the lane is a little conveyor belt that pushes everything that got knocked over toward the backstop back away from the lane. That's going on simultaneously while the sweep and the pinsetter come down, right? Right. And the other thing we should mention that is happening ideally, if it's working correctly, is your ball is going to be sort of shuttled over to what's called an accelerator. And it's just a really fast moving conveyor belt on a pulley. And it's going to shoot that ball pretty fast actually, but it's all happening underground. Again, make these things clear like people want to see this stuff. And it goes through that tunnel between the lanes.

It's, you know, the lanes share one of those ball return machines. And then at the very end, when it reaches the big covered up thing that shouldn't be covered, you have an S shaped sort of system with two spinning tires. And it just sort of grabs the ball and shoots it through this S track for lack of a better term out to where you are. And you can kind of think of those spinning tires as like a baseball pitching machine when you stick the baseball in between the two tires and it shoots it out. Right. And not only shoots it out, it moves it upward vertically, which is pretty cool because again, this is a 16 pound ball. And then I looked and I didn't see anybody say anything about it, but it looks like that top wheel spins in a direction that will put spin on the ball. So it loses momentum as it's coming out because it's spinning the opposite direction of the direction it's traveling.

I'm not 100% sure that's based exclusively on my own information or observation. And I haven't conducted any sort of scientific study. Because you got to watch those fingies when you go to pick the ball up. For sure, because I mean, that's a lot coming out, but I think that they put spin on it to make it slow down. That's right. All right. So meanwhile, you've got a rack that's going to drop over the pins and you have a, you know, obviously if you don't knock everything down, there's something called a sweep wagon or a sweeper that's going to sweep away those pins. But you want to keep those pins that are there and this machine drops down, there's something called a pin detecting plate that's going to detect whether or not there's a pin there.

And then it will engage these grasping claws called spotting tongs. Is that right? Yeah, I think so. Okay. And they grab that pin and pick it up. Yeah, because it's really important that the whatever pins are left standing after the first throw in the frame, you want to move them up and out of the way before you sweep the deadwood that's left on the lane back toward that conveyor belt, right? Right. And then it brings it back down, sets them back in place, and then the pins that are lifts back up and it's ready for that second throw.

But in the meantime, that conveyor belt that's moving all the deadwood and the ball that was swept back beyond the lane, that's moving. So the ball's been shunted off into the ball return. And what's left are pins that are just kind of spinning around, bobbling around. It almost looks like a lotto machine with the balls popping, but like jumping around inside of it. And behind, right behind that conveyor belt is an elevator and an elevator is designed with a bunch, I think 14 different little buckets in each bucket very snugly holds a bowling pin. And the bowling pin just kind of fall into the elevator. Sideways. Yeah, sideways on their side right.

And then one by one, they're lifted up and taken to the top of the pin setter. And some more magic happens too. Yeah, some more magic happens. They have these sintering wedges that get them all ready to go. And we should point out they can be laying either, you know, skinny side left or skinny side right. And they are horizontal. And then they, when they're dropped off, they're just sort of, you know, one end of it is sort of smacked around and it goes down a little chute. So they are sitting upright again.

Yeah, they're all facing the same way with the base at the board. Yeah. At the bottom toward the, toward the person. Yeah, there's all sorts of little like fins and shoots and just little things that manipulate how the bowling pin moves around and where it's laying and how it's oriented that are really simple in design, but they're also extremely ingenious. And it's like, it's not like the kind of thing that you wouldn't intuitively figure out if you sat down and thought about how to do it. But somebody sat down and thought about how to do this and they came up with a really elegant, really complex electromechanical solution, which is the pin setter. Yeah, and they, I'm sure there are other places around the country, but I know there's one in LA and Highland Park called Highland Park Bowl, which was a bowling alley from the 1930s that they restored to its original beauty not too, too long ago. And they do leave the pin setting machines exposed there and it's super cool looking.

Yeah. So, so you've got eventually 10 pins that are lined up in the pin setter and they are, they're knocked into a vertical position standing upright. And then eventually that same pin setter that lifts up the remaining pins after the first, after the first throw, that same pin setter drops down 10 pins after the second throw, resets everything and the whole thing starts all over. That's right. It's beautiful. And each one of those videos, it's really, really interesting to see how it works because we haven't quite done it justice, if you ask me. Yeah. And I imagine they're expensive and there are a lot of them in a full-size bowling alley.

Like it's a lot of money going on there. For sure. So should we talk about some of the history? Yeah, we'll finish out with some history. So like we said, this started out as a lot of human games, which is throw something at something else to knock it down. They have found things in Egyptian tombs that show that they might have done something like bowling. They definitely know that in the Middle Ages, they were bowling on lawns, like a bowling green. That's where that comes from.

And at various times, bowling became super popular and various kings got angry that bowling was popular. And so they said, you cannot bowl anymore. But also Germany is tagged as possibly the beginning of not what we modern tin pin bowling, but early bowling in the 300 A.D.s as a religious rite and ritual where you would roll a stone at a bunch of standing clubs to absolve your sins. Yeah, it was religious bowling. I love it. Yeah, Germany still lays claim to the invention of bowling based on those monks that used to do that. Again, that's nine pin. And eventually we don't really know where ten pin or when or who I should say who created ten pin and exactly where and when it was created.

But we do know it was an American invention in the very late 19th century. And there's a longstanding rumor, an old saw, if you will, about where ten pin came from. And that was that there were all sorts of prohibitions on nine pin bowling because it had become a means of gambling or something to be gambled on. And so to prevent gambling, there were prohibitions on nine pin bowling. So they added a tenth pin to get around those bands. And that's supposedly where ten pin came from. Apparently it's never, no one's ever really turned up any original source material saying that, but it's a pretty good story. I like it.

In 1895, a gentleman named Joe Thumb, the grandfather of modern bowling, brought together a bunch of people and formed the American Bowling Congress, the ABC, which is now what you mentioned earlier, the USBC, the United States Bowling Conference. And over the years, bowling has kind of ebbed and flowed in its popularity. There were beer leagues in the thirties and forties where beers would sponsor tournaments and sponsor bowlers. The mafia got involved for a while with action bowling, which is like, hey, let me get some action on this. And there were some pretty high stakes games going on in New York back then, right? Yeah, supposedly action bowling would take place after the leagues were done and it would start around midnight or 1 a.m. And sometimes these games would go to 7 in the morning and their stories of people who were into action bowling in New York who would walk out of there with $10,000 plus dollars that they'd won from these basically gambling on bowling late at night. And it was a huge thing in New York and it got to be so big that some of these action bowlers ended up getting so good that they became pros.

They ended up in the Pro Bowlers Association because they couldn't find anybody who would take their money anymore because people just knew how good they were. So the only people they could compete against were other pros. So Ed has the 1980s, he lists as the peak of bowling's popularity. I'm going to take issue with that. Maybe in the 80s it was the peak of televised professional bowling. But everything I saw clearly indicated that the 1950s and 60s was when bowling was at its peak of popularity as far as the American public goes bowling is concerned. Yeah, let me give you an example of that. And I got this from a Priceonomics article by Zachary Crockett.

I think it's called The Rise and Fall of Bowling. Zachary Crockett is one of my favorite writers on the web. He's just awesome, he's popped up in a bunch of our episodes because he just writes about the most interesting stuff in a really great way. But in it he cites that the first athlete of any sport, Chuck, any sport to land a $1 million contract was Don Carter in 1964. And that's $1 million in 1964 dollars. So it's about more than seven and a half million dollars today. And that's pretty astounding that a bowler was the first one to land a million dollar endorsement contract. But it's even more astounding when you juxtapose it against what some of the other stars, some of the other sports stars were getting at the same time, right?

Yes, 1963, the top bowler was a man named Harry Smith, and he made more money than baseball MVP Sandy Kofaks and NFL MVP YA Tittle combined. Yeah, and then also, yeah, exactly. And then also there were other sports figures who had endorsement contracts, but they were nothing like a million dollar endorsement contract. Arnold Palmer had one with Wilson for $5,000. That's less than $40,000 in today's money. Joe Namath had one with, I think, Chick Razors. Yeah. He had a contract for $10,000, which is worth about 75 grand today.

A bowler in 1964 got a million dollar contract. This is crazy, man. That's how popular bowling was at the time. Yeah, it was huge. There was a legend named Dick Weber, and he has a son named Pete Weber, who's probably one of the more well-known bowlers today. And the only reason I bring him up is because Ed pointed out a very fun video of Pete Weber in 2012 after winning a tournament. And you got to see it because it just, Ed says, you know, he shouted non-sensically, who do you think I am or who do you think you are? I am.

And I was like, what does that mean? And I know Ed said it was non-sensical, but did you see the video? Oh, yeah, I kept watching it over and over again. I did too. It's so funny. He gets so fired up and he's screaming and he just goes, who do you think you are? I am. And just the double thumbs and everyone went, what?

Yeah. And it, of course, has happened in 2012, so it immediately became a meme. And so a lot of people who are not at all in the bowling are familiar with who do you think you are? I am. It's so great. Apparently it's on coffee mugs and t-shirts and all sorts of stuff. Yeah. I had not heard of it before then, but I looked into it and it is definitely a meme.

That's hysterical. But yeah, he was the kind of like the John McEnroe of bowling, but he, from what I could see, I mean, it was definitely ingrained in his personality. But he also did it to keep attention on bowling at a time when bowling was losing viewers like left and right. As a matter of fact, the Pro Bowlers Association, the PBA was purchased in 2000 by three Microsoft employees for $5 million. That's the state that bowling was in back in the day. I know. That's how far it declined. And slowly but surely it's starting to tick back up.

And I've got a couple of stats if you'll indulge me real quick. Oh please, because I've got more. Okay. So in the heyday, in the 60s, there was something like 12,000 bowling alleys and there were 10 million Americans who were considered regular bowlers. Today, there's less than half of that in the number of bowling alleys and it's down to less than 3 million regular bowlers. So it's been a pretty precipitous drop. And one of the things that this group, White Hutchinson, who from what I can tell is basically the KPMG consultants of amusement games, they did a bunch of studies and focus groups and they kind of put their finger on the idea that the old bowling alleys were kind of neglected as customers dropped off.

Yeah. And they got to be really sad, cigarette-y, stale beer smelly places that you would not want to take your family. It was just a depressing place to hang out. And now people are starting to tear those down, remodel and replace them with these new, happy, huge fun centers. And as a result, bowling is actually starting to make a comeback. Yeah. And league bowling too has been a big part of that hit. I think it used to account for about 70% of total bowling revenue.

And I mean, when you and I were growing up, like my parents didn't do it, but league bowling was a big thing. Like a lot of people did it. Now that's down to 40% of total revenue is from league bowling. And you're right, like with, I think like Lucky Strike is one of them. And there's all kinds of sort of new fancy schmancy bowling centers that where you can get, you know, like a quality cocktail and like for bowling alley, maybe decent food. Definitely more family friendly for, you know, holding like birthday parties and stuff there. I mean, those places are fine. I'm a fan of just sort of an old school, you know, not gross, but like an old school bowling alley.

No, I know what you mean for sure. That's what I grew up into. Yeah. If you can find one, I do want to shout out, they're both closed now, but I know I've talked about the Hollywood star lanes, which I live down the street from in LA. Lebowski lanes where they filmed the big Lebowski. And on any given Friday night, you know, we'd be in there hanging out and there'd be like, you know, the cast of the 70s show bowling and Vince Vaughn and John Faber over there having a drink. And it was like a really cool place to see celebrities on the DL. And then when I moved, we moved to Eagle Rock and there was Eagle Rock lanes, which had a killer karaoke.

And I just looked up in Eagle Rock lanes closed a couple of years ago, which makes me very sad. I want to shout out my home lane, which was not nearly as hip or celebrity studded as yours. Southwick lanes where the bowling alley I grew up bowling at. And also, if I remember correctly, the place where I first really smelled a cigarette and thought, hmm, I wonder what it's like to smoke one of those. Yeah. I probably bowled more in my 20s when I lived in LA in early 30s because it was just fun and, you know, pretty cheap. Like these new places are a lot more expensive. I mean, you used to could go in there and bowl for, you know, 10 bucks or so for a couple of hours, you know, not including your beer and stuff.

But maybe we should close on the seven 10 split. Oh, nice thinking, buddy. So I've always heard about the dreaded seven 10 split, which means the only two pins remaining are the ones on the very, very back corners opposite one another. Right. The seven pin and the 10 pin. And I knew it was like a really hard thing to do. But I had no idea literally until today that it's only been done four times in like televised pro bowling tournaments. Yeah.

I think the first time it was ever shown live was like 2010 or 12. When was that one? Well, I mean, I saw, I don't know about live, but I saw clips from the 80s. Okay. So, so, so what I saw on CBS Sports is that there was a bowler who did it. It was a PBA bowler, he did it and it was the first time it was captured on live, live television. The last time that it had happened was like 1991 and apparently it wasn't televised live. So it is extremely rare.

And the chances of you actually making it happen are really, really slim. I saw something like a 0.85 or maybe even 0.085 percent chance of 0.8 of sinking a seven 10 split. And it's because you have to hit either the seven pin or the 10 pin in such a way that you knock it directly into the other pin opposite it. In a direction that's perpendicular essentially to the direction the ball's traveling. And in that sense, you're knocking both pins down using one pin to knock the other pin down. It's extremely hard to do. I didn't realize how hard it was to do either. I'm like you.

I was just like, yeah, the seven 10 split everybody knows that's hard. Yeah, but I did not know it was that rare. And just to shout out the gentleman who did it most recently. You can look it up on the internet, 18 year old name Anthony newer. It's kind of fun to watch because people go nuts. It's, you know, it's kind of fun to see something like that happen. But the announcer screamed out because this kid's got red hair. The ginger assassin.

He did say that. Not only does he have red hair, he's got a luxurious mullet, I believe. It looked pretty mullety. I didn't get a side view, but it looked like he was partying in the rear. It definitely did look mullety too. So congratulations to you, sir. And I guess that's about it. Bowling still goes on that the change in balls didn't just change it for the casual bowler changed it for the pros too. So that it's undergoing or in the process of a big sea change as far as how the game is played by the pros.

But it's still hanging around. I think bowling's ever going extinct anytime soon. Agreed. I need, I haven't been in so long. This has inspired me to go go out. I think I think my daughter would enjoy it at this age. It'd be fun. I'll see you there, Chuck.

Let's do it. Oh, and one more thing I want to shout or direct everybody to the song that I usually think of any time I think of bowling. Camper Van Beethoven's Take the Skinheads Bowling, which is a surprisingly happy song. And since I said it's a surprisingly happy song and Chuck said, yeah, that means it's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this a quick pronunciation tip. This is from Teresa in Melbourne, Australia. Hey, guys, enjoy the podcast. Firstly, I would like to know which one of you has the delightful giggle.

No, I think we know who that is. I guess that's me, right? I was going to say Jerry. Okay. But that is not my genuine question. Like many Americans, you struggle to pronounce English towns and cities and locales and government names. Particularly, I've noticed the ones that end in S-H-I-R-E. Sheary.

The unofficial rule, guys. When standing alone, it's pronounced shire, like wire. But when used as a suffix, it rhymes with beer. So Oxfordshire, Worcestershire, obviously, instead of Worcestershire, or less to shear. I say Worcestershire, Worcestershire, Worcestershire sauce. I don't say it anymore because I'm going to use it. I say it three times in succession, just like that. Pronounce this correctly, and you will probably get many free beers next time you're in the UK.

And again, that is from Teresa in Australia. Thanks a lot, Teresa. That was a great one. Sheer. Sheer delight. If you want to be like Teresa and give us some tips on how to talk good, we would love to hear from you. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastatihartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.

For more podcasts on My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. About my new podcast, and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye-bye-bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me, and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes, because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Listen to Skyline Drive on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. There are loads of movie mics, movie podcasts, every Monday on the Nashville Podcast Network, available on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.