Bowling for ClodDumbine

Outta Leftfield: Bowling brothers’ side-splitting antics strike a chord
Published: Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Get it? "Bowling" and "strike"? Prediction: the aforementioned antics will be neither side-splitting nor chord-striking.

Pardon the you-know-who-esque pun in my title.

The first thing one noticed when walking into Roxy’s Lanes was a blue haze of smoke, hovering near the low ceiling over the proceedings like a mushroom cloud, providing cover for the sounds of bowling balls crashing into pins and the whoops, hollers or swear words that followed each roll.

Woah woah, what is this?!? Could he be trying to duplicate the "success" he enjoyed from his "Joy of Baseball Cards" article? He's really going all-out with the "haze was like a cloud" thing.

It was a smallish bowling alley — 24 lanes, I think — near one end of a mostly blue-collar town. Smoking was allowed, so was drinking, and there was lots of both at this bowling alley.

So there was smoking allowed at this smoke-filled bowling alley. Interesting. Continue.

Inside the entrance along one wall was information about all the leagues, lined up like the box scores on the sports pages. Here one could see the current standings, averages, high score and high series from the previous week and lane assignments for the current week. There must have been 40 different leagues and hundreds of bowlers, both men and women.

This is a feature, I am sure, is completely unique to this particular bowling alley. Surely you could find information on LEAGUES and HIGH SCORES in no other place. The effort he is expending to describe this completely generic aspect of a bowling alley must be killing him.

It’s where the Morsch brothers bowled every Wednesday night at 9 p.m. during the 1970s in the central Illinois town of Pekin.

Ah, and he brings it all together. What an artist!

I was of driving age, around 17 or so, and enjoyed watching the brothers bowl, not because they were great bowlers but because they were just that entertaining, so much so that I’d stay up late on a school night just to observe the shenanigans.

Oh boy, what did they do? Eye-pokes and nose-twists a la the beloved Stooges? Crack jokes about their nagging wives? Discuss how often they spill things on themselves? Talk baseball? That bowling alley must have been a regular proto-Outta Leftfield!

My dad also bowled in a 6 p.m. league that same evening, so he was there all night. There was no entertainment value in the early league,

Why not? I suppose that, much like Mo, Larry or Curly, Morsch's dad couldn't cut it on his own. Nowhere is the distinction between Stooge brother and Marx Brother more distinct.

so I’d wait and drive myself down to the bowling alley for the second league, where the Morsch brothers, in their maroon bowling shirts, would hold court.

"Hold court"! If he's trotting out the metaphors, Morsch must really be shooting for some kind of award for this one.

It was relatively easy to pick them out of a big crowd.

The biggest, fattest guys usually are.

I never looked at the bulletin board to see their lane assignments; I just walked into the blue haze … and listened.

Sorry. Biggest, fattest and loudest.

Even amidst the hubbub and noise of a bowling alley, I could find the Morsch brothers. They were the loudest voices in an already loud atmosphere.

And there wasn’t a more charming band of rascals and rogues. They would do a little bowling, but mostly what they’d do is drink, curse, smoke, curse, gamble, curse, yell and curse.

Sounds like a good time! Weren't those the good old days, when drinking, smoking, gambling and cursing were COOL? Oh, to be a kid again!

They were characters, individually and collectively,

Except for Morsch's dad, who individually provided "no entertainment value."

and they enjoyed all the drinking, smoking, gambling, yelling and cursing that went with bowling night.

Okay, okay, we get it. They did those things, and they're not sounding any more enjoyable no matter how many times you repeat it.

In general, bowling isn’t a spectator sport, but with these guys — Uncle Louie, Uncle Bill, Uncle Nick, Uncle Poncho (Paul) and my dad, Ed — it was indeed a spectacle.

Uncle Bill bowled leadoff.

Question - is the first bowler on a team actually described as the "leadoff" bowler? I suspect this is an unnecessary baseball reference.

I always thought he and my dad looked the most alike of all the brothers. His nickname was “Pat,” a nickname my grandfather gave him. One of the younger brothers, he wasn’t as demonstrative on the alleys as some of the others, but he had a wonderfully unique laugh that he employed early and often on bowling night.

Yeah, you gotta have that uniquely-laughing guy in any comedy troupe.

Uncle Louie was second, and he was the weakest bowler average-wise of the bunch. I don’t think he ever threw a ball down the alley that he was pleased with.

Woah, woah, Morsch - a negative comment? "Weakest bowler"? Don't you want to qualify that, as you do with any negative comment you'd make about a celebrity or doctor's office? "Not to say he was bad - actually he was a fine bowler." Try that.

He’d turn around and mumble and curse his way back to prepare for his second shot, occasionally kicking the ball return in disgust. He never seemed happy with his performance, even when he threw a strike. And he eventually had to stop kicking the ball return because he actually broke his foot one time trying to dropkick the machine.

Reader comprehension question: what did Uncle Louie do to the machine? The clue is contained THREE TIMES in the last paragraph.

Uncle Poncho was third in the lineup. Perpetually happy and animated, he employed a bowling strategy that I had never seen up to that point: If he threw a shot that wobbled a pin, he’d try to pick the corresponding board on the alley over which the pin wobbled, and he’d stomp on it.

I'm pretty sure Moses did that when he bowled.

Like there was some possibility that the board was loose enough at the far end of the alley that his stomping at the point of the ball’s release would somehow cause the pin to fall 60 feet away.

Woah, great observation! And the longer the observation goes, the funnier it becomes! Like Morsch thinks that there's a possibility that by continuing to describe how ridiculous that suggestion is it will become even more amusing since he's being so specific about how ridiculous it is that his uncle thinks that this strategy will actually knock over a pin that is so far away!

It was only an illusion, of course, but Poncho was an experienced kegler and had a sense of knowing when a teetering pin was likely to fall and was able to make it look like he had stomped it down.

Question - if it was all an "illusion," why make a big joke of the strategy?

And Poncho wouldn’t just stomp, but stomp-stomp-stomp-stomp-stomp in rapid fire succession, so much so that one time he broke his foot stomping so hard.

WE GET IT. Try reading that sentence in a "dumb guy" voice - it's amusing.

His antics absolutely cracked me up to the point that once I began bowling in leagues as an adult, I would employ The Poncho Stomp, mostly to entertain myself and as a tribute to him.

And thus his long, plagiarism-based comedy career began.

If you’re keeping track, that’s two different ways the Morsch brothers found to break a foot in a non-contact sport.

Uncle Nick bowled fourth in the lineup. Seemingly always chomping a cigar, he had a sidearm kind of delivery on the ball, which caused it to have a big, sweeping hook. He may have been the least loud of the bunch, but that’s really not saying much. There were only degrees of loud with these guys.

If it's not saying much, don't say it at all. There's also no need for "on the ball" - we know he's bowling, unless anyone bowls with, like, a cube or a tetragon.

My dad was the anchor and had about a 180 average. He was a little less demonstrative than Poncho and Louie, a little more animated than Nick and Bill.

That reads like an SAT question.

When Dad threw a ball he thought was going to be a strike, he’d raise his right arm straight into the air and stand on one leg, much like a sleeping swan.

Again, totally unique in the bowling world.

They’re all gone now. Uncle Bill died last week, and the Morsch brothers bowling team now belongs to the ages. I miss them, but one thing I learned when my dad died more than four years ago is that although our loved ones are no longer here, they’re still always with us. They live on through us, through the memories and stories we tell.

You gotta be kidding me. The whole point of this was a generic "they will live on in songs and legends" thing?

I think I’m going to go out and bowl a few games as a tribute to my father and uncles. And I’ll try very hard not to break a foot.

Oh... Kay? So to summarize, the side splitting antics were:

Drinking
Smoking
Cursing
Gambling
Yelling
Having a unique laugh
Kicking the ball return/breaking foot
Stomping on the floor/breaking foot
Bowling sidearm
Posing after bowling
Dying (?)