Read Pin Action: Small-Time Gangsters, High-Stakes Gambling, and the Teenage Hustler Who Became a Bowling Champion for Free Online Page B

the lunch counter. Served on thick slices of New York deli rye with chips and a Coke for $0.50, the tuna salad contributed to Fish Face’s reputation as one of the cheapest guys in town. Patrons suspected that the tuna, tasty as it was, consisted largely of a lower-grade fish called bonito.
    The building itself served as the most vivid illustration of Fish Face’s frugality. The joyless monotony of its brick exterior, void of even the slightest decorative flourish, amplified the endlessness of its expanse from McDonald Avenue to East 2nd. There was not much more to see inside, where a yawning stretch of blank, white walls deadened the decor. Many bowling alleys display trophy cases, wall murals, plaques, or scoreboards honoring the highest scores ever bowled there. The interior of Avenue M Bowl, however, betrayed a ruthless opposition to such indulgences. Indulgences, after all, cost money, and Fish Face preferred to keep his money where he liked it best—in his pocket. But if the ambiance lacked distinction, the clientele most definitely did not. Avenue M Bowl housed one of the most eclectic collections of characters the action bowling scene ever assembled under one roof, and it was the locus of some of the most unforgettable drama in action bowling history.
    Fish Face may have been cheap, but the man knew how to make a buck. Avenue M Bowl, like many New York City bowling alleys at the time, was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Fish Face always made a killing on Sunday afternoons, when it seemed as if every family within five miles took their kids out for a few games, and bowling leagues packed the alley most evenings. Late at night, when leaguebowlers headed home and families had long ago put their kids to bed, the place struggled to rent out a lane or two at a time. Fish Face was not the only proprietor struggling to rent out lanes at the time. Like any bubble bound to burst, proprietors were finding by 1963 that the abundance of bowling alleys built after the automatic pinsetter changed the business forever made it difficult to corner the market of bowlers in a given neighborhood. Bowlers were spreading their patronage across a variety of bowling alleys, all of them close to their homes. Business suffered; bowling alleys began to close down. The Brunswick Corporation repossessed nearly 20,000 pinsetters and more than 15,000 lanes between 1962 and 1966. This misfortune soon proved to be action bowling’s gain.
    Bubbles may be bound to burst, but good businessmen are bound to hatch good ideas. And Fish Face had an idea. He spotted talent in a couple regulars, a pair of bowlers known as Mac and Stoop who were as renowned for whoring as they were for bowling. When Mac and Stoop were not out on the prowl for women, they were bowling for the money they needed to do so. Fish Face decided to bill them as the most invincible doubles team New York City had ever seen, daring other local players to challenge them to doubles matches for any amount of money they cared to wager. Mac and Stoop happily obliged, taking on challengers after the last leagues concluded, at about midnight or one in the morning. Soon, word on the street had it that there was this place in Brooklyn where a couple of wise guys thought no one could beat them. That was a surefire way to attract many more wise guys, Fish Face soon discovered. And each of them, of course, ranked his ability at least as highly as Mac and Stoop ranked theirs.
    Some of the guys who showed up to challenge them matched Fish Face’s nickname with monikers of their own, names likeBernie Bananas or Freddy the Ox, who owed his nickname to the 6’4” frame into which he stuffed his prodigious girth; or Joe The Kangaroo, who took a three-step approach and then hopped around the approach on one leg after each shot.
    One night an action bowler from Brooklyn named Johnny Petraglia was watching Joe the Kangaroo bowl a guy called Frankie the Leaper. They both averaged around 130. Johnny