Pin Action: Small-Time Gangsters, High-Stakes Gambling, and the Teenage Hustler Who Became a Bowling Champion Read Online Free Page A
Author: Gianmarc Manzione
“Ernie, we got a fish in Philadelphia!”
A “fish” in action bowling parlance was a sucker whose money was easy because he either didn’t know his competition or hehad an exaggerated sense of his own abilities. And if he did know his competition and chose therefore to keep his money to himself, well, there were remedies for that: You could ask him to please confirm he still had a pair of balls between his legs, show up on crutches and say you had the gout to put on the airs of easy prey, or start a match with a few thrown games before stunning the poor bastard with enough strikes to make him beg to keep enough money for the bus. You did whatever it took to get him on the lanes and make his money yours. That was the bottom line. Schlegel’s bait to catch these fish included the shot of bourbon he downed and the extra splash he rubbed behind his ears, and the long-sleeved shirts he wore to perpetuate rumors that they concealed heroin tracks. And then there was the crooked mouth and the thing his friends called “the twisted eye.” Schlegel’s vision was so poor in one eye that he tightened it into a kind of contorted squint when he bowled. It made him look a little crazy to the unsuspecting. Despite his impaired vision, Schlegel was the most accurate bowler in New York, an asset that made him not just a good bowler, but a great bowler. He threw a much straighter ball than most; a lot of bowlers at least hooked the ball a little, some a lot. Schlegel preferred a straighter shot because he knew that he never would miss his target, while bowlers with big hooks will not always be able to predict where their ball will end up as it makes its way toward the pins. There is a narrower margin for error when you rely on hook instead of accuracy. When you throw a straighter shot you remove that uncertainty; and when you know, too, that you rarely will miss the target you are looking at, you are a fearsome competitor.
But for Schlegel, action bowling was as much about hustling as it was about physical ability—the way a stench of bourbon or a twist in the eye consumed more of his opponent’s focus than the match itself. And that was exactly the point: Youwanted the guy on the other side of the ball return to think about anything but how to get out of the place with money in his pocket, anything but what he had done to succeed in this spot before. You had to convince the fish that there was something wrong with you, afflict him with the delusion that he had the upper hand. If you played your part well, your prey would get angry—so angry, in fact, that he would bet far more money than reason advised. The double-or-nothings, the big bills he would lay down to recoup those small bills his buddies had just watched him lose, the machismo that gnawed at him as his humiliation grew. That’s when you made the real money; that’s when you were playing a game Schlegel liked to call “the spider and the fly.” By the time Schlegel’s opponents found themselves down a couple hundred bucks, they knew they were caught.
The roommates Schlegel would soon live with knew he played the role of the spider well enough to send him bowling whenever they needed some rent money. They knew about the night Schlegel and his chain-smoking doubles partner, Johnny Campbell, took on the most fearsome duo in action bowling, a pair of bowlers known as Fats and Deacon, in a 12-hour match that culminated in a tie at dawn. Both teams piled their cash on the score table for one last game to settle it all. With fingers so raw by then that the finger holes in their bowling balls were stained with blood, they once again battled down to the 10th frame, when Schlegel needed all three strikes to win the match. He stepped up and threw what Campbell would describe for years to come as the best three strikes he ever saw in his life. The money was theirs.
But Schlegel and his act found fewer takers by 1962. After a while, even the fish came to know your shtick well
A “fish” in action bowling parlance was a sucker whose money was easy because he either didn’t know his competition or hehad an exaggerated sense of his own abilities. And if he did know his competition and chose therefore to keep his money to himself, well, there were remedies for that: You could ask him to please confirm he still had a pair of balls between his legs, show up on crutches and say you had the gout to put on the airs of easy prey, or start a match with a few thrown games before stunning the poor bastard with enough strikes to make him beg to keep enough money for the bus. You did whatever it took to get him on the lanes and make his money yours. That was the bottom line. Schlegel’s bait to catch these fish included the shot of bourbon he downed and the extra splash he rubbed behind his ears, and the long-sleeved shirts he wore to perpetuate rumors that they concealed heroin tracks. And then there was the crooked mouth and the thing his friends called “the twisted eye.” Schlegel’s vision was so poor in one eye that he tightened it into a kind of contorted squint when he bowled. It made him look a little crazy to the unsuspecting. Despite his impaired vision, Schlegel was the most accurate bowler in New York, an asset that made him not just a good bowler, but a great bowler. He threw a much straighter ball than most; a lot of bowlers at least hooked the ball a little, some a lot. Schlegel preferred a straighter shot because he knew that he never would miss his target, while bowlers with big hooks will not always be able to predict where their ball will end up as it makes its way toward the pins. There is a narrower margin for error when you rely on hook instead of accuracy. When you throw a straighter shot you remove that uncertainty; and when you know, too, that you rarely will miss the target you are looking at, you are a fearsome competitor.
But for Schlegel, action bowling was as much about hustling as it was about physical ability—the way a stench of bourbon or a twist in the eye consumed more of his opponent’s focus than the match itself. And that was exactly the point: Youwanted the guy on the other side of the ball return to think about anything but how to get out of the place with money in his pocket, anything but what he had done to succeed in this spot before. You had to convince the fish that there was something wrong with you, afflict him with the delusion that he had the upper hand. If you played your part well, your prey would get angry—so angry, in fact, that he would bet far more money than reason advised. The double-or-nothings, the big bills he would lay down to recoup those small bills his buddies had just watched him lose, the machismo that gnawed at him as his humiliation grew. That’s when you made the real money; that’s when you were playing a game Schlegel liked to call “the spider and the fly.” By the time Schlegel’s opponents found themselves down a couple hundred bucks, they knew they were caught.
The roommates Schlegel would soon live with knew he played the role of the spider well enough to send him bowling whenever they needed some rent money. They knew about the night Schlegel and his chain-smoking doubles partner, Johnny Campbell, took on the most fearsome duo in action bowling, a pair of bowlers known as Fats and Deacon, in a 12-hour match that culminated in a tie at dawn. Both teams piled their cash on the score table for one last game to settle it all. With fingers so raw by then that the finger holes in their bowling balls were stained with blood, they once again battled down to the 10th frame, when Schlegel needed all three strikes to win the match. He stepped up and threw what Campbell would describe for years to come as the best three strikes he ever saw in his life. The money was theirs.
But Schlegel and his act found fewer takers by 1962. After a while, even the fish came to know your shtick well
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