Several years ago, I watched an episode of the the TV series Homicide: Life On The Streets in which some of the characters were bowling. Except they weren't using regular equipment. The pins were kind of short and squat and the balls appeared to be a little larger than a softball. It was bowling but it wasn't the game Walter Ray Williams and Norm Duke play. Little did I know, there are other types of bowling played regionally in the U.S. and Canada. In places where these other forms of bowling are played, our game of bowling is called ten-pin.
Shannon tries duckpin bowling
The Homicide series took place in Baltimore so I did some searching and found that the game of duckpin bowling is popular in Maryland, the Washington DC suburbs, some parts of New England, and the Canadian province of Quebec. (New England and eastern Canada also have candlepin bowling which we will try when we reach Maine. Ontario has five-pin bowling which we will try in Toronto.)
AMF College Park Lanes
Duckpin bowling never achieved national popularity like ten-pin bowling but it remains a popular sport regionally. When George and I visited Maryland and Washington DC in 2009, we didn't get around to trying duckpin bowling. On this journey to the area, we made a side trip to College Park, Maryland specifically to try the duckpin game. Not far from the University of Maryland campus is AMF College Park Lanes. It was a short drive from our hotel in Washington DC.
Duckpins and ten-pins, side-by-side.
AMF College Park Lanes is a 40 lane house with duckpin lanes on 1-20 and ten-pin lanes on 21-40. The photo here shows a duckpin and 10-pin lane side by side for comparison. As mentioned earlier, the ball is only slightly larger than a softball and weighs between 3 lb 6 oz and 3 lb 12 oz. Compare that to the 15 lb ball I use in ten-pin bowling. The ball can fit easily in one's hand so it doesn't have fingerholes and it's much easier for children to roll down the lane than a heavy ten-pin ball.
They do cosmic duckpin bowling, too.
It's much more difficult to strike in duckpin bowling so the game-play differs slightly from ten-pin bowling. You get three shots per frame instead of only two. Just like ten-pin bowling you get a strike for knocking down ten pins with one shot and a spare for knocking down ten pins with two shots.The scoring for strikes and spares is also the same as in ten-pin bowling. If you knock down all of the pins in three shots, it's called a ten and you don't get a bonus in the next frame as you do for a strike or spare. You just get credit for the ten pins you knocked down. Nobody has ever bowled a perfect 300 in duckpin. I was told that reaching 100 is a pretty good accomplishment
Shannon prefers duckpin to ten-pin.
Another thing that's different about duckpin bowling is that the pinspotters and lane sweepers don't work automatically. You have to press the deadwood or reset button when needed. For instance, on my first shot, I knocked down six pins and sent all of them into the pit. There's no need to have the pinspotter pick up the remaining pins and have the sweeper clear the pin deck. There's nothing on the pin deck that needs to be swept away. I just pick up my ball and shoot my second shot. This time, I knock down two and they're still on the pin deck. Now I press the deadwood button so the pinspotter will pick up the two standing pins and the sweeper will clear the fallen pins into the pit. On my third shot, I miss so there are still two pins standing at the end of my turn. At this point, I press the reset button to give the next bowler a fresh rack of ten pins.
So far as the machinary goes, the duckpin sweeper is more like a windshield wiper than a rake. In ten-pin bowling, the rake drops down after the shot and sweeps back to pull any fallen pins into the pit. In duckpin bowling, the sweeper swings around in a semi-circular motion from the side to clear the fallen pins. I found myself captivated by the duckpin machinary almost as much as the bowling itself.
Eric Jackson of College Park Lanes
The bowling was incredible. Bowling with a small light ball that could fit between the pins was a lot more exciting and entertaining than I anticipated. If I were on my own, I think I would have stayed at College Park Lanes all day and skipped our outing to the Smithsonian. Yes, it was that much fun! We owe a debt of gratitude to Eric Jackson at AMF College Park Lanes for helping us with the gameplay and the operation of the machinary.
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