Extremely Expensive Bowling Balls that You Probably Couldn't Afford

Some of us are willing to spend a lot more money on our favorite pastimes than others. Traditionally, bowling is not considered to be a particularly expensive endeavor. A new ball will usually set you back between $50 and $150, and then you might need a pair of bowling shoes and a good bowling bag, like the ones you can find at bowlingbags.com. Overall, it requires a small initial investment and then just the price of maintenance plus the cost of renting a lane at the bowling alley. However, there are ways you can drive the costs up by getting a very expensive bowling ball like the ones in the list below.

1. Yoda Bowling Ball

There are tons of bowling balls out there that feature custom designs and they are all more expensive than regular balls. However, the exact cost will depend on the intricacy of the design. A perfect example is one bowling ball which has a very detailed portrait of Yoda from Star Wars on it. The workmanship alone will drive up the price, but then you also need to consider that just about anything with Star Wars on it is considered a collectible by many.

2. Skull Ball

The price of this ball goes up because it is a movie prop. It was used in the 1999 superhero movie Mystery Men by The Bowler, a character played by Janeane Garofalo. The movie wasn’t a hit, but it became a cult classic and still has a following.

3. Rose Ball

Kingpin is the most iconic bowling movie ever made and in it the main villain played by Bill Murray had a distinctive bowling ball with a rose inside it. This ball later went to auction and it was reportedly sold for around $20,000. BowlingBag-9-3.jpg

Whenever you are in need of quality bowling products such as bowling bags, visit http://bowlingbags.com and you will find a large selection available to you at affordable prices.

Photo of the Year

...so far.





From the Baltimore Sun, this might be one of the best baseball photos of the year. Homeplate Umpire Greg Gibson clears the plate so Chris Dickerson can officially score his game-winning walk-off three-run homer.
Amazing. Great shot by Sun photographer Karl Merton Ferron.

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Tragedy at Camden

Writing a baseball blog is supposed to be a fun hobby. I get to write about my favorite team, post funny memes and basically faff about on the internet in between responsibilities both professional and personal. But every so often something happens that I simply cannot ignore and I have to take a detour in the world of politics and my general disdain for most of humanity.

Today is one of those days.

Last week the forces of machismo, alcohol, rivalry, idiocy, and adrenaline combined in the stands of Camden Yards. When these things happen it is never a good thing, and it does happen often but it rarely ever ends in anything significant. Last week it did. At Wednesday’s Orioles – Nationals game Matthew Fortese from Hagerstown was with a young lady on their second date. Matthew made the, apparently, cardinal sin of wearing a Yankees hat at a baseball game and thus incurred the wrath of Gregory Fleischman and Michael Bell, a couple of 20-somethings from the greater Baltimore area.
The complete circumstances of what transpired throughout that night will likely never be entirely known. What we do know is this: The two men are accused of harassing Fortese and his girlfriend most of the night. This culminated with a full beer being lobbed at the couple. Fortese then stood up and confronted the two men. A punch was thrown, Fortese stumbled and fell backwards over the railing of their section. He landed on the concrete five feet below fracturing his skull in the process.
He is currently in the Intensive Care Unit of the University of Maryland Medical Center’s Shock Trauma center. Bell and Fleischman are out on bail.

We now have to have a discussion on fan behavior at games.

First and foremost let us dispatch with the fake shock over this. Allow me to channel my inner Claude Raines when I say I am shocked, SHOCKED, to hear someone got seriously hurt at a baseball game fight. And please, do not mistake my flippancy for callousness. I have nothing but the deepest sympathies for the Fortese family and friends and I genuinely wish him the speediest and full recovery. I also have nothing but pity for the pathetic pair of boys that are charged with the assault. The bottom line is they did not intend to seriously hurt this man. Sure, they seem to be the guys who started it and one of them threw a punch but I do not believe that in their wildest dreams they expected something like this would happen.

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What a night; Chris Dickerson's walk-off homer helps Orioles defeat Tigers, 7-5

What a week for the Orioles. After their come-back-from-behind victory on Wednesday, I didn’t think much else could have topped what I saw then.

Well, what happened at Oriole Park at Camden Yards on Friday may have topped that. As you all probably know by now, the Orioles pulled an amazing win, defeating the Detroit Tigers, 7-5, in the first contest in a three game series.

With Baltimore down by three, 6-3, in the ninth, Detroit brought in Jose Valverde to close out the game. He was basically unemployed at the start of the season; however, Detroit brought him back – because they had no one else really to close out games!

Anyhow, if there was a closer the Orioles could come back against, it was Valverde.

Then it happened.

Nick Markakis led off the frame with a home run, and then Adam Jones along with Chris Davis followed up with back-to-back singles. The Tigers got two outs thanks to horrible at-bats by Matt Wieters and J.J. Hardy; however, the next batter, Chris Dickerson decided to end things with one swing of the bat.

He took a Valverde offering and deposited it into right centerfield, ending the game. The sold out crowd of 46,249 who stayed until the end were in frenzy, and it felt like the Orioles had won a playoff game or something. It felt like a rock concert and you were surrounded by thousands of your best friends dressed in orange and black.

Most of the fans didn’t leave the stadium after the Orioles secured their 31^st win of the season – at least until they saw Dickerson pied the face with shaving cream by Jones and Alexi Casilla.

Everyone stayed on the feet from the Markakis homer until the very end. It was quite a sight to see and just amazing how the community has responded to the Orioles finally becoming a winning organization.

Opposing teams have to know by now that no lead they build by now is safe with the Orioles, and that they will fight for all 27 outs.

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