Chris Schenkel

Commentateur sportif
très polyvalent

(Click on the image to zoom in.)

Yes, during the Golden Age of Television, you could always see Chris Schenkel announcing a multitudinous diversity of events. Everyone¹ remembers seeing Chris presiding over football, baseball, boxing, horse racing, tennis, and golf - all with their thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.

But BOWLING????!!!!????

Indeed (to quote Shakespeare²). In fact, Chris spent so much time announcing bowling you suspect that it was his favorite sport. He moderated professional bowling competitions for 36 years.

But as anyone knows who sees the closed down and dilapidated bowling alleys - if they haven't been torn down and replaced with condominiums and apartment blocks - bowling has undergone what scholars call a "decline" since its Golden Age. But as is often true with the various Golden Ages - television or bowling - historians can't quite agree on the timeline of the various Belles Époques.

A commonly cited span of Bowling's Golden Age is between the 1940's through the 1960's. Others, though, extend the Auric Age through the 1970's and even into the 1980's. But there's no doubt that Bowling's Blistering Boom marched with the Takeoff of the Tremendous Tube.

The first nationally broadcast professional bowling television series was Bowling Headliners which debuted on October 30, 1948, on ABC. But at that time there was less than 1 television set per 10 families. So it's no surprise that the show was short lived and didn't even run a full year.

But by 1954 the television/household ratio had risen to over 50% and NBC began broadcasting Championship Bowling. The program was not an official sports organization match. Instead the network would invite two professionals to compete for a cash prize put up by a sponsor. Championship Bowling proved to be one of the most popular (and watched) sports shows.

By 1959 the US television household saturation had risen to nearly 90%. So a new series, Jackpot Bowling, did well. The ratings were helped by the show having well, we'll call it a gimmick, in that it featured "celebrity" hosts even if they weren't bowlers.

Jackpot Bowling's first presenter was none other than Milton Berle - "Mr. Television" himself. And before the show ended in March, 1961, the moderators and guests had included the acerbic political comedian Mort Sahl, finger-snapping crooner Bobby Darin, boisterous and brash comedian Buddy Hackett, argumentative manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers Leo Durocher, and even boxing great Jack Dempsey.

By the start of the Swinging Sixties, televised bowling contests had become the norm occupying much of Saturday and Sunday television. A perusal of the television listings shows there were more bowling matches than baseball, football, or golf. You not only had the nationally broadcast shows but the local television stations began covering tournaments featuring the regional talent.

You may read on popular informational websites that this was when Chris stepped in. And yes, in January, 1962, ABC began broadcasting the Professional Bowlers Tour and Chris manned the microphone until June 1997. Professional Bowlers Tour was not just one of the most popular bowling shows ever televised; it was one of the most popular television shows bar none. Admittedly it helped that the time-slot was most favorable since the show aired from 3:30 to 5:00 on Saturday afternoons. This was just before the popular (and now iconic) ABC's Wide World of Sports hosted by Jim McKay.

But this was not Chris's first foray into bowling broadcasting. On November 4, 1956, TeleVue magazine had run the ad:³

Right Down Your TV Alley CHAMPION- SHIP BOWLING CHRIS SCHENKEL 6:30 p. m. Saturday

At this time, though, Chris was not yet the famous sportscaster he became. Instead the Washington D. C. viewers knew him mostly as a regional announcer for horse races. One of the first stories about Chris was on March 28, 1953, when the Washington papers reported he would be the broadcaster for the Rowe Memorial Races on CBS. Then shortly before his inaugural bowling broadcast he had been the "color" commentator for Brian Field for the radio broadcast of the United Nations Races at the Atlantic City Race Track.

Even after Chris emceed the Floyd Patterson-Roy Harris fight, he was still largely linked with horse racing as the sportswriter George Huber mentioned:

SPOTLIGHT ON SPORTS

BY GEORGE HUBER

Good Fight, But Not Great, on TV

 FLOYD PATTERSON IS a surprisingly articulate fight champion and, on television, after stopping Roy Harris in Los Angeles last night, he spoke more than the usual "It was a good fight, Mom [sic], and I'm glad I won."
 It was a fair enough fight, but not a great one, and Patterson himself was the first to say so, if only by in direction. "Neither of us had fought for so long our timing was off," he explained into Chris Schenkel's microphone.

…

 This Schenkel is a new boy to many Easterners, although veteran racegoers from the Washington area will recall that Larry MacPhail had him calling the races at Howie not so many years ago. Chris is not at all bad as a fight announcer, either, although he did seem to try to make a Federal case of whether it was an official knock down when Patterson hit the deck in the second round.
 In Washington it looked like a genuine knockdown, but Schenkel, on the scene at the Wrigley Field ringside, said no. Later he started hedging and saying maybe, and promised to find out for sure. It didn't make any difference, really, particularly by the time he admitted it was just about the time that Trainer Bill Gore, in Harris' corner, was saying that Roy would not be out for the 13th.
 It was a pleasant enough seasoning to the fight and a reminder of an almost identical hassle in Patterson's last fight, the one against Pete Rademacher in Seattle last August 22. Patterson was down in the second round there, also, and in some places they still may be arguing whether it was a real knockdown.
 Schenkel even got Joe Louis into his act in a between rounds interview, and as this was early in the fight the big news still was that Patterson had been on the floor, "No official knockdown," still was Schenkel's version, but the forthright Louis thought differently. "He was down good," the ex-champion stated. "In my book it was a real knockdown."

Despite George's rather curmudgeonly comments, Chris's smooth delivery and mellow baritone quickly proved popular and he was soon heard (and seen) announcing sporting events ranging from football (where it was insinuated he favored the New York Giants), Olympic skiing, baseball (including the World Series), and golf (and the PGA Championship).

Then in January, 1962, Chris began hosting Telesports Digest on CBS, a show that summarized the week's sporting events. He also began presenting sports specials, and Chris's ability was acknowledged by his colleagues who voted him a finalist in the National Sportswriters and Sportscaster of the Year poll.

Then on April 18, 1962, the sports fans read:

CARTER TOPS PRO KEGLERS

 Don Carter, who leads the tournament trail in money winnings this year with $11,422, heads the field of 144 pro keglers who will vie for $22,800 in prize money in the Oak Hills Open. San Antonio, Texas, with the crucial matches on "Professional Bowlers Tour" Saturday at 3:30 on KFAR-TV, Channel 2.
 Chris Schenkel and Jack Buck will handle the commentary from the Oak Hills bowling lanes on the two semi-final matches and the championship match which decides the winner of the $5,000 first prize. The field will include most of the top professional bowlers, among them Harry Smith, who has won $9,930 this year; Dick Weber, with $9,400 won on the tour; Skip Vigars, with $8,325 earned.
 Glenn Allison, with $8,100; Dick Hoover, with $7.190; Al Savas, with $7,555; Fred Lening, with $6,390; Ray Bluth, with $5450, and Andy Rogoznica with $5179.

Bowling was "in". Professional bowlers became celebrities. When not rolling balls down the lanes, they hawked wares as varied as bowling balls, slacks, cigarettes, and beer. Don Carter, in fact, earned $100,000 in one year from advertisements and he became the first sports celebrity to total $1,000,000 in endorsements.

Bowling's origins are murky but go back millennia. Excavations in Egypt found what looked like what might have been a child's bowling game with small pins and stone balls. Adults may have also played an outdoor version of the game where a ball was rolled down a path. This would have been around 3000 B. C.

It may surprise the bowling fans that the history of bowling and billiards are inexorably linked. Both games can be traced back to bocce (pronounced BOH-chee), a game that was played in Ancient Rome. In bocce you first roll a small ball called the pollino (poh-LEE-no) or boccino (boh-CHEE-no) out onto a lawn or flat court. Then the players roll larger balls with the intent of getting them closer to the pollino than your opponents. Your ball can hit the pollino which might move it further from the other team's balls. But it also might nudge it closer or move it further from yours.

Naturally the Romans took the game with them into the far reaches of their Empire and Julius Caesar landed in Britannia in 55 B. C. Rome left the island for good in 410 and even when the Empire fell in 476⁴, the game remained. By 1190 William FitzStephen wrote that one of the popular pastimes in England was "casting stones". This is likely what the English called bowls and is essentially their version of bocce.

Bowls is still played today often as the outdoor "lawn bowls". That the game was popular even with aristocratic ladies is clear since Shakespeare mentions it in Richard II (Act III, Scene IV) when the Queen's attendants suggest they play a round to ward off boredom.

Queen:	What sport shall we deuise here in this Garden, To driue away the heauie thought of Care?
Lady:	Madame, wee'le play at Bowles.
Queen:	'Twill make me thinke the World is full of Rubs, And that my fortune runnes against the Byas.

But by then there seems to also have been a distinct game similar to modern bowling. At least there are engravings from the 1500's showing people rolling balls to knock down pins. This was likely the game mentioned in 1511 when King Henry VIII confirmed earlier royal decrees banning the game.

Yes, bowling had been banned in England and as early as 1455 by King Edward III. But Edward wasn't a complete kill-joy and he said his subjects could play the game at Christmastime. But otherwise it was a frivolous activity and detracted from honest labor and religious observations.

But like many politicians who don't practice what they impose, Henry VII actually had bowling lanes constructed at his palace at Whitehall. His gripe, it seems, was that the game should be reserved for the uppercrusts. But after his rather stern daughter, Mary, became Queen, she banned bowling outright. Bloody Mary - as she has since been affectionately known - saw bowling simply an excuse for "unlawful assemblys, conventicles, seditions and conspiracys." But then Mary didn't like anybody.

But royal decrees meant as little then as they do now, and by the time Mary's half-sister Elizabeth came to the throne, both bowls and bowling were as popular and discreditable as ever. In the reign of James I (who was also James VI of Scotland), a writer vented a spittle flinging diatribe that "Common bowling alleys are privy moths that eat up the credit of many idle citizens, whose gains at home are not able to weigh down their losses abroad, whose shops are far from maintaining their play, that their wives and children cry out for bread, that they go to bed supperless often in a year."

It's not always clear whether the earlier writings refer to bocce, bowls, or the game where the ball knocks down pins. But the modern game was certainly played in the American colonies by German immigrants. From 1800 to 1810 "ninepins" is referenced in German dictionaries, and in 1819 Washington Irving wrote in his story "Rip Van Winkle" how Rip was out hunting in New York's Hudson Valley and came across some strange bearded men:

On a level spot in the centre was a company of odd-looking personages playing at ninepins.

Nine-pin bowling is clearly bowling in the modern sense. The pins are set up at the end of a lane and a ball is rolled with the purpose of knocking over as many pins as possible. It was a popular sport and players including a rustic store owner from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln.

However, nine-pins retained a whiff of disrepute as it supposedly detracted the players from honest toil. Worse, people actually laid wagers on the game! So almost as soon as it was imported, municipalities began banning nine-pin bowling.

But fans will not be denied. If nine-pins is banned, why, simply add another pin and hey, presto!, it's not nine-pin bowling! As we see in "Rip Van Winkle", bowling had often been played on lawns and lots, but the new "ten-pin" bowling soon became an indoor sport where the balls could be rolled all year around. Of course, building bowling alleys requires a large capital investment. As big money backers tended to be the town's leading bankers, bowling became a respectable sport and was clearly here to stay.

By the mid-20th Century bowling began edging out baseball as the #1 "participatory" sport in the United States. It became everyman's sport. It was mentioned in fiction where the blue collar characters like Ralph Kramden and Fred Flintstone were avid bowlers.

Companies began replacing their baseball teams with bowling "leagues" where their employees competed in actual tournaments. Junior leagues were set up for the kids and even a Bowling Teens television show was broadcast. Bowling was something everyone could do, including as Chris pointed out, people with disabilities. A goodly number of ordinary people became skilled enough to enter professional tournaments.

But watching Chris's shows - many were preserved on tape - the modern viewer can see that times have a-changed. For one thing there was a decided formality in an audience that was composed of men dressed in proper suits and ties and women in their finest dresses. Kids were nowhere to be seen. And of course the first shows were in black and white.

Prizes also seem quite chintzy. The checks Chris handed out in 1956 were scarcely munificent even by the norms of the day. The winner of a game might get $50, and a tournament win might garner $500. The players, although professionals, were part all time.

Of course, as the game's popularity waxed, prize money inched its way up. First place winners in 1962 might earn $5,000 and in 1969 when Chris hosted the Professional Bowlers Association Tournament of Champions, the winner collected $25,000. But the professional bowlers all still had more or less regular jobs, often as the managers or owners of bowling alleys. One of the bowlers on Championship Bowling ran a tailor shop in New Jersey.

But in those pre-inflationary times, the pay in the 1960's wasn't that bad. Don Carter's winnings of $11,422 for the first four months of 1962 would equal about $130,000 today. By the end of the decade a number of professionals were making $30,000 - nearly $300,000 in today's currency. Compare these figures to the $20,000 first prize in golf's 1969's Master Tournament and a typical NFL football player's yearly wage of $25,000. Some NFL players made less than $15,000. Virtually all professional athletes had alternate "regular" jobs. Even the great New York quarterback Y. A. Tittle worked off-season selling insurance.

Of course, for touring professionals the winnings had to cover expenses and travel. Sometimes even top bowlers had to discontinue a tour because they ran out of money. Others sought out financial partners to allow them to complete a tour.

Although today the pay for professional bowlers has risen, it is nowhere near that of other sports. In fact when corrected for inflation the moolah actually seems to have declined. The biggest prizes for the Professionals Bowlers Association Championship and the Professionals Bowlers Association Tournament is currently $100,000 ($8,500 in 1962). True, the take-home pay for bowling champions can be above $150,000 which is not bad in an absolute sense, but is less than middle level management compensation even in smaller companies.

To be honest the non-enthusiast may see televised bowling as a bit mundane. The best bowlers are good enough that they can get 5 strikes in a row and most of their other rolls are spares. Pins left standing are the oddity and were usually the result of splits. Elite professional scores over 200 are the norm and watching a series of strikes followed by a spare or two can get rather tedious.⁵

Of course, sometimes a series of strikes gets interesting. In 1970 Chris was calling Firestone's Tournament of Champions where Don Johnson was playing against Dick Ritger. Dick scored a quite respectable 268 which is usually a winning score. But Don made 10 strikes in a row. This allowed him two more rolls and if they were strikes, he would have a 300 game. That would land him a $10,000 bonus above the $25,000 winners prize.

Don's 11th roll was a strike. Naturally the audience - which included jazz clarinetist Pete Fountain who was sitting next to Don's wife - were on the edge of their seats. Then came the last throw. And yes, Don left one pin standing for a 299 game.

But the times continued to a-change and scholars have studied the sociology of bowling's long slide. Some say that bowling has fallen from favor because stay-at-home entertainments keep people out of the alleys and glued to the consoles. Certainly home entertainment has become de rigueur, but most people who follow other sports don't attend the actual games either. And yes, attendance at bowling tournaments must needs have be small compared to the attendance at massive stadiums where 60,000 people can spend over $200 for a ticket. On the other hand excepting the major tournaments, golf has relatively small live attendance but is doing better than ever.

Of course there's always the money factor. Bowling alleys are expensive to run and maintain, and skyrocketing real estate values are tempting. So if a developer of apartment blocks offers an owner of a bowling alley more than he could ever earn by keeping the lanes open, he'll likely sell. So there are just fewer and fewer places to bowl.

There's also a time investment for the player. Learning to bowl well - even to consistently break 150 - takes years of steady practice. One professional admitted that practicing can be a bit of a bore.

Whatever the cause, decreasing viewership and the general loss of interest in bowling led ABC to end what was then (and now) one of the longest shows on television. ABC's final bowling broadcast was June 21, 1997 and clearly marked the end of any lingering remnants of the Golden Age of Bowling. This last broadcast was also, sad to say, Chris's last appearance as a sports announcer.

Chris himself had been a true pioneer. Along with a number of others - including three guys named Howard, Frank, and Don - he had launched what can accurately be called the Golden Age of Sports Announcing. Among the many honors Chris received was to be inducted into both the Professional Bowlers Hall of Fame and the United States Bowling Congress Hall of Fame. Howard, Frank, and Don never reached such a pinnacle.

Of course, bowling is still with us. The following year CBS took over the broadcasts, and since then bowling programs have been passed back and forth amongst the various networks. Although bowling programs are not as numerous as baseball, football, tennis, or cricket, you can still find plenty of bowling tournaments on television to while away a Saturday afternoon.

Of course, many do lament the closing of the alleys. For the kids - particularly in small quaint towns - bowling alleys had been great places to hang out. There were snack bars where you could get away from your mother's cooking, and there were usually pinball machines and pool tables for the non-bowler.

Parents were generally willing to let their kids head off to the bowling alley on Friday nights. Because there were always a goodly number of adults on the alleys, teenage behavior was kept to proper decorum. Sometimes the kids would hie to the alley and find their teachers and even the school administrators on the lanes. It wasn't unheard of for them to join together in a friendly game.

Perhaps it was the game's very success that led to its decline. By the 1970's the kids - prospective future bowlers, remember - would head to the lanes to find them all occupied by company leagues. If the crowds were too large they might not even be allowed inside the building. So after a while they would just quit showing up.

Nevertheless, there is some debate whether bowling has really declined or simply been transformed.⁶ As with everything else, technology has changed the game and not everyone thinks it's for the better. True, some of the innovations don't usually bother most modern bowlers. Computer tabulated scoring has become the norm and avoids errors. Also the automatic scoring has actually attracted players who find toting up the pins by hand as a mathematically challenging exercise.

But one particularly strident complaint is that the old style automatic pin setting machines are being replaced by "tethered" pins. That is the pins are set up by strings attached to the heads.

High Technology

In the earliest days the pins had to be reset manually. "Pin boys" were employed at the alleys who cleared the fallen pins, rolled the ball back to the bowler, and then reset the pins up for a new roll.

Even in the early 1800's there were inventions for automatic pin setting and these became commercially available about 1910. But modern style automatic pin setters really came along after World War II and were routine by the early 1950's.

After the ball is rolled and knocks down some pins, a traditional pin setting machine lowers a frame, called the table that picks up the standing pins on the pin deck. Then a mechanical arm - the sweep bar - descends and pulls the downed pins back behind the lane into the pit. The standing pins are then be relowered and the player rolls the second ball. Then a pin elevator lifts a new set of 10 pins, aligns them in the frame, and lowers them onto the deck for the next player.

But in the newer alleys the pins are connected to a string attached to a frame above the pin deck. Now when the ball hits the pin they get knocked down, yes, but the string keeps them from being thrown back into the pit. The fallen pins are not pulled back into the pit but simply lifted up off the deck while the standing pins remain. Resetting all ten pins simply requires the pins be raised by the strings, positioned by the frame, and then lowered.

The complaint, though, is that the strings restrict the free motion of the pins. So sometimes bowlers think the ball would have made a strike or a spare on untethered pins but now the strings keep them up.

The manufacturers and designers maintain that tests have shown there is no meaningful difference in the old vs. the new string pinsetters. And the simpler operation of the tethered pin-setters reduces the maintenance cost. Adjustments and repairs that used to take hours or days can now be effected in minutes and so the new machinery keeps bowling well within the budget of the most careful of families.

When Chris began hosting the tournaments, virtually all the tournaments were for men's bowling. But there has always been women in the sport even before the days of Bowling on the Tube. Newspapers were printing stories in the early years of the 20th Century that the game was a wholesome and healthful pastime for the ladies.

Emma Phaler began promoting women's bowling as early as the late 19th Century and she was the secretary of the Women's International Bowling Congress from 1927 to 1965. A skilled player herself Emma lived until 1988 aged 99.

Marion Van Oosten Ladewig was probably the first top-notch professional woman bowler. She was named Women Bowler of the Year nine times starting in 1950 and was the first woman bowler elected to the Women's Sports Foundation Hall of Fame.

Today women are represented today by the Professional Women's Bowling Association which was organized in 1960. Although it discontinued its operation in 2003, it became active again in 2015. Today there are women's bowling tournaments on television where you can see top notch games.

Of course, like all fields of sports, bowling provides humor, jests, and high wit. So what better way to close a serious scholarly discussion than with some light hearted Bowling Banter?

Was the crowd quiet at the bowling tournament?

Of course, you could hear a pin drop!

Why did people begin wearing caps with pictures of Don Carter?

Bowler hats were back in fashion.

Why was music coming from a bowling lane?

It was a Ten Pin Alley!

Why did Jimmy Hoffa like bowling?

He could have twelve strikes in a row!

And of course there's ...

What happened when a bowler had to use long yellow tropical fruits in place of the pins?

He got a banana split.⁷

References and Further Reading

"The Last Frame After 36 years on ABC, Bowling and the Announcer Chris Shenkel Got Tossed Into the Gutter", Gerry Callahan, Sports Illustrated, June 30, 1997.

"Greatest TV Moments in Bowling History", Craig Lazzeretti, Stadium Talk, September 13, 2019.

"When Bowling Dominated Saturday-Afternoon Television", Barry Sparks, 50Plus Life.

"Championship Bowling ", The [Washington, D. C.] Sunday Star TeleVue, p. 27, November 4, 1956.

"Spotlight on Sports", George Huber, The [Washington, D. C.] Evening Star, August 19, 1958, p. 16.

"Rowe Memorial Is Due to Give Bowie Racing Big Boost Today", Lewis F. Atchison, Evening Star Sports, [Washington, D. C.] Evening Star, March 28, 1953, p. A-6.

"On The Air", Bernie Harrison, The [Washington, D. C.] Evening Star, December 18, 1958, Page B-11.

"Atchinsons' Angle", Bernie Harrison, The [Washington, D. C.] Evening Star, March 8, 1960, A-20.

"Worlds Series Special", Bernie Harrison, The [Washington, D. C.] Sunday Star TV Magazine, October 2, 1960, A-20.

"Telesports Digest", The [Washington, D. C.] Sunday Star TV, January 7, 1962, Page 9.

"Smith Nelson Again Named Best in the Nation by Colleagues", The [Washington, D. C.] Evening Star TV, March 21, 1962, p. 9.

"Carter Tops Pro Kegler", [Fairbanks, Alaska] Jessen's Weekly, April 18, 1962, Section 2, p. 5.

History Of Bowling And Billiards, Leila Doran and Julia Shepard, Constable Printing Company, 1928.

"The History of Italy's Second Favorite Sport - Bocce Ball", Jerry Finzi, Italians Sons and Daughters of America.

"Bowling History: Timeline & How It Started", Max Kuch, Sports Foundation, March 17, 2024.

"The Complete History of Bowling", Jeffrey Tillman, Expert Bowler, November 21, 2023.

"When Bowling Was a Sport Reserved for Royalty", Lauren Young, Atlas Obscura, March 2, 2017.

Nathan Bailey's Dictionary English-German and German-English, Friedrich Frommann (publisher), Volume 22, 1810, p. 341.

"Rip Van Winkle", The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Washington Irving (author), C. S. Van Winkle (Printer), 1819.

"Set Em' Up! Knock Em' Down! Bowling’s Automated Pin Technology", Smithsonian.

"Sports on TV", The [Washington, D. C.] Evening Star, January 27, 1963, p. 43.

"For the Record", Sports Illustrated, January 16, 2012.

"Bowling on TV", International Bowling Museum.

"Bowling, That Simple Game of Our Youth, is Being Turned Upside-Down by Technology", David Wharton, Los Angeles Times, November 21, 2023.

"A League of Ordinary Gentlemen", Chris Browne ( director), National Public Radio, April 25, 2006.

"What Average Do Pro Bowlers Have? A Complete Guide for Bowling Enthusiasts", Lillie Gabler, 33 Square, October 21, 2023.

"Football Inflation: Moving the Goalpost from $50,000 to $50,000,000 in under 60 Years", Krystle Dodge, Expensivity, December 22, 2023.

"How Much Do Pro Bowlers Make? Salaries in 2024 Revealed!", Bowling Buff, January 1, 2024.

"History of Women’s Bowling in the U.S.", Eran Akrewi, Bowling View, July 27, 2023.

Chronicling America, Library of Congress.

"Purchasing Power Today - US $", Measuring Worth.