Strike, Strike, Strike, Strike

An Essay About Love, Handicap, Death, and Miracles

Photo by Benjamin Faust on Unsplash

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In 1990, at Washington State University, my girlfriend Kari and I took a bowling class. We liked to take classes together but we didn’t have any academics in common because she was a pharmacy major and I was taking a random assortment of liberal arts classes that would eventually lead to a bachelor’s degree in American Studies. So we took athletic classes together. Volleyball, tennis, ping pong, basketball. And bowling.

We weren’t bowlers. But bowling fit out schedules.

During the first class, we were randomly separated into teams of four. Kari and I convinced the teacher that romantic couples should be on the same team so we were matched with Brady and Alice, who weren’t a couple. They didn’t know each other.

We didn’t know Alice, either. She was a pale Seattle goth girl who pulled off her Doc Martins to wear the rented bowling shoes.

Brady was also a stranger—a big white kid—but he’d graduated from a high school just off the border of my reservation. A few of my Indian cousins also went to that school so Brady and I knew some of the same people.

He had a moderate stutter that became more complex with stronger emotions. He especially struggled with the words that began with an “F.”

Alice and Brady weren’t bowlers, either. They just wanted to take a fun class as a break from their serious studies.

During that first class, we learned the basics of bowling. It’s not a complicated sport. You throw the ball down the alley and try to knock over all the pins. But it takes serious skill to become a good bowler. You have to learn bowling physics. You must become a bowling scientist. The best bowlers in the world are mad geniuses.

Kari, Alice, Brady, and I were not geniuses. It quickly became apparent that we were the worst foursome in the class.

But, over the next 15 weeks of classes, we still had a great time. Depending on circumstances, continual failure can be continually joyous. The class met once a week for three hours, enough time to complete two matches of three games each. And we lost every game and every match against our classmates. We went on a 90-game losing streak.

Corey, a high school basketball rival from a private school in Spokane, was on another team and had a great time mocking our team. We also had a great time mocking ourselves.

Like the Ramones all assumed Ramone as their last name, we called ourselves Strike, Strike, Strike, and Strike. We meant it ironically, of course. We were four baseball strikes not four bowling strikes.

“Sherman,” Corey said during class. “I only beat you once during four years of hoops so I’m loving this”

“Sherman,” he said. “You are the worst bowler on the worst team.”

He was taller than me. Faster and stronger with a vertical leap that quadrupled mine. But I was a much better basketball player. That killed him and made it easier for me to enjoy his insults. For both of us, high school basketball would always be more important than almost any other endeavor in our lives—especially intramural bowling at a land grant university.

“Sherman,” Corey said. “You should play reverse bowling and give yourself a strike for every strike you miss.”

I vividly remember the insults. Corey laughed so hard at his own jokes that he made himself cry.

I loved him in the way that you can love somebody whom you barely know. While writing this essay, I Internet-searched for him. I didn’t know where he’d gone in the world. I wanted to ask if he remembered our 10-pin incompetence but was sad to learn that he’d died of cancer when he was only forty-eight.

“It’s been a long time since you’ve thrown a strike, Sherman,” said Corey. “It’s been weeks. Months. Years.”

Our team didn’t throw gutter balls. Instead, Alice, Brady, Kari, and I would knock down five or six pins on our first throws but would rarely knock down all the remaining pins with our second throws and pick up spares.

We failed spare after spare after spare after spare.

In bowling, there is a rather socialist concept called the handicap. It’s a number assigned to bowlers based on their average scores. That number, the handicap, is added to the bowler’s final score in each game. Good bowlers have low handicaps or no handicap at all. Bad bowlers have higher handicaps. Terrible bowlers have huge handicaps.

Thus the handicap is designed to put every bowler in a game, match, and league on an even playing field.

Call it bowling equity.

After 15 weeks of class, Alice, Brady, Kari, and I had massive handicaps. I don’t remember exactly what the numbers were but I want to call them infinite.

And yet, we were so terrible that our infinite handicaps didn’t translate to victories.

For our final exam in the bowling class, we had to enter the college-wide intramural bowling tournament. There were 32 teams—foursomes from our class and foursomes from elsewhere in the university.

It was a single elimination one-day tournament and our first match was against Corey’s team. He was a good recreational bowler. I think he averaged around 180 points per game. Solid. His teammates were just as good. They’d destroyed us twice during class.

Before our college-wide tourney match, Corey pointed at me and said, “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

God, he was funny.

And then Alice, Brady, Kari, and I bowled out of our minds and, with our added handicaps, kicked the holy shit out of Corey’s team.

Corey was flabbergasted. And greatly amused. He cursed and laughed.

He said, “I didn’t know Jesus cared about poor bowlers like you.”

That was even more funny because his high school was a private and conservative Christian K-12.

So we advanced from the round of 32 teams to the round of 16. That was a major victory for us. It was our only win of the season. We celebrated like it was the world’s birthday.

And then, in that next match, we again bowled out of minds, added our handicaps, and walloped another superior team from our class.

We advanced from the round of 16 to the round of 8.

And then we won again, defeating a team from outside of our class. They had brought their own goddamn bowling shoes and balls.

We were in the Final Four.

You know where this is going, right?

In that next match, Alice, Brady, Kari, and I all bowled over 180, added our handicaps, which pushed out scores into superior bowler territory, and defeated the best team in our class.

We’d somehow made it to the championship match. And we were facing Washington State’s Club Team, the four best bowlers on campus.

They were wearing official uniforms with their names on the back.

Corey had returned to the bowling alley and sat in a chair against a wall about twenty feet away. He was the only spectator.

And he roared with laughter. He fell out of his chair. He rolled on the floor. And he pounded his fists against the walls as Alice, Brady, Kari, and I each bowled strikes for our first five frames.

Our team bowled 20 strikes in a row.

Then we each picked up only two spares in the next four frames. We’d given the Washington State club bowling team a serious chance to beat us. They were completely relieved. Who wants to lose to straight-ball bowling, rented-shoe, infinite-handicap kids named Strike, Strike, Strike, and Strike?

But then, in the tenth frame, where you get to throw three balls if you keep throwing strikes, all four of us threw three strikes.

With our handicaps added, all four of us scored 300. Perfect games.

The club team shook their heads as they shook our hands.

Then Corey rushed us, picked me up, and carried me in circles. And he started singing Queen’s national anthem of victory. And Alice, Brady, Kari, and I sang along because we were indeed the champions.

And then Corey started chanting, “Miracle on Ice! Miracle on Ice!”

That was the offical and unofficial name for the 1980 Olympic hockey game in which a bunch of American kids somehow defeated the legendary Soviet Union team.

“Miracle on Ice! Miracle on Ice!”

We celebrated for a few more minutes and then it was over. There were no trophies. No ribbons. But we did win $50 gift cerificates for the University Bookstore.

I only saw Corey a few more times on campus. But I saw online that he’d graduated from Washington State with an Economics degree and had been working in construction when he died.

I never saw Alice again.

Kari and I broke up not long after we graduated from college.

I discovered that Brady works in banking in Spokane.

After we’d finished our celebrations in the bowling alley, Brady slumped into a chair. A few happy tears rolled down his face. I sat beside him. Hugged him.

He sighed and started to speak. He was very emotional so his stutter had him stuck on “F-F-F-F-F…”

Then he sighed again, looked at me, and said without pause, “I can’t fucking believe that we fucking did that.”

Then we laughed at our miracle and walked away into our very separate lives.