Pin Action

by Gianmarc Manzione

Overview

Most of us think of bowling as a "sport" in quotation marks, and bowling alleys are places with disco balls, matching shirts, and funny shoes. But in the 1960s, New York City was the center of "action bowling", a form of high-stakes gambling in which bowlers—often teenagers—faced off for thousands of dollars every night. When money like that is changing hands, you can bet the pressure is on (and the balls are rigged), and losses come with dire consequences. But for a few kids, the world of action bowling would turn out to be a ticket off the mean streets and onto the Professional Bowlers Association Tour. For Ernie Schlegel, it would be a chance to shed his hustler ways and become a bonafide champion.For the more than 100 million bowlers worldwide and for fans of timeless sports histories, Pin Action captures the underbelly of 1960s and '70s New York and tells the true story of how the most notorious action bowler of all time became a Hall of Famer. Set in the gritty, flashy, lost world of action bowling, Gianmarc Manzione tells an epic tale filled with seedy characters, uproarious eccentricities, improbable twists of fate, and a rags-to-riches narrative so crazy it has to be true.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781605987156
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	11/04/2014
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	1,011,778
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Gianmarc Manzione is the most recognized writer in the bowling industry today. He has written on the subject for the New York Times and all of the bowling industry’s highest-profile publications. Manzione fell in love with bowling as a kid growing up in Brooklyn, where he spent so much of his childhood in local bowling alleys that he was virtually raised in them. Manzione currently teaches English and creative writing at the College of Central Florida, and lives with his wife near Tampa.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

1 A Fish in Philadelphia 1

2 The Guns of Avenue M 29

3 Central 55

4 The Road to Buffalo 91

5 The Bicentennial Kid 116

6 The Gorillas of Vancouver 140

7 Shrugging off the Monkey 158

8 The Last Great Action Match 169

Epilogue 193

Acknowledgments 205

Notes 215

About the Author 226

Editorial Reviews

09/01/2014
The action of the title refers to “action bowling,” in which bettors gamble on head-to-head match-ups. Action bowling was most popular in New York City and the Northeast around the same time bowling was booming in the U.S.—the 1950s and ’60s—and, though it took place in the same alleys where families bowled, it was a late-night affair. Manzione, a native of Brooklyn, action bowling’s capitol, paints the scene of these late night battles and the hustlers, gangsters, murderers, gamblers, and characters, such as Joe the Kangaroo, Fish Face, Ox, and Bernie Bananas, who haunted these smoky alleys from dusk to dawn. While the mayhem and debauchery of action bowling is the central to the first part of the book, Manzione later turns his focus to Ernie Schlegel, a great bowler with a hot temper and a hustler’s spirit who tried to make it on the straight and narrow in the Professional Bowlers Association Tour. Manzione’s account of eccentric people, colorful places, and once-popular pro sport is a strike. (16 pages of color photos). (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

In Pin Action, Gianmarc Manzione takes the reader on a fascinating journey into the murky world of high-stakes bowling. But this tribute to gangsters and gamblers is not just for bowlers. Anyone who appreciates top-notch storytelling will appreciate Manzione's audacious new book. Lace up your bowling shoes and muster your courage. You won’t regret the ride.

R. A. Dyer

Pin Action took me on a wonderful trip back in time to the golden era of action bowling in the 1960s New York Tri-State area. Manzione's words brought back vivid memories of the greatest time of my life bowling action at Ave M Bowl in Brooklyn which was one of the most famous action houses of all time. He goes into great depth capturing the smell, the feel, the characters of this great bowling alley and others with his own very unique writing style.

Clifford Nordquist Sr.

The biggest pleasure of Pin Action is those stories of glory days, which read as if you're listening to a bunch of slightly shady old guys spinning yarns in some neighborhood club in the least hip reaches of Brooklyn. Manzione tells them with the colorful language and larger-than-life tone they deserve.

Tampa Bay Times

A book about bowling? Zzzzzz, right? Nope. Manzione lays bare a world to which most readers will have had little exposure. But he brings that world alive with vivid prose and razor-sharp characterizations. A superb sports memoir.

Booklist (starred review)

A thoroughly entertaining slice of twisted Americana, New York gangster style. Only in the Big Apple could something so pure and Middle America as bowling become so infused with most of the seven deadly sins. Put it on the shelf with The Big Lebowski and Jersey Boys.

Dary Matera

Every now and then, we're fortunate enough to stumble across a story that transports us to places we never knew we wanted to go. Pin Action is just such a story—a rare, cultural gem of storytelling, both brilliantly researched and masterfully rendered. Prepare to be bowled over.

Tracy Crow

For those who roamed bowling alleys between dusk and dawn in 1960s New York City recall places where kids too young to shave made more money in a night than their parents made in a year, con men faked heart attacks to evade the gangsters they swindled, and no one went home before sunrise.

The New York Times

10/15/2014
Manzione (editor, Bowlers Journal International and Bowlers Journal Interactive) displays his love for the sport in this fast-paced biography of champion bowler Ernie Schlegel, who rose to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s. The author offers a look into the sub-rosa world of "action bowling," whose practitioners had as much in common with Minnesota Fats and other famous pool hustlers as they did with bowling greats Don Carter and Dick Weber. Many action bowlers arrived at dead ends but others made the jump onto the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) tour, which offered legitimate success and safety from the fists, guns, and knives of opponents who didn't savor defeat in high-stakes matches and the mobsters who lost bets on them. The volatile and flamboyant Schlegel was denied entry into the tour for a protracted period because he stabbed a fellow bowler during such an altercation, and once he was admitted, suffered a years-long drought before winning his first championship. But perseverance paid off, and over the years he earned a place in the PBA's Hall of Fame. VERDICT This well-researched account is for those who remember the glory days of bowling. Others will be fascinated by the gritty side of the sport, which few knew existed.—Jim Burns, formerly with Jacksonville P.L., FL

Library Journal

2014-09-28
A hard-boiled and often funny look at the hustlers, thugs and characters of the 1960s New York bowling underworld. Before bowling alleys were sanitized into lanes and became family fun centers, they were as colorfully unsavory as any pool hall, race track or smoke-filled poker room, generating thousands of dollars per night in bets, weapons at the ready for those reluctant to pay. Manzione plainly misses those days of "action bowling" (gambling action), which have "faded into an obscure labyrinth of characters and stories." Characters and stories, as well as beatings and corpses, abound in this book, which mainly serves as a biography of Ernie Schlegel, action-bowling master—(and delinquent)—turned—flamboyant Professional Bowlers Association mainstay, reinventing himself as "The Bicentennial Kid," an elaborately costumed cross between a comic-book hero and Muhammad Ali. It took Schlegel decades to overcome his demons and rise to the top of his profession, but bowling kept him out of prison. Much of the book features side stories and anecdotes about guys with nicknames like "Joe the Kangaroo, who took a three-step approach and then hopped around the approach on one leg after each shot." Or the guy who bet he could drink a fifth of Scotch straight down, did, pocketed his $50 and dropped dead on his walk home. Or "the adrenaline-hungry kids with dollar signs for pupils." The author's romanticizing sometimes pushes the narrative toward purple prose—"By 1980, Schlegel was still waiting for the elevator in the lobby of his dreams"—and his stories can occasionally sound like tall tales. But he loves the sport, the era and the characters and makes good on the promise that "if it is even remotely as much fun for you to read about as it was for me to write about, then the journey will have been well worth the trip for both of us." Who knew bowling alleys could tell such entertaining stories?

Kirkus Reviews