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Duckpin bowling moving westwardHAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP -Bowling with stubby pins and a grapefruit-sized ball has been an East Coast, sport for decades, but in recent years the squatty duckpins have surfaced as far west as Wisconsin and Indiana.“It was a regional game initially, but now with national TV exposure, maybe it's going to open up,” said Hill Orchard, current president of the National Duckpiri Bowling Congress,Even a hint of new activity is encouraging to the 150,000 duckpin bowlers who have lived in the shadow' of the more-popular tenpin game, played with taller pins and a heavier ball.About 120 duckpin alleys dot the Eastern Seaboard from New Hampshire and Vermont, to North Carolina, but the sport never made its way West. In the past year, however, duckpin has been featured on cable television nationwide, and duckpinners hope the sport will catch on across the country.Bob Moore of College Park, president of Duckpin Bowling Proprietors of America, said duckpin lanes belonging to members of the association plunged 36 percent after 1980. He said many centers lost their leases because of high land values.But Orchard noted, since the cable TV programs. “There’s a lane in Indianapolis that has opened up with great results and also one near Milwaukee.Tenpin advocates acknowledge growing interest in duckpin, but they doubt it will ever rival tenpin.“People just favor the bigger pins and the bigger balls,” said Mark Miller, a spokesman for the American Bowling Congress in Greendale. Wis. The congress estimates 67 million people bowl tenpins at least once a year, and 7.4 million bowl in weekly leagues.The majority of duckpin bowlers live in and around the nation's capital.“They call this duckpin country, said Paul Wolfe. 55. who handles maintenance at Southsidc Bowl. “You're either cut out to be a tenpin bowler, or you're cut out to be a duckpin bowler.For tenpin players, bowling means sticking two fingers and a thumb in the holes of an 8- to16-pound ball and letting it rip down a shiny alley. Duckpin balls do not have holes and weigh only 3 or 4 pounds. The pins are smaller too, standing 9 inches tall, compared with the 15-inch tenpins.“I don't believe t could lift one of those (tenpin) balls,” said James “Bud” Mason, 73. “We just got into duckpin. Oh, we love this oT sport.”According to the national duckpin congress, the game began in 1900 at a bowling alley in Baltimore that was ownea by Wilbert Robinson and John McGraw, who played baseball and went on to manage major league teams.Some bowlers were amusing themselves with 6-inch balls, and someone suggested modifying the pins to conform to the smaller ball. So the alley manager sent some pins to a woodturner.“When Robinson and McGraw, whose hobby was shooting ducks, saw' the little pins fly as the 6-inch ball plowed into them, they remarked that the pins looked like a flock of flying clucks,” according to the congress.Bruce Pluckhahn, curator of the National Bowling Hall of Fame and Museum in St. Louis, however, says there was a duckpin tournament in Lowell, Mass., in 1894.Except for minor variations, duckpin is played and scored as tenpin is. The real difference occurs when the ball hits the pins. The smaller ball can knock out just the center pins, leaving difficult splits.“You get the ball in the middle of thd alley (with tenpin) and you get a strike, said Bettie Moore of Hagerstown. “You pul the ball down the middle in duckpin, and you don't know what you’ll get.Jack Shufelt of Hagerstown, president of an association representing bowlers in Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, said tenpin is a game of strikes, while duckpin is a game of spares.“Anybody can knock 'em down with those big cannonballs, Shufelt said.Rich fossil deposits in Queensland. Australia, have yielded 150 species of mammals never before known, according to National Geographic.
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Paris News
Paris, Texas, US
Sun, Apr 03, 1988
Page 9
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MD, USA 23 Jan 2024
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