Bowling Can Be Fun Even If You Stink

IF you're looking for a sport that offers both of the Surgeon General's Two Recommended Key Elements of Athletic Activity, namely (1) rental shoes, and (2) beer, then you definitely want to take up bowling.

I love to bowl. I even belong to a bowling team, the Pin Worms. How good are we? I don't wish to brag, but we happen to be ranked, in the World Bowling Association standings, under the heading ``Severely Impaired.''

Modern science has been baffled in its efforts to predict what will happen to a given ball that has been released by a Pin Worm. The Strategic Air Command routinely tracks our bowling balls on radar in case one of them threatens a major population center and has to be destroyed with missiles.

But the thing is, we have fun. That's what I like about bowling: You can have fun even if you stink, unlike in, say, tennis. Every decade or so I attempt to play tennis, and it always consists of 37 seconds of actually hitting the ball, and two hours of yelling ``Where did the ball go?,'' ``Over that condominium!'' etc.

Whereas with bowling, once you let go of the ball, it's no longer your legal responsibility. They have these wonderful machines that find it for you and send it back. Some machines also keep score for you. In the Bowling Alley of Tomorrow, there will even be machines that wear rental shoes and throw the ball for you. Your sole function will be to drink beer.

Besides convenience, bowling offers drama. I recently witnessed an extremely dramatic shot by a young person named Madeline, age 3, who is cute as a button but much smaller. We were in the 10th frame, and Madeline had frankly not had a good game in the sense of knocking down any of the pins or even getting the ball to go all the way to the end of the lane without stopping.

So on her last turn she got up there, and her daddy put the ball down in front of her, and she pushed it with both hands. Nothing appeared to happen, but if you examined the ball with sensitive scientific instruments, you could determine that it was actually rolling. We all watched it anxiously. Time passed. The ball kept rolling. Neighboring bowlers stopped to watch. The ball kept rolling. Spectators started drifting in off the street. TV news crews arrived. A half-dozen Communist governments fell. Still Madeline's ball kept rolling.

Finally, incredibly, it reached the pins and, in the world's first live slow-motion replay, knocked them all down. Of course by then Madeline had children of her own, but it was still very exciting.

For real bowling excitement, however, you can't beat Ponch, the bowling dog. I'm not making Ponch up; he holds the rank of German shepherd in the Miami Police Department, and he bowls in charity tournaments.

He uses a special ramp built by his partner, K-9 Officer Bill Martin. Bill puts the ball on the ramp, then Ponch jumps up and knocks the ball down the ramp with his teeth. It looks very painful, but Ponch loves it. He loves it so much that as soon as the ball starts rolling, he wants to get it back, so he starts sprinting down the lane after it, barking, his feet flailing wildly around, cartoon-style, on the slick wood (this is a violation of the rules, but nobody is brave enough to tell Ponch).

When Ponch is about halfway down the lane, he suddenly sees his ball disappear into the machinery, so he whirls around and flails his way back to the ball-return tunnel, where he sticks his head DOWN INTO THE HOLE, barking furiously, knowing that his ball is in there somewhere, demanding that it be returned IMMEDIATELY, and then suddenly WHAM there it is, hitting Ponch directly in the face at approximately 40 miles per hour, and HE COULD NOT BE HAPPIER.

He is OVERJOYED to see his ball again, because that means Officer Bill's going to put it on the ramp and Ponch can hit it with his teeth again! Hurrah!

Not only is Ponch a lot of fun to watch, but he's also very naive about scoring, so you can cheat. ``Sorry Ponch,'' you can say. ``I scored 5,490 in that last game, so you owe me a million dollars.'' He'll just wag his tail. Money means nothing to him. But touch his ball and he'll rip out your throat.