Read Online Pin Action: Small-Time Gangsters, High-Stakes Gambling, and the Teenage Hustler Who Became a Bowling Champion by Gianmarc Manzione - Free Book Online
Authors: Gianmarc Manzione
Ads: Link
he walked into Avenue M Bowl and, certainly, long after he left the place alive.
Johnny got his first taste of the action in 1961 at a place in the Dyker Heights section of Brooklyn called Fortway Lanes, where the owner let him bowl for free as long as he agreed to clean tables, mop floors, and get the place ready for league after school. Johnny was not a great bowler yet on the road, but he was great at Fortway, a place loaded with shylocks on the prowl. A lot of action players had what they called their “home house,” the place where they bowled most often and rarely, if ever, lost a match. If you beat a guy at his home house, though, you left the place with pockets full of money. That was the reason Fish Face’s gambit with Mac and Stoop took off. Everybody wanted a piece of them at their home house because victory promised a handsome payday.
Fortway Lanes was Johnny’s home house, and the shylocks knew it.
“Hey, kid,” one of the shylocks said to Johnny one day, “I am going to bring some guys down here to bowl you. I will put up all the money, and you get ten percent.”
Johnny was fourteen years old at the time, but he looked like he was twelve. The shylocks knew it would be easy to lure a guy into a match against him. What gambler was going to turn down an opportunity to bowl for money against a kid who looked like a grade-school altar boy? It would be some time before Johnny looked like anything more than a little kid, in fact. Even when he made the tour years later, he still cut the figure of a high-school sophomore: a body as thin as a horse hair, a gaunt face framed in thick, black sideburns that stretched from ear to chin, and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. Long before the Petraglia name meant anything outside of Brooklyn’s Fortway Lanes, it was a shylock and his bodyguard’s Cadillac that gave the teen his first notion of the life that awaited him.
Two weeks after Johnny got his orders at Fortway, the shylock’s bodyguard pulled up in his Cadillac as Johnny hung out on the corner with some buddies. It was time for the match. The bodyguard carted Johnny off to Fortway, where he encountered a group of grown men twice his age with bowling balls in tow.
“This is who ya want me to bowl?” one of them said.
“Yeah, let’s go,” the shylock grunted. “Now.”
Johnny’s father was supporting a family on $63 a week. Johnny himself was making about a buck a day with his after-school gig at Fortway. But the first match he bowled that day was for $1,000. The shylock peeled off a series of $100 bills and put them on the score table. Johnny had never seen a $100 bill in his life. At first, the pressure of all that money lording overhim proved a bit too much to handle. He lost the first game. Then he pondered the consequences, which, in the imagination of a fourteen-year-old, weighed just as heavily as all those $100 bills.
“This guy is gonna kill me or shoot me,” Johnny thought.
But the shylock had no interest in shooting anybody. This was not some James Cagney movie; this was gambling, and the shylock was going to make money on his boy. There was nothing else to think about.
“Relax,” the shylock said. “There will be a lot more games.”
Johnny won the second game. Then he lost the third, but won the fourth. By then, Johnny started feeling it, and he won the fifth and sixth games. The match continued, and Johnny crushed his opposition.
“Ya did real good, kid,” the shylock said. Then he peeled off a couple of those $100 bills, handed them to Johnny, and had his bodyguard take him home.
A hundred bucks went a long way in early-1960s Brooklyn, where life was as cheap as it was simple. It was a world where a nickel bought you a chocolate bar, any stoop was a front row seat to the nearest stickball game, and the pompadour was almost out of style. It also was a time when bowling alley food was about more than a greasy basket of fried cheese and a soda. Weekday specials at another
Johnny got his first taste of the action in 1961 at a place in the Dyker Heights section of Brooklyn called Fortway Lanes, where the owner let him bowl for free as long as he agreed to clean tables, mop floors, and get the place ready for league after school. Johnny was not a great bowler yet on the road, but he was great at Fortway, a place loaded with shylocks on the prowl. A lot of action players had what they called their “home house,” the place where they bowled most often and rarely, if ever, lost a match. If you beat a guy at his home house, though, you left the place with pockets full of money. That was the reason Fish Face’s gambit with Mac and Stoop took off. Everybody wanted a piece of them at their home house because victory promised a handsome payday.
Fortway Lanes was Johnny’s home house, and the shylocks knew it.
“Hey, kid,” one of the shylocks said to Johnny one day, “I am going to bring some guys down here to bowl you. I will put up all the money, and you get ten percent.”
Johnny was fourteen years old at the time, but he looked like he was twelve. The shylocks knew it would be easy to lure a guy into a match against him. What gambler was going to turn down an opportunity to bowl for money against a kid who looked like a grade-school altar boy? It would be some time before Johnny looked like anything more than a little kid, in fact. Even when he made the tour years later, he still cut the figure of a high-school sophomore: a body as thin as a horse hair, a gaunt face framed in thick, black sideburns that stretched from ear to chin, and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. Long before the Petraglia name meant anything outside of Brooklyn’s Fortway Lanes, it was a shylock and his bodyguard’s Cadillac that gave the teen his first notion of the life that awaited him.
Two weeks after Johnny got his orders at Fortway, the shylock’s bodyguard pulled up in his Cadillac as Johnny hung out on the corner with some buddies. It was time for the match. The bodyguard carted Johnny off to Fortway, where he encountered a group of grown men twice his age with bowling balls in tow.
“This is who ya want me to bowl?” one of them said.
“Yeah, let’s go,” the shylock grunted. “Now.”
Johnny’s father was supporting a family on $63 a week. Johnny himself was making about a buck a day with his after-school gig at Fortway. But the first match he bowled that day was for $1,000. The shylock peeled off a series of $100 bills and put them on the score table. Johnny had never seen a $100 bill in his life. At first, the pressure of all that money lording overhim proved a bit too much to handle. He lost the first game. Then he pondered the consequences, which, in the imagination of a fourteen-year-old, weighed just as heavily as all those $100 bills.
“This guy is gonna kill me or shoot me,” Johnny thought.
But the shylock had no interest in shooting anybody. This was not some James Cagney movie; this was gambling, and the shylock was going to make money on his boy. There was nothing else to think about.
“Relax,” the shylock said. “There will be a lot more games.”
Johnny won the second game. Then he lost the third, but won the fourth. By then, Johnny started feeling it, and he won the fifth and sixth games. The match continued, and Johnny crushed his opposition.
“Ya did real good, kid,” the shylock said. Then he peeled off a couple of those $100 bills, handed them to Johnny, and had his bodyguard take him home.
A hundred bucks went a long way in early-1960s Brooklyn, where life was as cheap as it was simple. It was a world where a nickel bought you a chocolate bar, any stoop was a front row seat to the nearest stickball game, and the pompadour was almost out of style. It also was a time when bowling alley food was about more than a greasy basket of fried cheese and a soda. Weekday specials at another
Similar Books
