Barack Bowl [View All]

[Marnieworld]

Barack Bowl
By Michael Powell

Barack Obama spent Saturday evening in a close encounter with the fierce urgency of a gutter ball.
In search of game, a friendly crowd and really good photo ops, Senator Barack Obama and Senator Robert Casey rolled into Pleasant Valley Lanes in Altoona to cheers from patrons, report our faithful press pool reporters. Several bowlers ready to bite into French fries lathered with ketchup and American cheese—it’s a Pennsylvania thing; you wouldn’t understand — stopped mid-munch, put down their beers and watched a presidential candidate walk into their midst.
Mr. Obama takes no small pride in his athleticism but he was back-pedaling from the start. “I just want to point out that the last time I bowled was 30 years ago, when I was 16,” he cautioned the crowd gathering to ask for his autograph and a photo.
Whatever.
Roxanne Hart, a 43-year-old gal from Altoona, asked if he wanted to bowl with her. Mr. Obama and Mr. Casey shed dress shoes for bowling shoes—a blue and white Velcro number for Obama, size 13 ½ — and entered their names into the overhead monitor. It was BAR and BOB against ROX.

Rox won in a walk.
Mr. Obama picked up a ball, cued up all confident-like, and sent the thing into the gutter. “We’re just warming up,” Mr. Obama assured himself, maybe.
So it rolled, one desultory frame after another. Rox hit spare upon spare; Mr. Obama knocked a few pins here and there and announced that his goal was to beat Mr. Casey. “I can’t beat Roxanne,” he said.
Mr. Obama, it turns out, was a weak centrist. His balls rolled down the center of the lane, but much too slowly to knock over more than a half dozen or so pins. “You notice I’m getting better?” he asked.
The patrons kept taking cell phone and camera shots, and urging friends to drive to the bowling alley to catch this scene.
“Let me tell you something,” Obama said to the crowd. “My economic plan is better than my bowling.” A man standing at the next lane called out, “It has to be.”
Mr. Obama laughed and gave him a hug.
Finally, in the seventh frame, Obama made a spare, cleaning up one pin. “Yes I can!” he started chanting after a couple admirers at a nearby lane started it. “Yes I can!”
As to politics, maybe. As to bowling? No, he really can’t.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/barack-bowl/