The best game I ever bowled...
April 1, 2002
Yes, it's April Fool's day. I'm aware of the fact that people like to
play pranks on this day. I, however, do not partake in such
tom-foolery, so you can rest assured that the following events are totally
accurate. (I'm a big fan of making people feel foolish EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR, as
long as they deserve it.)
Anyhow, Nick, Jason and I went out for some Monday "practice
bowling". After about 4 or 5 games, Nick called it quits and headed
home. Around the 7th or 8th game of the night, I suddenly got on a
roll. I bowled a 212 (ranking up there in the top 10 or 15 games I've
bowled to date) and considered calling it a night. Fortunately, I bowled
another game. As you can see from the score sheet, it's a good thing I
did.
I started the game out with 7 consecutive strikes. After about 6, the
possibility of the elusive 300 game started creeping into my head. In
fact, the most consecutive strikes I've ever bowled previously was 5, so the
pressure really started to build after the 5th frame. I've read where
other people who bowl a perfect game or pitch a no-hitter are "in the
zone" and nothing fazes them. I was in no such zone. The 5th,
6th and 7th strikes I bowled were, in fact, pure junk. Perhaps if I'd been
hitting the pocket perfectly each time, I would have been more relaxed, but
every ball I threw seemed to hit high or light and magically crap out a
strike.
Then... it turned ugly.
A high hit caused me to leave the dreaded 6-7 split. While this split
can certainly be made, it's not what I would consider one of the easier
splits. Anyhow... I hit it well, and came pretty close, but couldn't
convert the spare. Nonetheless, I bounced back with a pair of strikes, and
then left the 4-7 on a high shot, and picked it up to finish with a
254.
Anyhow.. that's pretty much the story. On the picture, you'll notice
that the date is crossed out and I typed a new one in. I suspect that the
bowling alley's license for the software that runs the scoring machine expired,
so they have to backdate their equipment.
You can click on the picture below to get a giant-sized scan suitable for
framing (assuming you have a really big frame.)
For those of you who don't have a browser capable of viewing
images (I noticed in my server logs that somebody visited here using lynx
on a freeBSD box...), here
is a nice text representation of the game:
------------1----2----3----4----5----6----7----8----9-----10----
| | |X| |X|
|X| |X| |X| |X| |X|S8|1| |X| |X|8|/|
|JAKE | 30 | 60 | 90 | 120| 150| 178| 197| 206|
234| 254 |
----------------------------------------------------------------
|
