I was out with my wife for our coaching lesson and my coach was trying to get me to try and outside line. I missed my mark outside by about 2 boards and ended up in the gutter. Well I turned around in disgust and then my coach just started laughing and said I wish I would have gotten that one on camera. I turned around and it was a strike. Apparently my ball popped out of the gutter half way down the lane and hit the pocket perfectly. The coach said he had never seen that happen before. He said he has seen balls pop out toward the end of the lane but never in the middle.

Interesting lol, too bad it wouldn't have counted in a real game. I've never seen anything like that, nor heard about it before now.

I had a similar thing happen to me, that I mentioned in a thread awhile back. I was bowling league on the last lane, lane 40.
I was playing outside too, well my thumb stuck and I dumped the ball into the gutter at a pretty good clip.

My ball jumped out of the gutter and got airborne and smashed into the concrete wall next to the lane. Then it hit the floor bounced up and blew right through the little door that leads into the back room where the pinsetters are. By now everyone around me is laughing thier a$$es off, and they laughed even harder when the mechanic comes out of the back with my ball looking as though he just got shot at. It was pretty funny.

LOL, man that sounds like one I would have liked to witness as well! Good story eraser!

Strangest thing that every happened to me occurred when I was shooting at a 10 pin. The house I bowl at has AMF pinsetters, which, at some times, will have pins stuck rolling on their side in the pit right behind the gutter. Went to shoot the 10 pin, missed it and ended up hitting the top of the stuck pin which launches the ball into the air. This is not entirely unusual. What was unusual was the fact that when my ball hit the cushion at the back of the pit, it landed right back into the gutter, made it underneath the sweep before it came all the way down, and rolled all the way back up the gutter to the foul line where I picked it back up. Shame it was in practice.

Mark

It's little moments like these that make me want to hit the lanes. You just never know what is going to happen. Again too bad that wasn't on tape. AFV, might get a kick out of it.

ive had something really crazy happen, i was bowling on lane 8 and someone was bowling on lane 7 he was right handed and bowling with no thumb and trying to throw it real fast, well i had left the 1-2-5 i think and anyways he was starting to bowl and he bowled a gutter, well he threw it so fast that it shot over the gutter into my gutter and out on to my lane, it went out to about the 10th board, hooked back in and picked up my spare! it was hilarious

LOL! Nice story guys i havent had any of those thing happen in my center. Closes thing was someone got ball stuck in his thumb and ball went air borne on the gutter cap and bounced off that landed on next lane and knocked some pins down.

Hahahaha, There's some good stories here! I think one of the weirdest things that happened to me was I threw a spare, and turned out waiting for my ball to come, just to see it rolling back towards the gutter at a surprisingly fast speed. I still have no idea how it happened, almost wondered if it fell off the ball return thing in the back as it was heading back towards the return or something.. I just remember being like "What the frick...?" We laughed.

While not as funny, I saw a random customer put a ball through the ceiling and bring down a whole panel of roof debris onto a lane.. that was interesting.

ist funny to say there is a spot above one of the lanes at my house where it looks like a ball has hit it ! i was trying for a 10 pin one time and hit the gutter and it hit the lane next to me and knocked the pins down. bad thing was it was on. and it sent my ball to the lane next to it which was not on. i had to go to the desk and tell the lady that my ball was 2 lanes over and i needed to get my ball returned 2 lanes over. also the sweep came crashing down in the middle of the 2nd game sunday in league. now that was funny. maintenance guy said that it was broke so bad that they where going to have to call someone on the outside to fix it. one of the welds on it broke and it came down in mid play. jacked it all up too.

Quite a while ago, I bowled on a team that had a bowler who got madder the worse he bowled. He would throw the ball harder and harder. And, loft it farther and farther. Until one night, he flung the ball about 30 feet in the air. It bounced on our lane, over the separation and gutters, and knocked down pins on the next lane.

We all had a big laugh at that. A bowler on the next lane laughed so hard, his dentures came out.

"his dentures came out."

now thats comedy!

We had a guy that was bowling against us last year that was not bowling well at all. He would also get madder as time went on, and he ended up punching the ball return towards the end of the night. He gave that ball return a good shot.
The next week he shows up with a cast on his hand. He ended up breaking his hand the week before with his little tantrum.
We got a chuckle out of that,..serves him right.

I remember this one time I saw a guy in our league kick a ball return the next week with one of those big foot boots one. It was funny watching him bowl because it was on his non-slide step so he still threw the ball(not very well). But I smiled all night because of that guy.

dang now thats funny. i wouldn't hit or kick one of those things for nothing. i know it would hurt just by looking at it :P especially with bowling shoes on.

Haha, I heard a story at the other center here, of a guy I bowled with a lot and he is a very good bowler, but has a tantrum. He kicked the scoring machine unit, and I guess he hit the thing hard enough that he broke something in the lane and the entire pair shut down, and they couldn't fix it. He got suspended lol.

I've never understood the people that feel the need to hit something, especially that doesn't belong to them when they screw up the shot. I may go back and lightly tap a wall, but more than likely bang my head against the wall in a manner to lighten my mood some. I also need full use of my hands, legs and anything else in order to make a living so it never made sense to do something deliberately where I could hurt myself.

closest i ever came to a temper tantrum on the lanes- once i needed to mark in the tenth but blew the shot, i came off the approach, grabbed a pencil off the scoring desk and bit it in two while growling loudly. (yes, pencil- it was a long time ago).

i threw my brace one time because i missed an easy spare ( 6-10 ) i mean come on i missed it by just an inch of hitting the 6 pin. and it was last frame and i just had a strike. so i needed to pick up my spare to get the second game. didn't of course. but i did get the 3rd game so it wasn't as bad as i thought it would be. so i learned something. "Don't do it! "

I bowl with people on a regular basis that punch and lightly kick ball returns and setee tables so I'm pretty used to it. It's not something I like to see but people get frustrated and they express it. Personally, I get annoyed when I miss "easy" spares. I don't get frustrated until I miss a number of them. But even then, me hitting something is about as rare as leaving the Sour Apple. Most of the time I don't think you can even tell it bothers me though.

I seen a guy bounce his ball off the seating area floor like baskeball for missing a spare. Me i perfer just to not beat up the furniture at bowling alley for my mistakes LOL i just go out take breather and forget about it.

its funny but a guy kicked one of the ball returns sunday. i never noticed anyone doing this till i read it here in this post. kind of funny but i see things more now that i've read about it here.

I remember one time in high school, I was bowling at a local alley that was in really bad condition. Old, worn out, dry-as-a-bone wooden lanes, manual scoring with overhead projectors that didn't all work, etc. It's no wonder this place is closed.

Anyway, I was bowling, and I released the ball, and it dropped right into the left hand gutter (I'm lefty). It pops out, rolls across the lane, and into the right hand gutter. Then, it pops out of that gutter, and into the left hand gutter of the lane next to me. Pops out of that one, rolls across that lane, and ends up in the right hand gutter of that lane. Not only did I put the ball in the gutter, but did it 4 times on a single throw!!

Must've been a center w/ shallow gutters, Tuba.

right after i got my dimension drilled, one of my teammates, who i've been bowling with since about '98, decided that he would throw a couple of my old bowling balls because i wanted to clear space in my room. well, the first shot he threw ever with my Track mean machine, it rolled about 15 feet then into the gutter. almost immediately, the ball jumped out of the gutter and back onto the lane at just the precise angle so that when it made it to the pin deck, it was dead flush in the 1-3, and he ended up with a strike.

figured i'd take the topic full-circle, since i believe a similar story was the start of this topic.