Just Ducky
BUTLER TWP — Eddie Cypher was staring at history.
More than a decade ago, standing on the approach at the Knights of Columbus Hall lanes in Butler, he was looking to roll his 11th consecutive strike.
No one had ever rolled a perfect game in duckpins in Butler. No one has done it yet.
Cypher's 11th shot rolled into the gutter.
“You could hear a pin drop in that place while I was getting ready to throw,” Cypher said. “Everybody was staring at me ... I was just so shook up.”
Now 80, the Chicora resident recalls that day as if it just happened.
“It's such a tough game. You don't forget something like that,” Cypher said.
He wound up with a 279 — still the record-high score for a duckpin game in Butler.
“It's the best game I've ever see anyone bowl,” said Don “Duck” Young, a duckpin bowler for 25 years.
So it goes with duckpins. In regular tenpin bowling, 300 games are rolled pretty much annually at every bowling alley in the country.
In duckpin bowling, a sanctioned 300 game has never been rolled — anyplace, anywhere, ever.
The duckpin ball is much smaller than those used in regular bowling — about five inches in diameter and weighing less than four pounds — while the pins are smaller, shorter and much lighter than tenpins.
The pins stand farther apart as well, making pin action and strikes harder to come by.
“It's frustrating, but it's fun,” said John Brough, a duckpin bowler for 20 years.
“Nobody dominates in this game,” George “Spike” Meehan, 69, added. “That creates definite competition. It's the only game where you get patted on the back for breaking 100.”
“There are some impossible spares. You can throw the ball right down the middle and take out only two pins. The best thing about duckpins is that everybody stinks,” Meehan said.
Duckpin bowling had existed at the Butler Knights of Columbus Hall since the 1940s. But when First United Methodist Church bought the building on North Street four years ago, the duckpin equipment was put up for sale.Don Clark, owner of Bon Aire Bowl, 202 Bon Aire Plaza in Butler, wound up buying the equipment and keeping the sport alive locally.“A friend of mine bowled at the K of C and told me I had to go down there and check it out,” Clark said. “I wound up putting a sealed bid in for the machines and equipment.”“The other bids came in from Erie, Franklin and Pittsburgh. If we didn't get them, duckpins would have been gone,” Clark said.No other bowling facility in Butler County offers duckpins. But while locations have become rare, equipment can still be ordered through the Internet. Some sporting goods stores still sell duckpin bowling balls.Bon Aire has four men's leagues — Monday, Wednesday and Thursday nights and Saturday afternoons — bowling duckpins on four lanes. No women's leagues have formed.Larry McWilliams has bowled a 241 this season, Mike Morris a 208, in the Saturday league. McWilliams has a 138 average, Brough 137. Young tops the Wednesday league with a 127.Young said he averaged in the 150s at the K of C Hall.“The shot is much more difficult here,” Young said. “(Bon Aire) has synthetic lanes, and the K of C lanes were wooden. That makes a difference.”Pat Green, 67, has bowled duckpins for 15 years and is averaging 118. He bowled a 210 at the K of C but has not topped 180 at Bon Aire.Lou Green, 69, has been a duckpin bowler for 45 years. His average is 105. He bowled a 225 at the K of C, but his high game at Bon Aire is 165.A portion of the wooden lanes from the K of C Hall now serves as lengthy tables behind the bowling approach areas at Bon-Aire.Steve Newcomb formed the Thursday night league, which sports an average age of over 50 and consists primarily of golfers from a Thursday league.Newcomb averages 185 in tenpin bowling. His duckpin average is 94.“Anyone who averages higher than 120 in this is pretty good,” Newcomb said. “We're just a bunch of guys who decided to get together and we've stuck together.”
Brough averaged 182 in tenpins. He began bowling duckpins after losing an arm in an automobile accident in 1994.“With the ball being much smaller and lighter, the game suited me more,” he said. “You see guys throwing it differently. Some use a hook, others a curve, some throw it straight, some throw it hard.”“It all comes down to personal preference. There is no proven system that consistently works for anybody that I've seen,” Brough said.Jim Huemme, 68, describes duckpins as “a very humbling game.” Young refers to it as “the ultimate challenge.”“That's what I love about it. When you roll a 200 in this game, you remember it. It feels special,” Young said.Meehan agrees.“The challenge of it is what gets me,” he said. “Most people play racquetball. I played handball because it's so much tougher. Most people do tenpin bowling ... It's hard to find people nuts enough to take up this game.”“It's a good game for people who like to compete. It is crazy, though. As soon as you think you've got it, you'll get three splits in a row,” Meehan said.Green said the game is a throwback as scores are still kept by hand. Automated scoring machines have been in regular bowling centers for years.With only four lanes available for duckpins, leagues are smaller in terms of the number of bowlers.“There's much more camaraderie and good-natured fun with each other because you're bowling the same people all the time,” Green said. “The familiarity develops quickly.”Dave Trainor bowls in the Wednesday night league. A duckpin bowler for only three years, he admits that “I set no goals for myself in this game.”“It's the most humiliating game I've ever attempted in my life,” Trainor said. “It's more like boccie than bowling.”“If I bowl a 120, I'm happy as a peach,” said Trainor.As different, humbling, frustrating, challenging and humiliating as duckpins may be, the game's clientele never wants to give it up.Just ask Cypher.“I'd still be doing it if my knees would hold up,” he said. “I tried to bowl this year, but in the first game, I fell, hit my head on the ball rack ... That was it.”“I walked off, sold my duckpin balls and I quit — one of the toughest things I've had to do,” Cypher said.
Some facts and figures on duckpin bowling:• Duckpins were reportedly bowled as early as the 1890s in Lowell, Mass.• Duckpin bowling balls are about five inches in diameter and weigh from two to four pounds.• Duckpin bowling centers are primarily located in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Indiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia and Washington, D.C.• The lone duckpin bowling center west of the Mississippi River is in Potter, Neb.• Bowlers get three balls per frame — as opposed to two in regular tenpin bowling — to knock down 10 pins. For scoring purposes, no pins carry over to the next frame if the third ball is needed to complete the spare.• The National Duckpin Bowling Congress (NDBC) was established in 1927. According to the NDBC, the highest sanctioned game ever rolled in duckpins was a 279 by Pete Signore Jr. in 1992.• The first NDBC national tournament was in 1928 and consisted of 126 five-person teams, 162 doubles teams and 201 singles entries.• By 1938, an estimated 200,000 bowlers were participating in sanctioned duckpin play. Participation peaked at 300,000 sanctioned bowlers in 1967.• Rubber band duckpins were introduced in Pittsburgh in the late 1900s. The pins are circled with hard rubber bands to increase action and scoring. The rubber band version was invented by William Wuerthele of Pittsburgh, who observed flying pins injuring pin boys.• There have been perfect games bowled in rubber band duckpins, but that version is almost extinct now.• Legendary baseball slugger Babe Ruth bowled duckpins on a regular basis.
