On a recent frigid Tuesday night in Evergreen Park, it seems as though no one has the courage to venture out on the streets. Indeed, the stretch of 95th Street from Western Avenue to Pulaski Road is mostly bereft of humanity. Only the occasional vehicle keeps one from thinking that an unknown enemy has decided to drop the neutron bomb in the general direction of southwest suburban Chicago.
But inside the Evergreen Towers Bowling Lanes, it’s league night, and more than 160 people are crammed into the 32-lane facility to compete against long-time rivals. All of the lanes in the facility are occupied, both with league players and independent bowlers who are there to settle a bet or just to take out their aggressions on the 10 white bowling pins.
“Some people tell me that they’re just here to blow off steam,” says Carol Reinheimer, the manager of the Evergreen Park facility. “They say that they’re imagining their boss’ face on the pins.”
There, in a nutshell, is the primary appeal of bowling. For as little as 75 cents per game, a person can throw a heavy object in a public place without being charged with criminal damage to property. Only the 10 pins and the automatic pinsetter are disturbed.
“Bowling helps me get away from it all,” says Ruth Bentley, one of the bowlers at the Evergreen Park facility. “It’s loud, it’s fun and it’s competitive.”
“This isn’t just a sport for me, it’s a way of life,” adds Gloria Wilson, another one of the bowlers at the Evergreen. “I’m here as much as possible. I’m a bowling addict.”
She’s not the only bowling addict around today. In the past year, more than 60 million people have bowled at least one game in the United States, according to representatives for the American Bowling Congress (ABC), a national bowling organization that sanctions league play.
According to the ABC, an estimated 2.9 million men and 2.8 million women are associated with some sort of organized bowling league. There are more than 42,000 men bowling in organized leagues in the Chicago area alone, according to Tom Sieffert, the executive director of the Chicago Metropolitan Bowling Association. There are more than 1,100 leagues in the metropolitan Chicago area, Sieffert said.
In addition to the ABC, the Women’s International Bowling Congress and the Young American Bowling Alliance also sanction bowling leagues in the United States. These groups decide on common rules and create team rankings in the different leagues, according to Sieffert.
“We act as the overseer for the leagues,” Sieffert said. “The sanctioned league is really the bread-and-butter for the sport.”
The Chicago area is home to 116 bowling centers, according to Sieffert, with a total of about 3,000 lanes.
There are 55 bowling centers in the south suburbs alone, he said..
“Bowling in the Chicago area is pretty well around the belt and in the suburbs,” Seiffert said. “Nothing has been built in Chicago proper in the past 15 years.”
What continues to attract suburbanites to bowling is not easily determined. The sport’s relatively low cost per game is probably one important factor: One game at a south suburban facility ranges from 75 cents to $3. And, unlike other indoor recreational sports (billiards, for instance), bowling has adapted to the computer age. In the past decade, most bowling facilities have installed computer terminals for scoring. Features like this have made the game more accessible for players who found scoring by hand to be tedious.
“There’s more of an interest in bowling now than there was 10 years ago because of the computerized scoring,” said Reinheimer of the Evergreen Park lanes. “That means that basically anybody can come in and bowl without worrying about keeping their score. You really don’t have to know anything about the sport at all.”
However, it is bowling’s across-the-board appeal that probably has sustained the sport in the suburbs during the last 30 years. There are facilities featuring bumper bowling leagues for players from 4 to 6 years of age and there are leagues for 65-and-over players. On many weekend afternoons, lanes are taken by families, while teenagers and dating couples patronize bowling facilities on Friday and Saturday nights.
“It’s a sport where the guys don’t always beat the girls,” Reinheimer said. “That makes a big difference.”
The object of the game is simple: a player rolls a ball no more than 16 pounds in weight down a wooden or urethane lane in an attempt to hit 10 pins 60 feet away.
“It’s not something you have to think too hard to be successful at,” Reinheimer says. “You basically just throw the ball down the lane and hope for the best.”
Bowling has existed, in one form or another, since the 3rd Century (although a game similar to bowling has been traced to an Egyptian tomb, circa 5200 B.C.). According to the writings of 19th Century German historian William Pehle, the game was originally a religious rite in which nine crudely constructed pins represented the devil. If a bowler toppled the pins with a wooden ball, he was considered cleansed of sin.
By the early 1600s, outdoor bowling was a recreational sport in both Germany and England. Settlers brought the game to North America, and by the 19th Century the game was popular in taverns and beer halls throughout the northeast section of the United States.
By 1875, the first national bowling organization (the National Bowling Association) was formed. Although this organization didn’t last long, it was succeeded by the American Bowling Congress in 1895, the group instrumental in creating still-existing rules on ball size, the scoring system and the spacing of the pins.
During the early 1950s, bowling began its move to the suburbs. Bowling arenas became larger and more lavish and the sport began to attract more families. Television introduced bowling to thousands who weren’t familiar with the sport. Shows like “Championship Bowling,” “Bowling for Dollars,” and “Celebrity Bowling” were staples of television during the 1950s and early 1960s.
As a result, the sport reached newfound popularity during those years. An estimated 24 million people bowled regularly during the early 1950s, almost double the number of people in leagues in 1940.
However, in the past decade there has been a concern both locally and nationally about the sport losing some of its popularity, and Sieffert confirmed that the sport has lost patrons during the past 15 years.
“We’ve lost 45 bowling facilities in the Chicago area since 1979,” Sieffert said. “And, nationally, the sport has lost about 1 million male bowlers and over 200,000 female bowlers in league play.”
Sieffert believes that adolescents and young adults may be less interested in the game than their counterparts 15 years ago.
“There’s so much competition with the kids,” Sieffert said. “Soccer has cut into our popularity. And don’t underestimate the shopping mall. More kids are going there now, and some of the larger lanes are even being torn down for malls in the suburbs.”
Still, entrepreneurs like Reinheimer say that business is booming, even with the younger crowd. “Our main clientele is the young adult from 18 to 35,” she said. “But you get all kinds here, from the blue-collar worker to upper-level management.
“I don’t know why they all love the sport so much,” she added. “I guess it just has a universal appeal.”
