Hamilton’s City 10-Pin, oldest bowling league on the planet, still rolling at 121

It’s a drinking game: if the lone pin standing after your first roll is the five pin — considered the easiest to hit — and you also fail to knock it down on your next attempt, you owe everyone taking part in the game a drink.

“Ohhh ... ohhh ... Oh!” The bowler knocks down the five. Arms down. No free drinks this time.

It’s Monday night at Skyway Bowl in the heart of east Hamilton, polished lanes glowing under the lights, classic rock on the sound system, and bowling teams competing with names like Alley Cats, Grip and Rip, and Put Your Thumb In It.

Grip and Rip’s Tim Robertson knocks them down sporting a ZZ Top-style beard, Ticats hat, and black bowling shirt emblazoned with “Nothing Hits Like a Hammer.”

He always wears a Hammer shirt. Has four or five of them.

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• Dec 31, 1969
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• Dec 31, 1969
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“It’s a fantastic group; really enjoy the league,” he says.

Four years ago, the future of the alley on Melvin Avenue — or “house” in bowler-speak — was in jeopardy, but it abides, as does the City 10-Pin bowling league, now in its 121st year.

A banner in the alley declares City 10-Pin the oldest sanctioned bowling league in Canada.

It is likely the longest running such association in North America, now that a league five years older in Baltimore went under — and “the world” according to member Doug Zigby, who is working to get the designation official in the Guinness World Records.

The league was born on a Monday night in 1902, in the Tivoli building on James Street North before it was a theatre, and bowling balls were still made of wood.

Fifty-four years later, City 10-Pin relocated briefly to Dundas Valley Lanes, and Queenston Bowl, before settling in what was then called Skyway Lanes, built in 1957 on Melvin near Barton Street East and Parkdale Avenue North.

The league is experiencing renewed growth, with 56 members; 14 teams of four members each.

It’s not the glory days of the 1980s, when at its peak the league boasted more than 150 members, and occupied all 24 lanes at Skyway.

But it’s better than the late 1990s, when the league shrunk to eight teams. That was an era when bowling leagues — in contrast to the number of individual bowlers — were fading, prompting a Harvard professor to call the trend the “most discomfiting evidence of social disengagement in contemporary America that I have discovered.”

Social disengagement is not an issue with City 10-Pin members, who bowl Monday nights from September into May.

“I come for the bowling, yes, but my main reason is the camaraderie,” says Jerry Cote. “They are my family, not just bowlers.”

Members say their league strikes the perfect balance between recreation and competition. No one wants the atmosphere sullied by those who take it too seriously.

Years ago, the league had to kick a guy out who ran too hot.

“We’re here to have fun, although it’s even more fun when you bowl well,” says Steve Cowie.

“It’s competitive but not too competitive,” said Mick Anderer, one of the top bowlers.

Anderer’s name is stitched on his black and green team shirt. His team is one of the few still sponsored by a local business: Mike’s Subs on Upper Gage.

It used to be that every team had a sponsor. One of them is named Lakeport Orphans, an echo of Lakeport Brewery, that closed in Hamilton in 2010.

Nostalgia runs as freely as the beer. Oldtimers enjoy recalling those 24-lane days, or when the league was so flush with cash it gave each member a turkey at Christmas.

The youngest member is 19-year-old Nathan Kulchyk-Ward. The oldest, City 10-Pin history in the flesh, is Phil Morris, still rolling at 89. (He scored a perfect game in 1971, at 36, when the Spectator called him a “veteran” bowler.)

Morris, who has been in the league since 1954, has calculated based on his scoring average and frequency of play, that he has knocked down roughly 4.6 million pins over the decades.

“Hopefully I go into my 90s,” he says. “I’ve seen a lot of fellas come and go.”

Fellas and gals: in 2017 Aleta Manning and Shawnna Prieur were the first women to join the league.

“I say that I’m a bowler, not a woman,” says Manning with a smile. “I needed more competition, and I told them don’t treat me any differently.”

As for Prieur, her grandparents bowled at Skyway, as well as her dad, until his health forced him to stop. She once worked at the alley, and so did her sister.

She works for Kiwanis Boys and Girls Club and lives a 15-minute walk away.

“I’m the remaining Prieur who still does it, and it’s one of the reasons I bowl, because my dad liked it, and enjoyed watching me do it,” she says.

She brought three balls to the house tonight. One is not spinning the way she wants, so she tucks it away in a bowling bag in favour of one that offers different weighting.

She heads to the line, throws a strike, and returns to her rye and ginger, lately her bowling cocktail of choice.

“You get superstitious after a while,” she says, and laughs.

The only thing that divides bowlers in City 10-Pin these days is scoring average, not if they are male or female, says Mike Lacroix.

A member since the 1970s, Lacroix loves Monday nights because he joins his three sons: Brent, Matt and Tim.

Lacroix sits on his walker each time he rolls the ball, with help from one of his sons.

“I used to be good, but not anymore,” he says. “But I don’t care, and if it wasn’t fun I wouldn’t do it.”

The league might not be located in the low-slung building on Melvin at all, if not for its operator, Lionel Lewis.

“(Lewis) is a very smart man and one of the best bowlers in the region,” says Zigby. “Because of him, we have a home.”

Lewis breathed new life into Skyway Bowl, including resurfacing the lanes, and has more renovations planned this summer.

Long ago he worked as a pin changer at the alley.

“My sister works in the kitchen and manages the bar, mom and dad are in here helping clean, and my little guy (son) helps out,” says Lewis. “People make the bowling alley a family place ... Everybody knows everybody.”

The DNA of the league and alley are acutely felt by Randy Bukowski, who has been a member for years, along with his brother, Rick.

“It’s getting bigger again... it’s a social thing,” he says, while glancing over his shoulder at the action, careful not to miss his turn.

The very bricks in the foundation of the house were laid by his dad, Dick Bukowski, part of the construction crew in ’57.

He passed away 21 years ago. He had been a fine bowler, and after suffering a stroke, switched his throwing hand from right to left. Kept on rolling.

The music, the cheers; the boom of the pins scattering from a well-thrown ball.

“I’m up,” says Dick Bukowski’s son, and off he goes, stepping back up to the line.