Coastal GA News

Let’s talk Turkey Bowling.

OK … turkey bowling. Is it a sport? I promise this will flow into sports. With Thanksgiving stuffed and behind us, turkeys are still on the minds and in the sandwiches of many of us. So let’s talk about sport involving turkeys. No, not hunting wild turkeys – Missouri hunts the most, killing 47,000 per year – we are talking about taking a frozen turkey and using it as a bowling ball to knock down 2-liter bottles of soda set up like bowling pins. Sport, right?

Turkey bowling originated (according to most stories), in 1988, when a grocery clerk named Derrick Johnson saw a manager in his Newport Beach, California Lucky’s market, slide one down an aisle and accidentally knock over a 2-liter bottle of soda.

Derrick anointed himself commissioner of the Poultry Bowlers Association and made up rules, including not stepping over the “fowl” line and changing a “turkey” of three strikes on a row, to a “gobbler.” A gutterball became a “butterball,” and a “wishbone” is a 7-10 split. The PBA once had as many as 2,000 members.

Basic rules: slide a frozen turkey -- usually a 12-pounder -- and aim it toward 10 unopened soda bottles acting as bowling pins. The lane is most often a grocery store aisle, but it can be a smooth surface anywhere, and then you try to knock things down. Sometimes turkey bowling is promoted as a between-period attraction at hockey games, rolled on ice.

Some promotions, including an annual Thanksgiving competition on Cleveland’s Fox affiliate WJW-TV, use cranberry sauce cans stacked high. This “event” was broadcast live for more than 20 years. And on Guy Fieri’s show, “Guy’s Grocery Games,” a segment featured the sport.

Now, doing this on your own is liable to draw the ire of grocery store managers, so if you want to give it a shot, try your own location or talk to the store manager ahead of time.

A few animal rights groups who oppose the use of animals in sports, claim that turkey bowling is disrespectful to animals and sends mixed messages, which may encourage violence to animals or people. And in England, at the UK Great Turkey Bowling Championships, to address protesters’ demands, plastic turkeys were used in competition.

OK, so it is a made-up sport. But aren’t many others? They all had to start somewhere. Sports are being made up all the time and don’t you wish we could really play Quidditch from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter? Throwing a ball through hoops while riding on a flying broom and trying to catch the elusive golden snitch? Let’s NOT adapt the Hunger Games player-vs.-player to-the-death scenario, but how about the trash-talking game, BASEketball … basketball with baseball rules?

A real made-up game is one of the faster-growing sports in America – pickleball. Combining elements of tennis, paddleball, ping pong and badmintion, you play on a modified tennis court with a paddle and a heavy wiffleball.

Some true odd games include biathlon – cross-country skiing, get your heart rate up, then shoot at targets while you try to settle your heart rate; ultimate fighting championships -- box, street fight, wrestle, kick, maim, knock-out; sepak tekraw – volleyball with your feet, knees or chin and no hands allowed; and guts Frisbee -- high-speed catch, five people per team, teams line up in lines 46 feet apart. Each team lines up fingertip to fingertip, toeing the line. The opponent throws the Frisbee at you at up to 85 mph. A good throw is above the ground, right-side up, and within reach. Points for bad throws or dropped throws.

Chess boxing involves chess and boxing. There is bossaball … kind of volleyball/soccer on trampolines, and cheese rolling in England, in which you chase after a nine-pound wheel of Double Gloucester cheese rolled down the hill. True sports.

I bet you thought I would tie this column into bowling. Nope, that is for another time. This one is about made-up sports and odd sports. Do you have a sport you’d like to see played or an odd one that you enjoy? Let me know, at: mike.blake@advantageinformatics.com.com.

See you next time.