Pin Action: Small-Time Gangsters, High-Stakes Gambling, and the Teenage Hustler Who Became a Bowling Champion

by Gianmarc Manzione

  Things did not turn out for Barber the way he had hoped, but the tremendous success he enjoyed as the owner of many pro shops throughout the New York City area earlier in his life was a testament to something that is true of many former action bowlers. Those among them who went on to successful careers in business—and there are many of them—directly credit their experience in the action as the reason for their success.

  One such former action bowler, Bill Markus, moved on to a career in finance when he realized he was not quite good enough to pursue his dream of becoming a professional bowler.

  “When I would have big business meetings, people would say to me, ‘Isn’t that a lot of pressure?’ I told them pressure is when you make a five-dollar bet and you only have three dollars in your pocket,” Markus told me in a 2013 phone interview.

  Harris says he “learned a lot more in the bowling alleys at night” than he ever did in college. “How to negotiate, stamina, acting, humor, strategy, how to read people, the art of risk-taking—I learned it all in the bowling alley.”

  I once took Barber to see another inimitable source for this book, PBA Hall of Famer Larry Lichstein. I convinced him to accompany me to Lichstein’s pro shop at a place called Bowland in Cape Coral and have an impromptu reunion with a fellow action bowling legend. It took some prodding. Barber no longer enjoyed bowling alleys. They reminded him that the one thing he loved as much as playing poker now was the one thing his broken-down body could not do. Nonetheless, he agreed to go to Bowland with me. He burst into Lichstein’s shop and immediately rolled out a Rodney Dangerfield impression. He did not even say hello; he launched into clown mode as soon as he sauntered into the shop.

  Lichstein was stunned.

  “Kenny Barber, Kenny Barber,” Lichstein repeated over and over with wide eyes. He looked like he was in a trance, as though he were seeing a ghost. In a way, he was. Barber was the ghost of the way things were.

  And there was another thing I couldn’t resist: the story of how Lichstein went bald. I told him I had heard the story from Jim Byrnes.

  Lichstein forced open a collection of crumpled notes that nested inside a mangled magazine in the drawer of his desk. It was a yellowing copy of Bowlers Journal from 1969.

  “See that!” Lichstein shouted, the words bursting from his body like little lightning storms as he pointed to his picture on the cover. “Who might that be! Oh, that’s me! I see!”

  It was hard not to notice that the photo featured a full head of hair before Lichstein thrashed it violently back into the drawer and slammed it shut with a thunderous bang. He stood up again, folded his arms, turned his head forward to leer at me from under his creased brow, and launched into the tale of how he lost his hair.

  “I was not terribly happy that I had lost my money, and I let people know about it. And then Jim Byrnes grabbed me by the arms, picked me up, and shoved me right into the trash bin.”

  Lichstein, in a rhapsodic frenzy now, slapped his bald and bobbling head with two frantic hands, roaring memories and grudges.

  “And there I am, upside-down in a trash bin. And there’s puke! And shit! And piss! And I’ve got all this shit all over my head and it stinks!”

  He slowed to an abrupt hush and leaned forward to reveal the top of his head.

  “And this is the result,” he said as the polished top of his bald and peach-colored head shimmered under the lights of his shop, a vague strip of silver hair running up the center of his skull like a zipper.

  Another source for this book whom I also must thank is Clifford Nordquist, otherwise known as A.C. Butch. Butch is one of my favorite people in the world, and his passion and support have been a tremendous help over the years. It takes just a few seconds of viewing one of his many YouTube videos, which he posts under the username “actionbowlers,” to determine that Butch is one of Brooklyn’s greatest characters. And there are many great characters in Brooklyn. I know; I grew up there. One such video was a tribute to me he produced in 2011. That was an act of kindness I never anticipated and did not ask for. Butch always has surprised and supported me with a generosity, sincerity, and authenticity I rarely encounter. He also is the man behind the great actionbowlers.com website, which is not so much a website as it is an odyssey through a world we cannot have back.

  In addition to Butch, the inimitable PBA Hall of Famer, Len Nicholson, has been one of my most ardent supporters over the years. He has graciously provided me with many opportunities to promote this book—and my work as a journalist, poet, and academic—on his internet radio show, Phantom Radio. I never quite know what I am in for any time I get on the phone with Lenny, as anyone lucky enough to also call him a friend knows. And that is just how I like it. Unpredictable, bawdy, hilarious, candid, immensely knowledgeable, competent, sharp—those are just some of the many superlatives I could summon to describe how impressive a man Nicholson is. I am so blessed to call him my friend. Above all, Nicholson cares deeply about the future of the sport he loves—bowling—and he will remain committed to his goal of educating people about where the sport once was, where it is headed, and why, until his last breath. And he is the reason I got the chance to meet and speak with the great Billy Hardwick in the years before his death on November 16, 2013, as Lenny was one of Billy’s best friends. May Billy rest in peace.

  I must also thank everyone at the Professional Bowlers Association who helped me cultivate an awareness of this book among their fans. In particular, Mike Jakubowski, Bill Vint, Jerry Schneider, Jason Thomas, Jef Godger, Tom Clark, and Dave Schroeder. Additionally, I am grateful for the support I have enjoyed from the good people at Bowlers Journal International, including Bob Johnson, Keith Hamilton, and Mike Panozzo. I also am grateful to the United States Bowling Congress for their help securing photos and for affording me the opportunity to share my love of bowling history with their members during my time as the Managing Editor and Features Writer for BOWL.com, USBC’s official website. Brock Kowalsky at USBC was especially helpful in securing photos.

  Thanks as well to Peter Limongello for helping me maintain contact with his legendary father, Mike Limongello. And to Dominic Perri, my best friend, for being the one person with whom I always could share my obsession with the sport of bowling back when we were kids in Brooklyn and the lanes were all we knew.

  Lastly, my agent, Laurie Abkemeier, and my editor and publicist at Pegasus Books, Jessica Case, both had the vision to see this book’s potential while others turned it down. They are two of the smartest and hardest-working people I ever have known. With their work ethic and insistence on excellence, they restored some of my faith in humans and they challenged me at every turn to aspire to be great. That is an aspiration I will carry with me for the rest of my life, and I always will have them largely to thank for that. I also know that I am a better writer today than I was before I met them; their vision and editorial guidance made that possible. Laurie, in particular, helped cure me of my peculiar affection for coordinating conjunctions and literary sentences that often got in their own way. Laurie helped me discover and unleash the power of simplicity and directness, an aesthetic that will remain a part of my work for years to come.

  NOTES

  CHAPTER ONE

  A FISH IN PHILADELPHIA

  The material on Jimmy Dykes at the start of this chapter is well-known, but my particular source for this information was an obituary that appeared in the June 16, 1976 edition of the Daytona Beach Morning Journal. The allusion to Minsky’s Burlesque and Tempest Storm is drawn from interviews with Steve Harris and from a May 18, 2008 New York Times story, “The Almost Naked City,” by Mark Caldwell.

  Much of the information this chapter presents regarding the origins and history of the sport of bowling derives from two of the greatest bowling history books ever published: Herm Weiskopf’s The Perfect Game and Mark Miller’s Bowling. I had the joy of working with Mark during my time at the United States Bowling Congress; the man is a walking encyclopedia of bowling knowledge and a true bowli
ng lifer.

  This chapter’s recounting of the night Harris, Schlegel and Nagai got a lot more than they bargained for down in south Jersey derives from interviews I conducted both by phone and in person with Steve Harris, Ernie Schlegel, and Toru Nagai. While Nagai’s memory is remarkably clear for a man in his 80s—he recounted in vivid detail how he escaped those south Jersey hoods with Harris and Schlegel in his black Cadillac—Steve Harris is gifted with a photographic memory. Over the years I kept going back to Harris to check my facts and ask him to tell me the story of what happened down at Federal Lanes one more time, and then one more time again, and then again. Every time the details were precisely the same, and every time I would become a little more confident in my ability to tell the story as vividly as he experienced it. It is probably one of my favorite action stories, and I am saying that as someone who has heard more of them than I now can count on twelve hands.

  Other sources for this chapter include interviews I conducted with Jim Byrnes, Johnny Campbell and Don Sylvia in Port St. Lucie, Florida in 2009; a phone interview with Sam Taylor, one of Schlegel’s earliest sponsors, also in 2009; and interviews by phone and in-person with Kenny Barber, whom I met on several occasions in Cape Coral and in Tampa, Florida from 2009-2011.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE GUNS OF AVENUE M

  The story this chapter tells about the night a loan shark raised his gun at Avenue M Bowl in Brooklyn derives principally from telephone interviews I conducted with Johnny Petraglia, Mike McGrath, and Richie Hornreich. I had first heard of the story from Barry Asher, who, like Petraglia and McGrath, is a PBA Hall of Famer. He referred me to Petraglia for the rest of the story, as Asher is a west-coast guy out in California who was not present when this incident went down at Avenue M Bowl all those years ago. He and others have told me that Petraglia tells the story best after a few glasses of wine. I was not able to feed Petraglia any wine while speaking with him—that is the downside of telephone communication—but he did still tell a hell of a story. After speaking with him, I moved on to McGrath and Hornreich. A box full of news clippings left to me by Kenny Barber before his death in 2011 also contributed to the names and places I identify in this chapter.

  I largely have Clifford Nordquist, who goes by the moniker A.C. Butch, to thank for this chapter’s descriptions of Avenue M Bowl. That place was one of Butch’s main haunts during his time as a young action bowler in the 1960s. Those who enjoy the stories I tell in this book should treat themselves to Butch’s many YouTube videos describing his experiences in the action as a kid and, later, during his mid-1970s “comeback.” He posts his videos under the youtube username “actionbowlers.”

  All the aforementioned names contributed in part to this chapter’s recounting of the Iggy Russo story, which is probably the most notorious incident in action bowling lore. I could not speak to any of them without at least some mention of the Russo incident coming up. I also got some information about Russo from phone interviews with Mike Limongello, Jeff Kitter, Lenny Dwoskin, Jack Clemente, Larry Lichstein, Dewey Blair, Red Bassett, Steve Harris, and Ernie Schlegel.

  CHAPTER THREE

  CENTRAL

  While much of the information about Gun Post Lanes and Central Lanes in this chapter comes from the countless hours of interviews I have done with Schlegel and Harris, it also came up in conversations I have had with everyone from big-name players like Petraglia and Limongello to lesser-known, but equally fascinating, figures such as Red Bassett, Dewey Blair, John Kourabas, and Pete Mylenki.

  Harris told me the story of poor Checkbook Al, the out-of-luck loser who came around bumming guys at the Central lanes coffee counter for enough money to please Max the Shylock’s goons, only to be hurled through a plate-glass window by one of them. Both Schlegel and Harris helped me envision what “Maxie” looked like and sounded like. The story of the match between Lichstein and Barber first came to me from Lichstein himself, who very proudly boasted of the accomplishment when I first went to visit him at his pro shop in Cape Coral, Florida, at a place called Bowland. I figured the best source with whom to corroborate the story would be the person at the worse end of its stick—Kenny Barber. Barber happened to be living in the Cape Coral area, as well, and he corroborated the story in the only way he knew how: “That fuck had never bowled that good in his life!” he said. Even fifty years later, Barber still smarted after the beating Lichstein handed him that night at Central. Aside from interviews with Barber himself and the box stuffed with news clippings and family correspondence he left to me, Jim Kaull’s April, 1963 piece for Bowlers Journal International, “The Restless One,” also helped with this chapter’s material on Barber. That was one of hundreds of news clippings I found in the box Barber left me.

  Lichstein also is the man whose recollections of the night he first met Schlegel inform this chapter’s account of the kind of character Schlegel had become by then. Lichstein, like Harris, has an incredibly vivid memory. He remembers specific dates down to the day and scores he and others bowled more than half a century ago in matches few people alive still recall. I often say that the 1960s action bowling scene and the bygone world that made it possible was a time and place when guys like Schlegel, Barber, Lichstein, Harris, Limongello, Hornreich, and so many others felt most fully alive. The rich detail with which Lichstein recorded those days onto the tape recorder of his mind is a testament to just how deeply he savored the life he lived back then.

  This chapter’s discussion of the doomed National Bowling League stems from a variety of sources. They include two books: Bowling: America’s Greatest Indoor Pastime by Mark Miller and The Perfect Game by Herm Weiskopf. Additional sources include an October, 1961 story in Sports Illustrated titled “Bowling’s Big League—A $14 Million Gamble”; a story by Ed Piel titled “The National Bowling League Ahead of its Time?” for a regional bowling news publication out of the northwest U.S. called The Van-Port; and a February 22, 1984 New York Times story by Peter Applebome called “Wide Open Spaces of Texas—Indoors.”

  The material about Buzz Fazio derives from a February, 1964 story by Steve Cruchon called “Bowling’s Indomitable Grandfather,” and a May, 2006 story by J.R. Schmidt titled “The Friendly Fire of Fazio,” both written for Bowlers Journal International. I also used a May, 1957 story by Bruce Pluckhahn titled “Buzz Fazio Decides Future Lies Elsewhere,” written for the now-defunct magazine, Bowling. Interviews with PBA Hall of Famer Len Nicholson also contributed to this portion of the chapter.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE ROAD TO BUFFALO

  The information about the period in his life that Schlegel describes as his “bum period”—that time in the streets in which he endured the lamentable purgatory between his dreams of going pro and Frank Esposito’s opposition—comes largely from my interviews with Schlegel himself. I also benefitted from interviews with Pete Mylenki, whom Schlegel credits as the man who saved his life. Mylenki gave me plenty of good information about how far Schlegel had fallen in his life at that time—Schlegel then believed a bum was all he ever would be—but when it came to what Mylenki described as “the dirty details,” he directed me to Schlegel. Additionally, I interviewed Schlegel’s longtime friends, Steve Harris, Jerry Markey, Mike McKeean, Mickey Kennedy, Matty Lynch, Billy Jones, Joey Keane, Eddie O’Brien, Danny Breheny, Pat Jacoby, Helayne Van Houten, and Sam Taylor.

  This chapter’s account of the 1969 Greater Buffalo Open mingles the recollections Schlegel shared with me and my own observations upon watching a DVD copy of that show, which I acquired from the PBA. Additionally, PBA.com, the official website of the Professional Bowlers Association, contains an extensive, historical archive chronicling the results of PBA tournaments going back to 1959. It is one of the world’s greatest resources for professional bowling history. I regularly combed over that source over the years for information on where Schlegel and others placed in various tournaments throughout the decades, including the 1969 Greater Buffalo Open.

  CHAPTER FIVE


  THE BICENTENNIAL KID

  In addition to many hours of interviews with the Schlegels—both Cathy and Ernie—I drew upon a variety of sources to stitch together this chapter’s glimpse into the most colorful moment in Schlegel’s professional bowling career. The Schlegels provided me with many pages of archival stories that appeared in magazines and newspapers in the 1970s and ‘80s. I found many allusions to—and some more involved examinations of—Schlegel’s “Bicentennial Kid” days in those stories. They include E.J. Kahn III’s profile of Schlegel in a 1976 issue of the now-defunct magazine, Oui; and several stories from back issues of Bowlers Journal International, including an interview with Schlegel in February, 1997 on the heels of his induction into the United States Bowling Congress and Professional Bowlers Association Halls of Fame, an October, 1975 piece called “Ernie Schlegel, U.S.A., is the Bicentennial Kid” by Jim Dressel, and a February, 1979 story called “The New Testament and Old Wounds of Ernie Schlegel.” Other stories that helped lend some perspective to the significance and controversy of Schlegel’s daring garb on the PBA Tour included a February, 1979 Dick Evans piece for the Miami Herald called “Schlegel Giving Bowling a Needed Injection of Flair,” a 1977 story by Chuck Frank called “Outspoken Bowler Schlegel: Mr. USA Does it His Way” that appeared in the Suburban Tribune, and a March, 1982 story Herm Weiskopf produced for Sports Illustrated called “Licorice Out, Snails In.”