Great Is Always Great

By Jim Goodwin - Stars & Strikes Newsmagazine

There are polls and surveys and more polls and surveys.

Every now and then or decade or half century or century there are efforts to determine the best of all time. I have seen polls conducted and the greatest range from Jimmy Smith to Hank Marino to Joe Wilman to Andy Varipapa to Don Carter to Dick Weber to Mark Roth to Earl Anthony to Walter Ray Williams to Pete Weber to Parker Bohn and a dozen others.

Almost every poll is as valid as any other, but how valid are any?

You really can't fairly judge greats of one era against the greats of another era. There are too many intangibles. But it is a simple fact that any bowler who was great at any time would be great in any other time. If any of the current greats had been born 100 years ago they would have been great then, and if they were born today they would become future greats.

The attributes that combine to make an immortal are not limited to any person at any time, and among those gifts must be adaptability. When a bowler of the past is criticized because he didn't know much about balancing a bowling ball through special drilling or couldn't toss a gutter shot or any other shot, that's not only silly, but stupid. He didn't know because it wasn't necessary in his time. The same is true of a modern bowler who might be accused of not being able to carry heavy wood or to get along with less than a dozen bowling balls. Irrelevant.

That's akin to picking on a football player because he's a lousy basketball player. The eras don't mix or jell that way. The bowler of 50 or more years ago was bowling then. The bowler of today is bowling today, and the bowler of tomorrow will be bowling in the changing waters of then. A bowler does what he has to do in his time in his way with the equipment, knowledge and rules and formats at his disposal in his time.

That doesn't mean you can't speculate, discuss and argue the merits of bowlers of different times, so long as a major premise is foremost, that when you're the best of your time, odds are you could have been one of the best any time.

We all have our favorites. We all have our leanings. A measuring stick of any great is did he dominate his time. If he was better than his peers and did everything better then there is no question about super status and ranking.

But that's rare. In every era there's one bowler more exciting than another, one who is a better frontrunner, another who comes from behind better, one who is almost always there in the clutch. Often the margin of difference is minute, like the difference in a beach when you remove a single grain of sand.

I feel that today's stars would have dominated 100 years ago even if they had to bowl with a wooden ball, a palm ball or a grapefruit. And I also feel that those greats of long ago would have been stars in the years to come when we may be rolling at light beams instead of pins.

Polls are great, if more than surface results are scratched, for what's beneath the surface is the stuff of which legends are created and carried on and on.

Article was posted with permission from Stars & Strikes, America's Bowling Newsmagazine. www.starsandstrikesbowling.com