The Final Score

As Neil Best revealed today in his Watch Dog blog, Fritz Peterson was my bowling instructor at Northern Illinois University back in the fall of 1970.

Fritz played ball at NIU in 1962-63 (.247 ERA) and after signing with the Yankees, came back to the cornfields of DeKalb to coach and teach in the offseason.

Twenty-year old gets a chance to take a bowling class with Fritz Peterson -- and get credit toward graduation, too? Wow, that was a tough choice.

Actually when it came to bowling, Fritz was a darn fine instructor. He stressed the hook and form, and I (your basic 150 bowler on a good day) actually once rolled so many strikes in a row that if we were keeping score there might have been a newspaper story about me. (I do suspect that there was something very, very wrong with the lanes, as a lot of the good bowlers were throwing gutterballs.)

Anyway, with Bowling 201 being a credit course, we had to take a written final. During it, my pencil broke and Coach Peterson was kind enough to swap with me.

Three years later, Fritz and Mike Kekich made the news because of a different kind of swap.