The era of home vs. home matches and match-game championship bowling gathered momentum during the 1930's, 40's and 50's. The first Match-Game Team Championship was held in 1925 between the two best Chicago teams in a 12-game match. This continued until 1966. To learn more about the teams, check out Dr. Jake's Bowling History Blog, a fascinating site about bowling.
Perhaps the most famous bowling team during this time was the St. Louis Budweisers. A 1957 Sports Illustrated article
features the team and touts them as practically the best in America. The article recaps the national team match-game championship that was held in Chicago and St. Louis:
"The result of the 24-game, home-and-home match was a foregone conclusion before the teams met in St. Louis for the final 12 games. The week before, in Chicago, Falstaff took a mere 136-pin lead on its own lanes, hardly enough to hold a team of Budweiser's caliber. At that, the Chicagoans put up a brief battle, winning two games of one three-game block in St. Louis, but then the roof caved in. The Buds shot a 1,203 game, and their leadoff man, Don Carter, the only man in history to win the U.S. title three times, came through with consecutive 277 and 287 games—and it was all over except for the totaling of scores. St.Louis won, 25,349 to 24,285, a margin of 1,064 pins."
The action and excitement of team bowling was all the rage during this era. The individual bowler while important and significant, did not have quite the same impact as the great teams of the day.
With the Elgin Cross-Town Classic, the idea is to match the top bowlers from each center against each other, bowl three games at Bowlway Lanes and three at Elgin Lanes, put them in a competitive environment and see which team knocks down the most pins and wins.
Team bowling is once again gaining national attention with the new PBA League, so this feels like the right time for team challenge matches to make a comeback in the Chicago area.
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| The Budweiser Bowling team in 1960: Front row (L to R) - Chuck O'Donnell, Pat Patterson, Don Carter; Back row (L to R) - Bill Lillard, Ray Bluth, Dick Weber, Tom Hennessey |
features the team and touts them as practically the best in America. The article recaps the national team match-game championship that was held in Chicago and St. Louis:
"The result of the 24-game, home-and-home match was a foregone conclusion before the teams met in St. Louis for the final 12 games. The week before, in Chicago, Falstaff took a mere 136-pin lead on its own lanes, hardly enough to hold a team of Budweiser's caliber. At that, the Chicagoans put up a brief battle, winning two games of one three-game block in St. Louis, but then the roof caved in. The Buds shot a 1,203 game, and their leadoff man, Don Carter, the only man in history to win the U.S. title three times, came through with consecutive 277 and 287 games—and it was all over except for the totaling of scores. St.Louis won, 25,349 to 24,285, a margin of 1,064 pins."
The action and excitement of team bowling was all the rage during this era. The individual bowler while important and significant, did not have quite the same impact as the great teams of the day.
With the Elgin Cross-Town Classic, the idea is to match the top bowlers from each center against each other, bowl three games at Bowlway Lanes and three at Elgin Lanes, put them in a competitive environment and see which team knocks down the most pins and wins.
Team bowling is once again gaining national attention with the new PBA League, so this feels like the right time for team challenge matches to make a comeback in the Chicago area.
