Pin Action: Small-Time Gangsters, High-Stakes Gambling, and the Teenage Hustler Who Became a Bowling Champion (12 page)

He tempted death as often as he used it to threaten Crazy Vito’s debtors.

In an early experience in the action at Brooklyn’s Seaview Lanes on Flatlands Avenue in Brooklyn—a desolate part of town known for the fifteen-cent burgers and triple-thick shakes at Farrell’s drive-in and for the landfill where mobsters dumped the bodies of those who crossed them—a crew of backers known to put their money on Barber drove him up to the alley to arrange a match. When word got around that a sixteen-year-old Barber would be Mike Chiuchiolo, one of the toughest matches in town, the money handlers started listing bets and taking cash as Barber went to retrieve his ball and
bag from the car. He didn’t get much farther than fifteen feet from the door before three mobsters stopped to tell him how it was going to be.

“You’re gonna lose,” one of the gangsters informed Barber, a gun pressed to the back of his head.

The gangsters wanted Barber to dump the match so they could pocket some easy proceeds. They had watched Iggy do it often enough to know it worked, so they did what any good gangster does with a proven idea. They stole it.

Just like some of those horse races and boxing matches guys like Barber loved to bet on, bowling, too, could be fixed. With anything involving money, there always was a way to rob, cheat, or steal. Barber himself was corrupt enough to know that as well as anybody else. On this particular night at Seaview, however, he wasn’t letting on.

“I don’t know how to lose,” he told the gangster.

“You’re losing,” the gangster repeated.

He pressed the revolver a little tighter against Barber’s skull.

“Look,” Barber pleaded, “why don’t you bet on me? I’m not gonna lose. You can make a lot of money on me!”

“For a sixteen-year-old kid, you sure got a lotta fuck-in’
balls
!” the gangster said in his Brooklyn accent.

Barber matched his flashy looks with some flash on the lanes. He had a unique bowling style in which he would curl up into a ball and then explode at the foul line, and he enjoyed throwing the ball with a big hook that was rare for the era because of the inferior technology in the bowling balls used then. Bowling balls made of hard rubber or plastic, as balls were in the early 1960s, did not possess anywhere near the hook potential of the more technologically advanced equipment that would become available to bowlers in the decades to come. Barber proceeded to thrash Chiuchiolo, beating him nine games straight and making the gangsters who bet on him
quite a generous chunk of money. They had his back from that night on.

The youngest player to bowl in the All-Star Tournament in 1963—arguably one of the most prestigious and grueling bowling tournament in the world at the time—a 17-year-old Barber competed alongside legendary names like Don Carter and Dick Weber. He carried a 204 average for 52 games. A month after bowling the All-Star, he shot a nine-game total of 1,940 at the elite American Bowling Congress tournament. He ultimately placed ninth in the “All-Events,” which is the combined total a bowler tallies through all three events of the tournament—the singles, doubles, and team events, each of which consists of three games. Before busting his back while running out the final shot of a 299 game one day in a match against Lemon, Barber recorded a high series of 876, shooting scores of 300, 299, and 277 in an action match at Jamaica Arena. Barber averaged 258 for ten games that night.

Barber’s triumphs on the lanes did not always culminate in glory. One night, he took some buddies up to a bowling alley in Connecticut looking for action and promptly cleaned the place out to the tune of nearly $10,000. As they headed down the interstate to go back home, somebody cut him off. Then another car came up from behind and shoved him into the shoulder. A few guys got out with guns. Barber and his buddies recognized them as the very bowlers they had just trounced. They had been following Barber’s car all along with every intention of getting their money back.

It was exactly the kind of moment when a six-foot-five, 250-pound man known only as “Milo” comes in particularly handy. Luckily for Barber, that is exactly what he happened to have in the passenger seat that night.

“You boys stay here,” Milo grunted. “I’ll handle this.”

Milo got out of the car. He was so huge that when he rose from a seat he never seemed to stop getting up. It was like watching a mountain emerge from the fog. One of the guys pointed his gun at Milo’s head. Milo walked up to him and stuck his finger in the barrel.

“We’re gonna kill you!” they said.

“You’re gonna kill yourself, you stupid bas-tid!” Milo barked. “I’ve got my finger in the barrel. I’ll lose my finger, but you’ll lose your life. The gun will backfire and kill you. So now why don’t you think about getting the fuck out of here?”

That was enough for the guys with guns to suspect Milo was both insane and eminently serious about trading his finger for their lives. If they had any notion of pondering the plausibility of Milo’s take on what happens when you stick your finger in the barrel of a gun, they did not let on. They got back in their car and peeled away.

Nobody pulled any guns when Schlegel and Barber banged heads at a place called Ridgewood Lanes in Brooklyn. Barber knew Schlegel was no scrub from out of town who would abide greased rags and false trips on the approach. He also knew the amount of money that would come down on the match from gamblers and shylocks would be enough to buy the place they bowled in. And Schlegel, for his part, knew Barber was a hell of a bowler who would neither be fooled by a stink of bourbon nor afraid of the gorilla show he put on at Central.

The first time Barber and Schlegel bowled each other, Schlegel shot the first 300 game of his life, beating Barber 300-279. But Schlegel bowled 155 the next game and lost—a development the gamblers would remember next time. It is not always easy for bowlers to come down from the adrenaline rush that accompanies a perfect game. Sometimes a bowler will find himself throwing the ball harder in the next game as his nerves take time to settle down. Any delay in the point at
which the ball gets into a roll and finally hooks back toward the pocket—a problem easily caused by throwing the ball too hard—will cause the ball to come up shy of the pocket or even whiff the headpin altogether. The result often can be an ugly, difficult split. As adrenaline caused Schlegel to throw the ball harder than he meant to, those crushing pocket shots he threw against Barber in his 300 game now left splits such as the 5-7 and the 8-10. One fact that makes these tough breaks particularly brutal is that the difference between a strike and a near-pocket shot that leaves an 8-10 split is a matter of centimeters.

The 5 pin is the pin directly behind the headpin, in the second row of pins from the back. The 7 pin is the back-row pin off in the left-hand corner of the pin deck. If a ball comes up “light” rather than hitting the pocket “flush” or dead on, both the 5 and 7 pins might be left simultaneously. The only way to convert such a spare is to kiss the 5 pin across the pin deck and hope it topples over the 7 pin on its way into the left-corner of the pin pit. The 8-10 split, also a consequence of failing to hit the pocket flush, is a considerably more difficult spare. Those pins are both in the back row, leaving less room to finesse the ball just to the left of the 8 pin to send it sailing across the deck into the 10 pin. Additionally, it is easier for a right-handed bowler to nudge the 5 pin off to the left than it is to nudge the 8 pin all the way across the pin deck to the right, just as it is difficult for a left-handed bowler to nudge the 9 pin all the way across the deck to the left to topple over the 7 pin. The harder Schlegel threw his ball in the game following his 300 against Kenny Barber, the more he suffered one open frame after another as he failed to convert the difficult splits he left. Thousands of dollars had exchanged hands by the end of that night, the boisterous collection of gamblers growing more numerous behind the lanes with each passing game. Barber told Schlegel to come back for a rematch a few nights
later, easily enough time for word to spread throughout the five boroughs about the big match coming up between Barber and Schlegel.

The place was packed with sharks and gamblers from every corner of New York City by the time they bowled again. Nearly two hundred people were betting on the match behind the lanes. Schlegel won the first game, but then Barber beat him the next three in a row. Schlegel switched bowling balls and shot 299 in game five for $500, and that was when the gamblers remembered what happened the last time Schlegel got that hot. He had shot 155 and lost the next game. There is no loyalty among gamblers; there is only money. So the gamblers cut their bets. All the money now was on Barber, who had upped the ante for the next game to $800. If Schlegel wanted to bowl, he would have to put all the money down out of pocket. It’s a lot easier to gamble with somebody else’s money than it is to gamble with your own. Bet too much of your own money, and that is when you started to squeeze. Schlegel knew that as well as anyone. But he also knew the only way to make the gamblers wish they had more faith in him was to beat Barber. He started the next game with seven consecutive strikes and won. Then Barber had them move to a new pair of lanes; maybe Schlegel had figured something out that he would lose if they moved. Not so much. Schlegel won the next game, too, and by then all the money in the house—his, Barber’s, the gamblers—was where Schlegel liked it best: in his hands.

Schlegel may have won in the end, but those high-profile matches worked miracles for Barber’s reputation; he became known as the kind of bowler you wanted to put your money on. He was consistent, whereas Schlegel could run super hot, or very cold. One night at Central, Maxie watched a young lefty out of Connecticut named Larry Lichstein thrash another
bowler. Then he watched one of Lichstein’s friends walk up to Barber and ask him if he would like to bowl Lichstein.

“How much?” Barber said.

“Two hundred bucks,” said Lichstein’s friend.

Barber laughed his ass off.

“I don’t pick up a ball for less than a grand a game,” he said.

Lichstein and his buddy only had a total of $900 on them, just the kind of predicament for which Maxie always kept his crisp roll of hundreds on hand. Maxie had seen enough of Lichstein to know the kid had a hot hand that night. He put up the money and Barber picked up a ball. He soon wished he hadn’t. Lichstein beat him the first game for $1,000. Barber asked for double or nothing next game and got it, and Lichstein beat him again for $2,000. Then he did it again for $4,000 the following game. The games were close and Barber kept grinding, but the thing about lefties is that when they get locked in they never miss. And that was the thing about Lichstein on this particular night: He never missed. After Maxie took his cut and Lichstein split the rest with his buddy, Lichstein left the place with $2,000 cash in his pocket. He was a 145-pound, seventeen-year-old kid who knew he had just found the thing he would do for the rest of his life.

Lichstein would prove just as displeased with losing as he was thrilled with winning. One night, having hurt his arm bowling, he decided to make his money betting instead. He put his money on a guy named Vick Pulin, who was bowling Lichstein’s fellow Connecticut native, Jim Byrnes. Byrnes was a big, stocky Irishman with forearms the size of boat anchors. Byrnes liked to call Pulin “Stone Fingers.” Every time Pulin needed a strike, Byrnes insisted, Pulin’s fingers turned to stone; he never had the nerves to come through in the clutch. Byrnes beat Pulin good, and lined his pockets with Lichstein’s money.

Lichstein then made it personal. Too personal, he quickly learned.

“Fuck you! When my arm gets better I will
kill
you!” Lichstein screamed at Jim.

“Larry, let’s just calm down,’” Byrnes said

“Fuck you!” Lichstein repeated. “You got my money!”

“If you open your mouth one more time, I will pick you up, dump you in the garbage can, and sit on it until you apologize,” Byrnes said.

But Lichstein started up again anyway. Byrnes jumped up, picked up Lichstein, and stuffed him into the reeking garbage can.

“Now say another word and I’ll break your arm off and stick it up your ass!” Byrnes told him.

Byrnes sat on the lid and did not let Lichstein out for 45 minutes.

Lichstein later would insist that incident was the reason he went bald as an adult.

If bowling was the thing Lichstein wanted to do for the rest of his life, he would not be doing it at Central Lanes. Nobody would. One day Schlegel showed up at Central for more action only to hear the place had been held up the previous night by gangsters armed with machine guns. Such an event was unheard of before then. In these days before credit cards and ATM machines, everybody carried cash. And even though everybody knew that bowling alleys after dark had tens of thousands of dollars in cash getting thrown around on gambling, no one worried about getting robbed. It just did not happen. That it had happened now, and that it happened at one of the most frequented centers of action bowling in the tri-state area, was a grim sign that times were changing.

“You should have been here!” a friend told Schlegel.

“Good thing I wasn’t! They would have taken my money,” Schlegel said.

Had they taken his life, well, that would have been bad, too. But not as bad as it would have been had they taken his money, he figured. But more importantly, where would the action go now that Central Lanes was gone?

The specter of an armed robbery at Central sent the action scurrying for another new home. But even if the action kept coming to Central after that, it would not have come for long. The owner died, and within months, the place burned to the ground. Some believed the owner’s daughters had it torched for the insurance money; others maintained it was an accident resulting from a couple of kids screwing around with fire in a utility closet. But it didn’t matter now. Central was gone for good by 1967, and its demise also marked the demise of action bowling’s golden era. Several years had passed since the early days at Avenue M Bowl. Some of those baby-faced kids who bet on Mac and Stoop back then were not such kids anymore. They shaved. They had moved out of their parents’ house. They had steady girlfriends pestering them about marriage, kids, and the kinds of jobs normal people kept. Others got drafted and, when they returned, jobs. By then, the now-real threat of robbery or dumpers like Russo who fomented distrust also had taken their toll on the action bowling scene.