Champs team: quads or clones?

Officials at Historic Stone’s Lanes have frozen the bowling alley’s Tavern League standings while they investigate a complaint alleging that the Cunningham Quads, the four brothers who bowl for the phenomenally successful Champions team, are not identical quadruplets but in fact are clones manufactured in a North Korean military laboratory twenty years ago.










Carl, Lyall, Darrell, and Denzel Cunningham, l to r: All-American boys or instruments of a fiendish plot?

If the claim is substantiated, the Quads will be disqualified from competition under the league’s Earl Anthony Rule, which was adopted in 2002 after it was discovered that genetic material from the late PBA champion was being traded on the open market for as little as $5 a swab.

The Quads defeated the Illuminati Bowling Team 5-2 Monday night in a match that has been formally protested by the IBT. Entering this week’s competition the Quads had compiled a 31-11 record to lead the Spare Division. The Illuminati, at 28-14, were leading the Strike Division. If Monday’s result stands, they’ll be 30-19, and still on top of the division.

Illuminati science advisor Leonard Nimoy said suspicions were aroused by the bleating sounds the Quads made as they released the ball and when they celebrated strikes. “These goatlike noises in moments of physical stress and arousal are typical of what we’ve seen in the products of the Pyongyang experiments of 1986 and ’87,” Nimoy said. It is believed that North Korean scientists, working with limited resources and primitive equipment, used small amounts of goat DNA in attempting to clone human subjects. “The age of these specimens is also about right to fit that theory.”

League officials decided to act on the anonymous complaint after Champs anchorman Denzel Cunningham celebrated a 218 game by headbutting the ball return and eating a two-ounce bag of rosin. Nimoy said there were reports of other manifestations of goatlike behavior by the Quads, but he declined to elaborate “to protect the young woman involved.”

Nimoy also refused to engage in speculation when asked why the North Korean government would attempt to subvert an Ohio bowling league with cloned competitors. “Fiendish, isn’t it?” he said.

The lines
Nelson—107, 154, 108: 369; avg 122 (+1)
Kennedy—98, 126, 139: 363; avg 129 (-3)
Peitz—124, 142, 139: 405; avg 143 (-1)
Corathers—160, 169, 141: 470; avg 157 (unch)

Next week
The Shockers

Moderation pays off for Illuminati, 7-0

Club officials are calling the Illuminati Bowling Team's new bar monitoring policy a great success after the team steamrolled hard-drinking, cellar-dwelling Jagerbowl 7-0 in Tavern League action Monday night.

The Illuminati have won fourteen straight and are securely on top of the league's Strike Division with a 28-14 record. Bob Huggins, IBT vice president of moderation, attributes the team's recent success to a newly implemented policy of keeping track of the beverages consumed by athletes during games and discouraging overconsumption. "Great thanks are due to our tap nanny Susan Doremus," Huggins said, "who kept meticulously timed records of each teammate's visits to the bar."

The Jagerbowl matchup was considered an important early test of the strategy, because the Jager team had announced plans to counter the IBT's sobriety with a new drinking policy of its own. That wasn't a factor in Monday's games, as Jagerbowl's idea of temperance turned out to be replacing their regular Robitussin-like liqueur with a mixed drink that involved cherry vodka and Red Bull.

The advantages of the IBT's more conservative approach can be charted in the results: as the evening wore on, the Illuminati's winning margins grew larger. They won the first game by 65 pins, the second by 87, and the third, which was briefly interrupted when Jager anchor Greg Inamorato tried unsuccessfully to engage Doremus in an extravagantly complex high five, by 120.

Debbie Kennedy (two Edmond Fitzgerald Porters) was a standout for the IBT, rolling a forget-my-average 450 series. Don Corathers (three Bass Ales) had his best night of the young season, a 520 series with a 201 high game. Mike Peitz (two diet colas) turned in a consistent 464.

The lines
Doremus--113, 104, 94: 311; avg 104 (new)
Kennedy--155, 158, 137: 450; avg 133 (+18)
Peitz--151, 167, 146: 464; avg 145 (+3)
Corathers--170, 149, 201: 520; avg 157 (+4)

Next week
The presumptiously named but apparently pretty good Champions (24-11).

IBT routs Crabs, 7-0

The Illuminati Bowling Team opened a big jug of Kwell on a woozy We Got Crabs foursome in Tavern League action at Historic Stone's Lanes Monday night. The IBT took all seven available points and sharpened its record to 21-14 after five weeks of bowling.

We Got Crabs, which represents a tony new downtown Cincinnati seafood restaurant, emerged from a players-only team meeting after the match and announced that beginning next week they will compete under a new name, We Got Scrod.

The lines
Nelson--132, 119, 132: 383; avg 121 (+2)
Palmarini--136, 122, 110: 368; avg 132 (-10)
Peitz--119, 187, 128: 434; avg 142 (+1)
Corathers--179, 170, 146: 495; avg 153 (+3)

Other Illuminati averages
Kennedy, 115 (3 games)
Graham, 138 (3 games)
Huneke, 136 (3 games)
Doremus, 2 whiskey sours (0 games)

Next week
Fearsome divisional rival Jagerbowl