A flash flood begins with a drop of rain on stone. A forest fire tells with just a whiff of distant smoke. A perfect game of bowling is a possibility only when an X is recorded in the little box in the corner of frame number 1, the first of twelve in a row. Steve Wong racked up nine straight strikes, so in the tenth and final frame of our first game that night—MDash posted a 33, and I had a 118, Anna a 147—a gang had gathered around our lane, about thirty people (by frame 6 the other games had quit to watch what might be Steve Wong’s second perfect game in a row—an oddity and marvel as rare as twin rainbows).
He opened the tenth with a strike. The crowd crowed and Anna screamed out, “Atta baby!” A hush fell, Steve strolled and swiped, and all ten pins fell again, his eleventh strike of the game with one more needed for perfection redux. It would be a bad joke to say, “You could hear a pin drop,” but you could. Dead silence met Steve’s final roll. When PERFECT GAME PERFECT GAME PERFECT GAME honked on the computer scoreboard, you’d have thought it was New Year’s Eve on the same night the Brooklyn Bridge opened, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and Saddam Hussein was dragged from his spider hole. Wong-mania was in full force, and we didn’t get out of the place until exactly three in the morning—3:00. Get it?
Had we bothered with a second game that night, you might not be reading this. Steve could have bowled a 220 and then played pinball. But Fate is a kooky dame. Four nights later, bowling for free as a prize for his twenty-four consecutive “tens-at-one-blow,” we returned for a goofy night of watching MDash try for something other than an open-gutter 33. But Steve Wong altered the tenor of the evening by rolling Chinese Lightning for a strike. He then rolled another. And, well, holy cow, as they say at bowling alleys on the subcontinent of India.
Steve rolled strike after strike, talked less and less, and entered a Concentration Zone that blocked out the rest of existence. He said nothing, never sat down, and never looked at what was happening behind him. People were texting their bowl mates to get down to the lanes on the PDQ. Free pizza was delivered. Smart-phone cameras came out in force, and a family of six showed up, the little kids in their pajamas, pulled out of bed because a sitter could not be found and Mom and Dad did not want to miss another perfect game. Steve Wong had yet to bowl anything other than a big black X for his third game in a row. In an atmosphere of utter wonder and magic, he kept right on smacking down thirty-point frames for his fourth, fifth, and—wait for it—sixth game. In a row.
We were openmouthed and hoarse from screaming, the three of us, huddled around the little desk between lanes 7 and 8, surrounded by a crowd of 140 and then some. I had stopped bowling. Anna began pacing instead of playing in the fifth frame of game 2, not wanting to somehow mar the alley and screw up Steve’s run. Only MDash kept rolling, two gutter balls to every one that found the stack.
Huzzahs rose and fell from lofty levels to silences thick with stilled lungs. Anna’s “Atta baby” became the common cheer not just for each of Steve’s strikes but, charitably, for MDash’s knockdowns as well. When the seventy-second consecutive strike for S. Wong was computed as his sixth perfect game in a row, the man-in-full stood at the foul line rubbing his eyes, his back to the berserk crowd, which screamed and stamped and pounded bottles of beer and cups of soda. None of us had ever been present for that kind of achievement—trivial to some, as what is bowling but a game? But come on! Six perfect anythings are a permanent memory.
Check out the Internet for videos of the evening and you’ll see Steve stone-faced as strangers and pals celebrate him like a congressman-elect. Look at the comments: about 90 percent of the Anonymous Horde call it a hoax, but never mind them. The next day Steve was fielding calls from media outlets that wanted comments, photos, and appearances on camera. He went on the local news, the four channels shooting him individually on lane 7 as he stood stiffly, the embodiment of on-camera discomfort. You actually roll all those perfect games? How’s that feel, rolling all those perfect games? What were you thinking? You ever think you’d roll so many strikes? Yes. Good. Trying to get another. Nope.
Each camera crew asked him to finish the interview with a roll down the alley. He obliged with four strikes, on camera, on cue. The string continued. The capper was a call from ESPN for an appearance on a show called Alley Nation. They’d pay him seventeen hundred bucks for just showing up, and if he rolled another perfect game, he’d get one of those six-foot-tall checks for $100,000.
You’d think such a heady few days would be fun, with an invite to be on TV and all. But Steve comes from a long line of quiet, humble Wongs. He clammed up. MDash saw him at work at Home Depot, standing stock-still in Power Tools, supposedly racking saber saw blades, but all he was doing was staring at two different blades in their clamshell packaging like the labels were written in a foreign language. He woke up at night with the dry heaves. When we picked him up in my VW Bus to drive to the ESPN gig, he almost forgot the bags with his monogrammed shoes and Chinese Lightning.
The show was going to be at Crowne Lanes in Fountain Valley—a long drive, so we stopped at an In-N-Out burger before hitting the freeway. In the drive-thru lane, Steve finally confessed what had been bothering him. He did not want to bowl on TV.
“You against the idea of getting free money?” I asked him. “The closest I’ve ever been to a hundred K was a Powerball ticket with two numbers right.”
“Bowling should be fun,” Steve said. “Laughs in an informal social contract. We roll when our turn comes up and no one cares about the score.”
MDash wanted him to take his winnings in silver dollars.
Steve continued as we crawled through the line. In-N-Out is always busy. “I stopped competitive bowling at St. Anthony Country Day when it became a letter sport. You had to file an application and sign score sheets. Keep up an average. It wasn’t fun anymore. It was stressful then. It’s stressful now.”
“Look at me, Stevie baby,” Anna said, reaching around the seat and grabbing his face in her hands. “Relax! There is nothing you can’t do on a day like today!”
“On what waiting room poster did you read that?”
“I’m just saying, turn this day into fun with a capital F. Today, Steve Wong, you are going to go on TV and you are going to have fun. Fun fun fun fun.”
“I don’t think so,” Steve said. “Nope, nope, nope, nope.”
Crowne Lanes had been a site for PBA tournaments. There were grandstand-style seats and ESPN banners, lights for the TV, and multiple cameras. When Steve saw the seats filled with avid bowling fans, he let out a cussword, rare for Steve Wong.
An exhausted woman with a headset and a clipboard found us.
“Which one of you is Steve Wong?” MDash and I raised our hands. “Okay. You’ll be on lane 4 after the game between Shaker Al Hassan and Kim Terrell-Kearny. The winner of that plays the winner of the Kyung Shin Park–Jason Belmonte game for the final. Nothing’s expected of you until then.”
Steve went out to the parking lot to pace with Anna on his heels, talking about how fun it must be to work at ESPN. MDash and I grabbed sodas and sat in a VIP section to see Kyung Shin Park beat Jason Belmonte by 12 in what was a damn fine exhibition of the hardwood game of tenpin. In the second game, MDash rooted hard for Shaker Al Hassan—he knew a lot of Al Hassans before coming to the USA—but Kim Terrell-Kearny (who was a woman pro, by the way) nipped him 272–269. While the cameras were being rolled over to lane 4 and the crew started tweaking the lights, the crowd milled about and Anna came looking for us.