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2.1.2.4. Bowling
There was not always a clear distinction between amateur and professional bowlers, especially since amateurs are allowed to collect prize money. Most acknowledged professionals were instructors, but there were a few who toured the country, giving exhibitions or playing matches for money.
Three professionals were pretty well known to the public. Andy Varipapa, a colorful trick shot artist, spent thirty years entertaining crowds throughout North America. He also won two consecutive BPAA All-Star tournaments, in 1946 and 1947.
Floretta McCutcheon was the sport's leading woman ambassador from 1927 through 1939, giving thousands of clinics, lessons, and exhibitions.
Best known of all was Ned Day, who not only toured but also did a very popular series of movie shorts during the 1940s. Millions of people saw the films in theaters and, later, in television reruns. Day retired in 1958, the very year the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) was founded. Under the leadership of Eddie Elias, the PBA set out to establish a regular tour of sponsored tournaments similar to the Professional Golf Association tour.
For several years, there were only three or four tournaments on the PBA tour, but the number grew rapidly during the 1960s, mainly because of television. To fit tournaments into TV time slots, Elias created the "stepladder" format that's still used in almost all PBA events.
Competitors first roll a series of qualifying games, with the top five finishers advancing into the stepladder round. The fifth- and fourth-place qualifiers bowl a match, with the winner advancing to bowl against the third-place qualifier. And so it goes up the stepladder, until the survivor meets the first-place qualifier in the final match.
The Professional Women's Bowling Association was founded in 1960 to establish a similar tour. It wasn't particularly successful, so a group of players left to form the Ladies' Professional Bowlers Association in 1974. The two merged again in 1978, forming the Women's Professional Bowlers Association, which became the Ladies Professional Bowlers Tour in 1981.
As in golf, the women's tour isn't nearly as lucrative as the men's, largely because of the lack of television coverage. The PBA tour boasts about 40 tournaments, many of which award $40,000 or more for first place. The LPBT tour offers only about 15 tournaments and first place money is usually less than $20,000.
There are four major men's tournaments, the BPAA U. S. Open, the PBA National Championship, the Tournament of Champions, and the ABC Masters. Women have three majors, the BPAA U. S. Women's Open, the Sam's Town Invitational, and the WIBC Queens. A fourth major tournament, the WPBA National Championship, was discontinued after 1980[16, www.hickoksports.com/history...].
2.1.3. Problems in professional sport
One of the most frequent complaints leveled against professional sports these days is that the news about them often concerns various disputes between players and management, court cases, and other legal proceedings more than it does what takes place in the games athletes play» and spectators watch. Part of this comes from the fact that people have been slow to recognize that professional sport really is a business and that people make their living engaging it. In addition, the world of professional sport, as the rest of society, is more complex than it was in the past.
Another familiar complaint, not without some justification, is that professional athletes in the most popular sports such as baseball, basketball, and football are paid more money than they could possibly be worth. For example, as of this writing the average major league baseball player's salary is just under the incredible sum of one million dollars per year! No wonder people complain. Yet, when a star player demands more money from his or her team, it is often the fans and the press who take the side of the athlete.
One of the most unfortunate results of the currently inflated price of tickets to professional sports events such as baseball is that they are now accessible only to the most well off. This is a sad break with the past tradition of having a sizable number of inexpensive tickets available to all segments of society. Over time sport in the US has become more open to all classes and ethnic groups. Recent moves by professional sports management to cater more and more to an elite clientele through such means as special luxury viewing areas (called sky boxes) at stadiums and arenas are an unwelcome departure from the mostly democratic development of American sport.
Only the most naive observers and spectators of American professional sport now believe that it exists in a realm that is separate from other social concerns. Sport is also related to politics. It has become a practice for politicians to associate themselves with championship teams. For example, the president usually phones congratulations to the winners of baseball's World Series; presidents have hosted the National Basketball Association (NBA) champions at the White House.
The attraction of major league professional sport is so great that there are keen competitions among cities for franchises. It is widely accepted by politicians, the public, and the press that having a major league team in their city or region is good not only for the local economy but also for the prestige of the area and even the morale of the population. Professional franchises often exploit this desire of localities to have a major league team by demanding and receiving extremely favorable terms for the use of public stadiums. When teams do not get what they want from local government, they often begin to play one city off against another and sometimes move to an area that offers a better deal.
Sport also has an international political dimension. After the Soviet Union joined the Olympic movement in 1952, the US and the USSR engaged in a long, hard-fought battle, especially at the Olympic Games, for overall supremacy in sport [2, p.307-308].
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