BY MICHAEL J. MOONEY FROM D MAGAZINE JULY 2012
In a bowling alley one night, Bill Fong came so close to perfection that it nearly killed him.
When Bill Fong approaches the lane, 15-pound bowling ball in hand, he tries not to breathe. He tries not to think about not breathing. He wants his body to perform a series of complex movements that his muscles themselves have memorized. In short, he wants to become a robot.
Fong, 48 years old, 6 feet tall with broad shoulders, pulls the ball into his chest and does a quick shimmy with his hips. He swings the ball first backward, then forward, his arm a pendulum of kinetic energy, as he takes five measured steps toward the foul line. He releases the ball, and it glides across the oiled wooden planks like it’s floating, hydroplaning, spinning counterclockwise along a trajectory that seems to be taking it straight for the right-hand gutter. But as the ball nears the edge of the lane, it veers back toward the center, as if guided by remote control. The hook carries the ball back just in time. In a heartbeat, what was a wide, sneering mouth of pins is now—nothing.
He comes back to the table where his teammates are seated—they always sit and bowl in the same order—and they congratulate him the same way they have thousands of times over the last decade. But Fong looks displeased. His strike wasn’t good enough.
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In January 2006 Bowlingdigital reported that the Castaways Hotel in Las Vegas, Nev., formerly known as ‘The Showboat’, was flattened. When the building was demolished on January 11, 2006, the history of the biggest bowling center in the United States with 106 lanes came to an end. Click here to read Frenchy Letourneau’s report.
