Pin Action

On March 2, 1991, Del Ballard Jr. threw the most famous gutter ball in PBA history on national television. Nine months later he stood in court facing felony charges. Two decades of one of the worst contracts in professional sports closed the loop on a single throw that no one ever told you the truth about.Full breakdown: youtu.be/5XTlH3sgR5A

In July 1985, Pete Weber told Sports Illustrated he bowled in a cocaine blackout. On record. Full name. The Professional Bowlers Association said nothing publicly and let the season continue.Full breakdown: youtu.be/N3Lhbf8xkSU

The Professional Bowlers Association hands its Playoffs winner a real WWE championship belt. Not a prop. The two executives who run the PBA and approved the belt deal both come straight from professional wrestling.Full breakdown: youtu.be/JCl1NowUjVo

The Professional Bowlers Association put Ernie Schlegel on ABC in a sequined jumpsuit and called him a gimmick. What that costume hid: a forty-two-year career, a Hall of Fame plaque, more PBA tournament cashes than any bowler before him, and the inside-out hook that bowled the perfect game on the most demanding lane condition the sport has ever certified.Full breakdown: youtu.be/AA-QtPiazSk

The PBA Hall of Fame has a written standard: ten tour titles, or five with two majors. Guppy Troup had eight and zero. Walter Ray Williams Jr. has 47 and 6 — he's in. Don Carter has six and three majors. Pete Weber has 37 and 10 majors. The other standard is unwritten.Full breakdown: youtu.be/Hqp8o9wTl4w

Earl Anthony won 43 Professional Bowlers Association titles. Twelve million people watched him bowl every Saturday for a decade. No major American network talk show ever booked him. Not once.Full breakdown: youtu.be/1xHOW2xZk_I

In 1991, the Professional Bowlers Association was receiving $200,000 per year from ABC for Saturday afternoon broadcasts — a contract that had run for 35 years. By 1997 the PBA was paying ABC to take it off the air. By 2000 the league was bankrupt.Full breakdown: youtu.be/lSq5I-h20mw

In 1999, the Wall Street Journal got one fact wrong about Microsoft programmer Chris Peters. Three months later, three Microsoft retirees bought the Professional Bowlers Association for $5 million.Full breakdown: youtu.be/zSYXNBAMETE

Apollo Global Management owns bowling. In May 2026, eleven bowlers sued to break it apart.The Professional Bowlers Association is owned by Lucky Strike Entertainment Corporation, formerly Bowlero — and Lucky Strike is controlled by Apollo, a private equity firm managing over a trillion dollars in casinos, defense contractors, home security, and live events.Lucky Strike grew from six bowling centers in 2012 to nearly 350 — about 35% of all U.S. bowling revenue — acquiring AMF Bowling and Brunswick Corporation along the way. One Seattle customer was charged $284 for two hours. In some local markets the company allegedly controls 95% of lanes.On May 6, 2026, eleven bowlers filed Doehr v. Lucky Strike Entertainment Corporation in federal court in Seattle, using the Sherman Act of 1890 and the Clayton Act of 1914 to ask a judge to unwind the roll-up.Full breakdown: youtu.be/USYmwQ1m_bo

In November 2023 the USBC ruled string pins score no different from free-fall machines. The same nineteen-page report recorded fewer strikes, a narrower pocket, and worse pin action.Its own lab robot, EARL — the Enhanced Automated Robotic Launcher — found a measurable scoring gap: 7.1% fewer strikes and up to 10 pins lower per game in the April 2023 report. That report made string pin bowling a separate category with averages not interchangeable with free-fall.Then the methodology changed. The USBC ran 350 human bowlers through four games each — a test designed to detect a gap of four pins or larger — and found "no statistically significant difference." Executive director Chad Murphy changed the playing rules the same day the report was published, "in collaboration with the industry's manufacturers."The PBA then approved exactly one machine, the Kubica AMF Edge. Within a year Kubica AMF was the PBA's presenting sponsor.Full breakdown: youtu.be/hMpbf9Afj7k

August 13, 2012. The PBA killed its Senior Tour with a press release. Ron Moore won the final championship on a paywall. The follow-up release contained one word that admitted everything: "back." Bill Beach won the inaugural PBA Senior Tour title in 1981 in front of an ABC Saturday afternoon audience. Thirty-one years later, Ron Moore defeated Harry Sullins at Spare Time Lanes in Decatur, Illinois — no broadcast cameras, streamed only on Extra Frame. Commissioner Tom Clark's press release called "senior" outdated and announced the PBA50 Tour. A separate release a week later quietly admitted one 2013 event would be "back" on ESPN. A reader looking at the All-Time PBA50/Senior Tour Titles list today cannot see the moment the Senior Tour stopped being a Senior Tour. Full breakdown: youtu.be/E9_Ib3ITbSo

In January 1963, the Milwaukee Mob murdered a jukebox operator who ran routes through bowling alleys across Wisconsin. Anthony Biernat — 85 machines across cocktail lounges, bowling alleys, and the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. Frank Balistrieri's Milwaukee crime family wanted the concession. Biernat refused. Three men dragged him from a Kenosha train station January 7, 1963. Body found three weeks later, frozen in a basement floor. The bowling trade press ran nothing. Bowlers Journal International published no sustained coverage. The PBA — whose founders were active in Chicago-area bowling while Biernat's route operated — has no surfaced acknowledgment in any archive. The documentation sits at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas. Full breakdown: youtu.be/P4FC9I5jSts

In 1986, a group of pro bowlers sued the Professional Bowlers Association for antitrust violations. The PBA settled. The terms were sealed. The official history doesn't mention it happened. Two years later, Eureka Urethane Incorporated filed a second federal antitrust suit against the PBA. That one's missing from the official history too. Forty years later, on May 6, 2026, a federal class action — Doehr v. Lucky Strike Entertainment — argues the same legal theory the 1986 plaintiffs did. The lead attorney is a former FTC merger enforcement lawyer. The Elias Cup is still awarded annually. Full breakdown: youtu.be/9gnvSUgXVgE

The PBA has a supplier almost no fan can name. Kegel Manufacturing, Lake Wales, Florida — started 1981 by a bowling-center mechanic named John Davis. Today Kegel sells more lane-conditioning machines than every other manufacturer combined. Its Sanction Technology is the preferred system of every major bowling governing body on Earth. Its broadcast tech Specto appears on every PBA telecast on FOX. The Mitchell family, sole owners since January 2016, has never appeared on a PBA broadcast. On May 6, 2026 a federal antitrust class action named Kegel as one of three preferential suppliers Bowlero allegedly used to consolidate 35% of U.S. bowling revenue. Full breakdown: youtu.be/vWLB3_L_peQ

On May 6, 2026, eleven bowlers walked into federal court in Seattle and asked a judge to break up the largest bowling company ever assembled. Dore v. Lucky Strike Entertainment. Lucky Strike — formerly Bowlero — owns 350 bowling centers and the Professional Bowlers Association. 35% of all U.S. bowling revenue. 95% of lanes in some local markets. The complaint asks for divestiture, not damages — structural relief American courts have not granted at this scale in forty years. CEO Thomas Shannon called the PBA acquisition "an infomercial" on CNBC. That quote is now in the federal complaint. Full breakdown: youtu.be/4MC-XypcSxA

In 1980, 9.8 million Americans bowled in a sanctioned league. Forty years later, that number had dropped by 89%.The PBA was founded in 1958 by an Akron lawyer named Eddie Elias, who had never bowled a frame in his life. He collected $50 from each of 33 founding members in a New Jersey motel room and built it into a Saturday afternoon television empire. ABC's Pro Bowlers Tour drew 12 to 14 million viewers and made Don Carter the first American athlete in any sport to sign a $1 million endorsement contract — before Mickey Mantle, before Johnny Unitas, before Arnold Palmer.Earl Anthony won 43 PBA titles as a former forklift driver who practiced 350 games a week. Mark Roth, Marshall Holman, Pete Weber, Walter Ray Williams Jr., and Jason Belmonte each rewrote the record book. By 1997, ABC cancelled its 35-year broadcast. By 1999, the PBA was on the edge of bankruptcy.Three former Microsoft executives bought it for $5 million in March 2000 and rebuilt the Tour on ESPN. Bowlero acquired the entire PBA in 2019. In December 2024, Bowlero rebranded as Lucky Strike Entertainment Corporation. The ticker changed from BOWL to LUCK.Full breakdown: youtu.be/kuFydJHbrBY

In 1980, 9.8 million Americans belonged to a bowling league. More than 22 million watched the PBA Tour on a single Saturday afternoon. The sport's collapse was already 18 years old.The first fall happened in 1962, when Brunswick Corporation's stock dropped from $75 to $13 in a single year and the company ended up with 131 bowling centers on its balance sheet as payment for defaulted equipment loans. Brunswick didn't want to run bowling centers. It had no choice.That accident of collateral became the Bowling Center Operations Division in 1965, the portfolio Brunswick sold to Bowlmor AMF in 2014 for $270 million, the company that rebranded to Bowlero in 2018, that acquired the Professional Bowlers Association in 2019, and that rebranded one final time to Lucky Strike Entertainment Corporation in December 2024.The line is unbroken. Robert Putnam's actual data — from Bowling Alone — shows that between 1980 and 1998, the total number of Americans who bowled went up 10%, while league bowling fell 40%. The sport didn't die. The business model did.Full breakdown: youtu.be/Y4zmRmsXfic