Bowling a 300 no easy feat

On one end of the noise spectrum is a library. At the other end, on the very far end, is a bowling alley. There, something is always running into something else. It's crash and scatter and, make no mistake, bowling is primal therapy to some. That head pin is your crabby boss. So roll it hard. Make it loud. And then pump the air with a fist and yelp. Do a little dance. Get down tonight. And that's just if you get a spare.

Nothing is quiet about a bowling alley except for that moment when you have thrown 11 consecutive strikes. You are one roll from a perfect 300 game and a permanent entry into the mental scrapbook.

"You can drop a pen and hear it hit the floor. That's how quiet the building is," said Danny Molles of Rohnert Park. "You have a hard time standing up. You have no feeling in your knees. Your hands are shaking. It is not a fun feeling."

On March 25 and again on March 26, Molles, 21, bowled a 300 game at Double Decker Lanes in Rohnert Park. Remarkable, oh yes, but that just makes Molles an expert witness to what Joe Scarborough did Sunday. The Charlotte, N.C., man bowled three straight 300 games. That's 36 strikes. That's the first time it happened in Professional Bowlers Association history. That's ...

"Unbelievable," said Molles, a 2009 graduate of Rancho Cotate High School. "I wouldn't be able to control myself."

So said the young man who has bowled five 300s in his life. And please, let's not misinterpret his last sentence. Molles is not suggesting he would fall to the floor, begin drooling and muttering show tunes. He would need a pause, a long pause, to collect himself before rolling that 36th ball. That's because the usual background noise of crash and scatter, it's not happening.

"In a 300 game," said Dennis Ganduglia, general manager at Double Decker, "everything has gone quiet by the time the 12th frame comes around."

Double Decker has 50 lanes. Imagine the massive sound of silence.

"The girl in the snack bar announces someone is going after 300," Ganduglia continued. "Everyone in the building comes over to watch. They surround the lane. They are whispering and you wouldn't think you'd hear it. But with 200-300 whispering, it sounds like a hum. The pressure is huge."

It is then, especially, when the uniqueness of the sport presents a very special problem.

"You are out there by yourself," Ganduglia said. "It's just me, myself and I bowling."

And does the "I" get in the way?

"Happens to me all the time," wisecracked Ganduglia, 60, who has bowled four 300s in his life.

Ganduglia remembered what he saw when he rolled that last ball in each of those 300s.

"The ball moves in slow motion," he said. "It took forever to get down the alley."

Those descriptions by Ganduglia and Molles refer to a single 300 game. Try to imagine 35 perfect frames. They couldn't. Does it seem impossible to comprehend, like a 1,000 angels dancing on the head of a pin?

"Pretty much," Ganduglia said.

"I'd be a nervous wreck," said Molles, a wine salesman.

Admitting their bias, both men said bowling three consecutive 300 games is much more difficult than two widely celebrated athletic achievements: pitching a no-hitter in baseball and making a hole in one in golf.

"A hole in one in golf? Big deal," Ganduglia said. "It's one lucky swing. You can't roll 36 lucky balls."

"A pitcher has eight people behind him helping him," Molles said. "There's no one out there helping you throwing 36 perfect balls."

And then there's the mind-blowing, nail-biting conundrum in bowling: The perfect pocket hit leaves one pin standing. It would be enough to make most bowlers chew a finger to its knuckle if it was in the 12th game of a perfecto. Molles would like to be in the position to roll a perfect 900 and he would hope, in that third game, he would be experiencing what he has in the five 300s he has rolled.

"I was in such a zone," Molles said, "that I would have to try to miss, I was so locked in."

The manner in which he spoke, that groove was more like a tunnel. Just roll it, be even blindfolded, and somehow the ball will find the path and take care of itself. The control, in a way, is no longer yours. Such is the ecstasy a 300 produces. So what would Molles ask Scarborough if he had the chance?

"I wouldn't congratulate him," Molles said. "Rather I'd ask him, &‘How did it feel (to be in that groove)?'"

And while we are at it, could we put that bliss in a bottle and sell it? After all isn't that what every athlete wants and would pay good money to experience just once: That moment when a sport is conquered, instead of the other way around.

You can reach Staff Columnist Bob Padecky at 521-5223 or bob.padecky@pressdemocrat.com.