They’re up. They’re down. (From http://www.thecouponconsultant.com)

Why I like bowling, reason No. 100:

You can drive over to the neighborhood lanes for your weekly league and witness perfection.

Take last night at the Thursday Night Men’s League in North Syracuse. I’m ready to pretty much tend to my own business — that is, throw my three games in the mid-100s or so with my teammates on CiCi’s Pizza — when I got to watch Anthony Mayzze throw 18 strikes in a row.

Although I’m five years into this increasingly competitive league, this was the first time I’ve had the honor of bowling with the thin, young left-hander. He obviously has spent time polishing this game of his. He starts his approach at the very back of the lane. Slow steps lead to a powerful and fast hook toward the pocket. The lane radar clocked him around 19 mph, very much at the top end of speed in our 60-man league. The other fastest throwers pretty much go straight at the pins. Those that throw that kind of curve more usually clock in from 13 to 15.

And when Mr. Mayzze hits that 1-2 pocket, the 10 pins leave the lane like-that. Pow. Gone.

Mayzze threw 12 in a row the first of our three games for his 300. Everybody around lanes 9 and 10 applauded. This is a good league, and it appears that a 300 is rolled every other week or so. (No, not always against CiCi’s Pizza, although sometimes that seems to be the way of our bowling universe.) In fact, last night, James Jones to the lines on the right struck through nine frames in the first game, too. My teammates Randy Dearstine and Steve Vicik noted more than halfway through game one that there was a perfect game still alive on four of the six sets of lanes.

Mayzze was really on. He threw six more in a row to start game two before leaving a sole pin. He made his spare and finished game two by striking out. He proved to be human the third game, opening the first two frames before bouncing back to complete his set of 802. That’s averaging 267.33.

Great bowling, right down the road.