Odd sports nostalgia

[cactuswatcher]

It may be surprising that in the 1950's my home town of St. Louis was one of the most important sports towns in the country. True the Cardinals were lousy and the closest pro football and hockey were in Chicago. But the closest thing to challenging the almost unstoppable Boston Celtics were the old St. Louis Hawks, who often made it to the NBA finals, but rarely made money. Tennis was big in town, home of the Davis (of Davis Cup fame) Center. Most of the decent soccer players in the US played on adult amateur teams on the south side of St. Louis. But the greatest sports team in town was a bowling team. When it opened, even St. Louisans chuckled at the thought of a Bowling Hall of Fame across the street from Busch Stadium. But if there was going to be a bowling hall of fame, St. Louis was the obvious spot. A local bowling team in the late 1950's sponsored by Anheuser-Busch was probably the greatest team ever assembled.

A charter member of that team and one of the last links to that era, Don Carter died yesterday. Don Carter, Dick Weber, Ray Bluth, Pat Patterson and Tom Hennesey were most of the stars bowling had when it hit TV in the 1950's. THEY ALL PLAYED ON THE SAME TEAM. Carter and Weber started the Pro Bowlers association and no doubt worked to negotiate the first syndication deals to show the sport across the country. Nobody believed the team format would work on TV so they all bowled individually against each other on the tube. But they played in town and toured as a team. Carter and Weber were easily the best bowlers of the time, though the other guys won plenty of TV games. The Budweisers' biggest rivals were another St. Louis brewery team, the Falstaffs. Don Carter sometimes played with the Falstaffs just to make some competition between teams to create interest. For many years the Budweisers held the record for the highest 5-man team bowling score.

Bowling on TV is not the most exciting of sports but when Don Carter and Dick Weber faced off against each other it was worth a look.

Comments

[midnightsjane.livejournal.com]

I was never very good at team sports, but bowling was one thing I actually quite enjoyed when I was a kid. Haven't bowled for years, but my friends and I were just talking about it the other week; there's a bowling alley in Aldergrove, and we thought it would be fun to go bowling some night.