There were whispers, but as soon as Fong picked up his ball, it was dead quiet. To a lot of people a life dedicated to bowling seems very sad and empty, but to Bill, he really does love bowling. Even his own website is no good anymore. Or no. “I don’t know,” Michael says again, then looks me in the eye. When you think the sheer number of people who bowl, how many games somebody can bowl, just the sheer number of bowling games that take place, then 300s, yeah okay.

(There have been only 11 899s. How do you bring this into, “Oh by the way… In the entire thing he was having a stroke.” So, “There’s also this.” That’s the transition. Something similar happened in the eighth frame.

They’ve been teammates for nine years.

Yeah, I thought about what to do because the research that’s out there is very limited. First it was tentative, a question: “Michael? I didn’t even realize that was the guy who had said that.

looks under the hood of great writing Education , Writing I don’t know how I’ve missed this, but Niemanstoryboard.org has a feature called Annotation Tuesday! Those were the kind of things that just happened; those were the decisions that are just going to happen when you’re actually typing. Walter Lippmann House. And I started looking for it and found the newspaper story.

Around the time of the 899, Fong got a part-time job at the pro shop at the Super Bowl. This contributes to a climate where, as Michael sees it, it’s better to “just keep quiet, because otherwise you can be misinterpreted in all sorts of negative ways.”For Michael, our conversations were minefields, with the potential for misspeaking—or being quoted out of context—lurking in the shadow of every question. “I didn’t have a significant reaction,” Michael says. There are exceptions, maybe more here in the U.S., and maybe more than in the past, but even then it’s within this framework where looks are considered, money is considered. That night he shot a 169 in the last game; he didn’t even break 800 for the series. And again he took a moment to shake hands with the line of people waiting to congratulate him. And inside of all of that, or through all of that, the story of that night.

I would love to say, “Yeah, I totally knew at the moment when I was talking to these guys that two years later, I’d be talking about it with Nieman.” But no, it’s still pretty astounding how far the story has gotten. In fact, if I had to guess, I’d say the aspect of his appearance that gives him the most trouble is his default expression of protective skepticism. . So it was never really a question of where it was going to go for me. It’s a lot of like, “Oh man, do you remember that? It is both wonderful and sad. In the course of putting together the story, I also talked to a whole host of other people I didn’t end up quoting, including users of And so they’re validating each other’s memories in a way, you know? When he got home, he went into the bathroom and vomited in the toilet. series, we’re looking at another of Saslow’s pieces, one that he wrote for ESPN The Magazine, about Rumeal Robinson, a former University … And now he has a bowling shop, so he’s constantly thinking about bowling. As soon as it left his hand, Fong began waving at it, trying to will the ball left. It’s weird. “I get no respect.”He goes over that last roll in his mind all the time. I was able to talk to probably 10 or 12 people who were there that night and remember it very vividly, within an hour of being at the bowling alley. It was interesting. And I think I said Mikhail Gorbachev. Maybe the uncertainty even becomes part of the fun. They’re still discussing a night two years ago. I don’t know. Fewer as the story goes on, I think. Because there’s a couple of videos of other people who have had 900. When you’re talking about the team name, it’s the first mention that he’s Chinese, or is of Chinese extraction. And it just seemed like an interesting, strange twist. Any reasonably good recreational bowler can get lucky one night and roll 12 consecutive strikes. That’s interesting that’s how you think of that.

When he was first telling me, I’m asking questions like: “How do you feel at that moment? “I wanna feel like we’re doing it in the beginning, or somewhat close to that.”But why, I wonder aloud, would a woman necessarily need to be younger than him to have a similar level of experience?“I’d be too suspicious,” he replies.

So we’re jumping two years into the future. This would be like a hardcore fantasy football player playing in a casual office pool. Yes and no. And it is basically like hearing somebody talk about getting shot… I’m really glad I had the video. He has so many more serious teams, even more serious leagues.

You need those instances where everything slows down a bit. For me, that was never really a question, you know? Exploring the art and craft of story. He dreamed of being a professional athlete one day. You have to, at some point, get to, and I will talk about it in a bit, but you have to get to the fact that he almost had a chance at a Texas record before. Exploring the art and craft of story.

I don’t think originally it was conscious. I first looked it up and couldn’t find it and didn’t think about it again, but it kind of sat with me and it did come back up in my mind a couple times. Does he open a pro shop? Yeah. He really feels like that pin was punishment for that time away… To my knowledge, he has never considered giving it up again and regrets having given it up the first time. A few were embarrassed that they hadn’t come over after the first 300. Life, like bowling, is full of complicating factors, unpredictable variables, plenty of times when there is no right answer. We don’t know. It was important to me that Michael knew that I had a less simplistic view of that world than that.

Dozens of people had stopped bowling to watch. I ask him how he felt when he heard about Isla Vista; Elliot Rodger hadn’t been using Michael’s site, but he’d been traveling in the same ecosystem. He has different teams for every single night of the week. James Race, who, with his perpetual smile and polite demeanor, reminds the other teammates of Mister Rogers, came a few years later.