Well, another installment of the GEICO PBA Team Shootout is in the history books and I think it's pretty safe to say that this was by far the best one yet.
Moving the action from a theme park with Bugs Bunny and Batman in attendance to a Chicago bowling lounge was tantamount to the difference between Kingda Ka and the Wiggles World (see below)...and it turned out to make all the difference in the world in transforming the event from a "silly season" exhibition into a real competition.
Team 900 Global put on an amazing run in the stepladder finals to claim the Manufacturer's Cup, dispensing of #3 seed Brunswick, #2 seed Storm and top seed Ebonite in shocking fashion.
Easily the most eclectic team, 900 Global was comprised of a woman (2011 USBC Queens champion Missy Parkin), two guys who don't even tour any more (Robert Smith and Brian Voss) and two journeyman pros who are still pretty darn competitive in Steve Jaros and Michael Haugen Jr. While their diversity of styles definitely hurt them in the preliminary competition (BV and Maximum Bob bowling doubles? Good luck getting a read off of each other there!) they definitely came together as a team in the stepladder and worked it out for the win.
BOTTLEGATE II
Of course, just getting to the stepladder provided us with plenty to enjoy and to talk about for years to come...starting with (drum roll please) Bottlegate II.
The hottest hot-potato issue in bowling today unfolded on Sunday's opening telecast during the exciting "elimination" singles round, where one bowler from each team took part in a sudden death one-ball roll-off format where the player with the lowest score was eliminated after each round.
The final two survivors in the second group of elimination round competitors were Sean Rash and Jason Belmonte and - unless you've been living under a rock the past few weeks - you already knew some of what happened...or, due to the various explanations of the events that have been bandied about, at least that there was some major drama.
The bottom line is that Sean Rash felt that Jason Belmonte was employing gamesmanship by choosing to hold on to his water bottle while Rash was up on the approach. After backing off a second time due to bottle noise, Rash made a comment to Belmonte, reset his pre-shot routine, got up, flushed a strike and unleashed a new phrase into the pop-culture pantheon.
Fueling Rash's rant were at least two past incidents involving Belmonte, one occurring during the 2010 PBA World Series of Bowling, and the other taking place during this past season's Dick Weber PBA Playoffs. Brad Angelo played the Sean Rash role in the latter incident (and was utterly excoriated by the majority of bowling fans for it) but it turns out he handled that particular incident with utter gentility in comparison when he asked Belmonte to refrain from touching the bottle before the commercial break, after an aborted shot, and then on the shot immediately after the balk.
After this incident, Kimberly Pressler fielded a pair of interviews (one with each competitor) and neither appeared willing to give any ground. In fact, Belmonte even referred to Rash as a "clown" both on set and during his interview, while Rash said that he will not back down in the future should something like this ever occur again. (I'm betting any future match-ups between these two guys will be, shall we say, "highly anticipated?")
So what have we learned from all of this?
The PBA has taken criticism for "publicizing" this incident (even though you'll find that, on balance, the event was covered no more by the PBA than any other "more positive" occurrence and that the interest is pretty much exclusively fan-driven). What I take from it personally is that what we have in this incident is genuine proof that the competition on the PBA Tour is as intense as what we see in any other major sport, and one of the goals of the PBA is to illustrate that point for fans outside the fold. Take this quote from the Las Vegas Review Journal (who happens to be one of the few papers in the country who still provide regular coverage and are actually fairly sympathetic to bowling) on the topic of Bottlegate. It really shows how far the sport of bowling still has to come: "For many, this is about as exciting as pro bowling gets."
Unfortunately, this is a microcosm of what the sporting world currently believes about our sport. True bowling fans know that this is not true, but because many of the coolest parts of our sport are hidden from the untrained eye of the observer (oil patterns, rapidly-changing conditions, subtle adjustments, a scoring system that rewards strings of strikes and penalizes open frames so that leads are never safe and gamesmanship, etc.) people assume that watching bowling is not as exciting as watching other sports. A sport like football, on the other hand, has an advantage in that the untrained observer who has no idea of the multi-faceted strategy going on during a game can at least enjoy it because they can see a bunch of 300-pound dudes knocking the ever-loving crap out of one another. In bowling, we have to show the intensity of what goes on in a different way, and Bottlegate certainly seems to stimulate that argument, based on the amount of fan interest it generated.
MVP - RYAN SHAFER
Moving on to another topic, it was great to see Ryan Shafer come up so big in his first appearance in one of these events. After being passed over for so long, Shafer took part in not one but TWO perfect games over the course of the competition - one in doubles with Belmonte - and a singles 300 during one of the Saturday shows. I was impressed by Shafer's humility in his post-game interviews - he could've easily stuck it to those who, in the past, chose not to select him - but instead he took the "Hy-Road" (shameless Storm plug - ha!), was appreciative for the opportunity and also seemed the ultimate team player in shifting the praise to his fellow teammates. He was my MVP of the entire competition.
WHAT'S NEXT
Sadly, this event represents the last competition on the PBA Tour until the start of the 2011 PBA World Series of Bowling in November. In the meantime, however, we still have plenty of PBA Regional Tour action, the conclusion of the exciting 2011 PBA Senior Tour and even a few other, non-PBA events coming up on Xtra Frame (such as the Teen Masters and a Bowling This Month feature in July) to satisfy your need for all things professional bowling.
You can also catch all of the GEICO PBA Team Shootout telecasts on ESPN2 starting July 9, or over on Xtra Frame starting seven days after the original telecast air dates.
In the meantime, let's all remember why we love the sport of bowling in the first place...to quote the great Randy Pedersen: "Can't we all just get along?" Or not - because when we don't, it sure makes for some good TV sports!