HISTORY OF DUCKPIN BOWLING

The origin of the sport is a subject of some debate. One possible origin is that duckpin
bowling began in Baltimore around 1900, at a bowling, billiards and pool hall owned by
future baseball Hall of Famers John McGraw and Wilbert Robinson, both of the then
Baltimore Orioles.
The following excerpt is taken from The Book of Duckpin Bowling, by Henry Fankhauser
and Frank Micalizzi.
The sport of duckpins was born at the old Diamond Alleys on Howard Street in Baltimore,
Maryland. Diamond Alleys was owned by a couple of members of the old Baltimore
Orioles minor league club -- Uncle Wilbert Robinson and John McGraw (you may
remember McGraw as manager of baseball's New York Giants in the early 1900's).
At the turn of the century, bowling leagues operated only during the winter months. In
the summer, many centers closed down. However, a few centers (including Diamond
Alleys) remained open for open play during the spring and summer. Diamond Alleys had
some smaller six inch balls that were used for such off-the-wall games as cocked-hat
(using only the 1, 7, and 10 pins) and five back (using the 5, 7, 8, 9, and 10 pins).
During one of these matches, Frank Van Sant, the manager at Diamond Alleys, was
drawn into a conversation about the small balls. Someone suggested that a set of his
old, battered tenpins could be made over into little pins to conform to the six inch ball.
Several days later, an old set was sent to John Dettmar, a wood-turner in Baltimore.
About ten days later, Van Sant gathered all his regulars and dumped the new little pins in
front of them.
Within minutes, the little pins were set up on the tenpin spots and the first unofficial
"small ball" game was underway. Only two balls were used, as in tenpins, and score was
kept in the same way. When Robinson and McGraw (whose other hobby was duck
hunting) saw the pins fly as the ball plowed into them, they remarked that the pins
looked like a "flock of flying ducks." Bill Clarke, a sportswriter for the Baltimore Morning
Sun, wrote a story on the fascinating new game and christened them "duckpins." The
name has stuck ever since.
However, according to a 2005 baseball book by Howard W. Rosenberg (Cap Anson 3:
Muggsy John McGraw and the Tricksters: Baseball's Fun Age of Rule Bending), an article
from May 1894 in the Lowell Sun confirms the existence of duckpins. Rosenberg traced
the story of crediting the origins of duckpins to McGraw and Robinson as far back as
Shirley Povich of The Washington Post in the late 1930s.
A major hole in the origin of the whopper has since come to light. Now accessible on the
Internet, thanks to the scanning in of old newspapers, is the Pittsburgh Press of March 3,
1929, which ran an article from Baltimore saying that Robinson "originated" the sport
and also gave it its name. The article can be found on the Internet by searching for the
following phrase: "Wilbert Robinson Claims He Invented Duckpins".

Possibly the earliest book to shed light on the whopper is Florence E. Greenleaf's (as told
to Paul C. Tedford) 1981 The Game of Candlepin Bowling. In the main text of the book,
Greenleaf credits McGraw and Robinson with originating the sport, and her source is
Frank G. Menke's Encyclopedia of Sports, the 1978 edition of which indeed contains that
superlative. However, at least in the version of the book that is in the permament
collection of the Library of Congress, there is a "Corrections since publication" page near
the end, pasted in, and Correction 1 states, "Duckpins were bowled as early as the 1890s
in Lowell, MA. [sic] area (more research is necessary)[.]"
Then, in 1985, a 130-plus-page publication called Duckpins: The Tenth Frame cited
related Lowell, Mass., coverage of duckpin bowling in May 1894. Writing in that
publication, Bob Tkacz, of Newington, Connecticut, noted finding articles showing that a
duckpin tournament was being held in Lowell at that time. Besides the rarity of the 1981
candlepin bowling book in U.S. libraries, the 1985 publication is not readily available at
all in U.S. libraries, which explains why anyone looking to refute duckpin bowling's
Baltimore origins would have a tough time competing with a claim in such a widely
distributed book as Menke's Encyclopedia of Sports, which has undergone many printings
(although the duckpins origin whopper was added subsequent to that book's first edition
being published in 1944).
Articles can be found in the Boston Globe earlier than May 1894 showing the existence of
the sport around Boston. According to Rosenberg, the earliest Globe reference to
duckpins was on January 2, 1893.
Rosenberg's book methodically accounted for Baltimore newspaper reporting in late
1899 and early 1900, when duckpin bowling suddenly appeared in Baltimore. The
Baltimore Sun of December 28, 1899, said that at the McGraw-Robinson bowling, billiards
and pool hool the night before, the facility's manager had introduced duckpins. The Sun
did not cast the introduction as nationally significant.
In 1982, the Women's National Duckpin Association was formed to give women a venue
to compete in duckpins at a professional level. The organization conducts several
tournaments yearly in New England and the Mid-Atlantic. The final tournament each year
is called the Grand Prix.
SCORING
The Basics
Duckpin bowling has rules similar to tenpin bowling. In a 10-frame game, bowlers try to knock down pins in
the fewest rolls per frame. Bowlers have three balls per frame, instead of two in tenpin bowling, to knock over a
set of 10 pins. If a bowler knocks down all 10 pins with their first roll in a frame, it is scored as a strike. If all
the pins are knocked down in two rolls, the bowler has made a spare. If all the pins are knocked down in three
rolls, it is scored as a ten, as in candlepins, with no bonus. If pins are still standing after the third ball, the
bowler gets one point for each pin knocked down.
In the case of a strike, the bowler gets 10 points plus the total number of pins knocked down with the next two
balls rolled, for a maximum of 30 points. In the case of a spare, the bowler gets 10 points plus the number of
pins knocked down with the next ball, for a maximum of 20 points. If it takes three balls to knock down all 10

pins, the bowler gets 10 points, with no bonus. A bowler's final score is the sum of the points earned over 10
frames (a spare or strike in the tenth frame earns one or two rolls respectively). The maximum possible score is
300 points, which is accomplished by rolling 12 strikes in a row. According to the NDBC, the official high score
in a sanctioned game is 279, rolled by Pete Signore Jr. in 1992.

A Sample Game
Below is a sample game bowled by "Fred":

Let's go thru this game frame-by-frame:

Frame 1: Fred bowled a strike! The box in the upper right is marked with an X and no score is added
yet.

Frame 2: Fred knocked down 6 on his first ball, then 2 more on his second, then one more on his final
throw. Since Fred got a strike last frame, the first two balls from this frame count towards last frame as
well. So, he gets 18 (10+6+2) for the first frame and 9 (6+2+1) for the second frame.

Frame 3: Fred knocked down 8 on his first ball, then got the remaining 2 pins on his second ball for a
spare! A slash is recorded in the upper right box and no score is put down until next frame.

Frame 4: Fred knocked down 6 on his first ball, then got the remaining 4 pins on his second ball for a
spare! A slash is recorded in the upper right box and since he got a spare last frame, he gets 16 (10+6)
for the previous frame. No score is put down in the current frame.

Frame 5: Fred knocked down 9 on his first ball, then missed the remaining pin on his second try, but got
it on his third try. Since he got a spare last frame, he gets 19 (10+9) for the previous frame. He gets 10
(9+0+1) for the current frame.

Frame 6: Fred bowled a strike! The box in the upper right is marked with an X and no score is added
yet.

Frame 7: Fred bowled another strike! The box in the upper right is marked with an X and no score is
added yet.

Frame 8: Fred knocked down 5 on his first ball, then 3 more on his second, then one more on his final
throw. Since he's had 2 strikes in a row, he gets 25 (10+10+5) for the frame where he got the first strike
and 18 (10+5+3) for the frame where he got the second strike. He gets 9 (5+3+1) for the current frame.

Frame 9: Fred knocked down 8 on his first ball, then 1 more on his second, then one more on his final
throw. He gets 10 (8+1+1) for the frame.

Frame 10: Fred knocked down 7 on his first ball, then got the remaining 3 pins on his second ball for a
spare! A slash is recorded in the upper right box and since it's the last frame (and you always count 3
balls per frame), Fred gets one more ball.

Extra Count: Fred knocks down 6 on his extra ball, so he gets 16 (10+6) for the final frame.

Fred has bowled a 150 game with 3 spares and 3 strikes (spares and strikes are typically recorded in league
play).
Keep in mind that ANYTHING over 100 is considered pretty good in duckpins. The game in the boxscore
above is VERY GOOD. The top averages in duckpins are right around 140-150.
HISTORY OF TEN PIN BOWLING
The act of trying to knock over a series of pins by rolling a round object towards them may not be new, but this
great activity is as challenging and engaging today as it was in the past. Archaeologists have found evidence of
bowling-type games from as long as five thousand years ago. This makes bowling one of the oldest sports on
record, dating all the way back to the civilization of the ancient Egyptians. Every time you pull on your bowling
shoes and head for your favorite lane to try and hit a few strikes, you are participating in a ritual that has
amused and challenged humans since the year 3200 BC.
Although the unique pedigree of bowling hardly sounds like a recipe for one of modern Americas favorite
family pastimes, the truth remains that the game is roughly ninety percent derived from ancient Egypt and ten
percent derived from nineteenth century law dodgers. Add a splash of turn of the century technology, and you
have the modern game of bowling.
From what historians have been able to piece together, the basic game of bowling did not change very much
between its inception at the dawn of human culture and the middle of the nineteenth century. At that time, the
ancient game of ninepin bowling had caught on all over Europe and had made its way to the United States
where it was a very popular sport in the underworld community and became a favorite target for gamblers. This
led the government of the state of Connecticut to pass an 1841 law that prohibited owning a ninepin bowling
alley. This was an attempt to fragment the gambling community by making it impossible for them to meet in the
bowling alleys where they usually gathered.
To get around this law, the gamblers in the area simply changed the rules of the game. They added an extra pin
to the bowling setup; thereby making their alleys into tenpin bowling alleys. The tenpin bowling alleys were
technically legal to own and operate simply because they hadnt existed when Connecticut banned the game of
ninepins. The game of tenpins proved to be more fun than its predecessor, and ten is the number of pins that we
still play with today.
Once ten pins became the standard for the game, the only aspect of bowling that remained old fashioned by
todays perspective was the ball. The first modern bowling ball was not introduced until 1905. Before that time,
most bowling balls were made of a wood called lignum vitae, which was prized both for its light weight and
its durability. However, wooden bowling balls did not have as much spring or bounce as the materials we use
today.
The first rubber bowling ball hit the market in 1905, and was immediately popular. By 1914 a new rubberized
plastic compound was created specifically for use in bowling balls. This compound was known as Mineralite
and its use transformed the game, enabling faster rolling speeds and greater precision. This created whole new
styles of bowling techniques, many of which are still in use today by both top bowlers and by young children
who are just starting out.
SCORING

For a beginner, scoring is probably the part of bowling which people find hard to understand. Fortunately, but it
is not as hard as it seems.
As most bowling centers have a scoring computer, you do not usually have to score yourself. I am sure that this
makes people lazy and there are probably some regular bowlers who would not be able to score manually if
they had to. One day, when it all breaks down, or you are needed to correct a mistake (yes, computers do make
mistakes sometimes), an understanding of the scoring rules are necessary.
The most difficult part of bowling scoring to comprehend is when a strike or spare is scored, as the score on
the scorecard does not get updated immediately.
A game consists of ten frames, which start with a full rack of ten pins. In each frame, you have two deliveries
of your ball, in which to knock down as many of the ten pins as you can.
If you knock down all the pins on your first ball, it is called a strike. The score doesn't get added on straight
away because for a strike, you get the values of your next two balls as a bonus. For example, if you score a
strike in the first frame, then an 7 and 1 in the second frame, you would score 18 (10+7+1) for the first frame,
and 8 for the second frame, making a total of 26 after two frames.
If you knock down some of the pins on the first ball, and knocked down the remainder of the pins in the second
ball, it is known as a spare. Again, the score doesn't get added on straight away because for a spare, you get the
values of your next ball as a bonus. For example, you if score a spare in the first frame, say an 6 and a 4, then
got an 8 and a 1 in the second frame, you would score 18 (6+4+8) for the first frame, and 9 for the second
frame, making a total of 27 after two frames.
When it comes to the final frame, it is slightly different. In the final frame, you get bonus balls if you strike or
spare, to a maximum of three deliveries. If you strike in the first delivery you have the opportunity to strike in
the remaining two and have three deliveries in total. If you scored strikes in each of your final three deliveries,
the score for the final frame would be 30 (10+10+10). If you spare the final frame, you get the third delivery as
a bonus. So, a spare, 9 and 1, followed by a strike would equal 20 (9+1+10).