Sunday rerun: Out of their league

I had no idea that bowling was this big of a deal!  There was a Johnny Unitas Colt Lanes bowling place down the road apiece when I was a kid, and we would hang around there, hoping to catch a glimpse of the greatest quarterback ever to play in the NFL while we tossed the ball down the alley.  Eventually, the manager would come out and holler at us, claiming that throwing the balls down the back alley was hurting his business, so we'd come in and actually roll the balls toward the pins.


And I know that tens of millions of Americans wear shirts that look a lot like they came from Charlie Sheen's wardrobe so they can go bowling in a league, one or two nights per week.  Looks like fun, if a little overly noisy.  But the camaraderie must be worth it!


Now comes news via my local Patch that a local guy is charged with embezzling 47 thousand semolians from his local bowling league.  This is stunning news, not least because you read that the bowling league started out in 1896, long before most of us were born, and because there is a bowling league that has   had   $47,000 in its bank acct.   


So you read on, and it turns out that all the bowlers chipped in between $200 and $1,000, and this is the prize money that is now missing.  The treasurer is the one on the "hook," if you will, and you can only hope that he doesn't wind up in the "gutter."  Unless he's being "frame"d, he will have to come up with a better story than "the family had a party at my house while I was away, and when I came back, the money was GONE!"


Hey, whaddya know?  We should see if we can "spare" him any extra cash, so this doesn't "strike" him too hard. 

I'm not saying anyone did anything; I don't know anything beyond what was in the Patch.  But I remember when a detective buddy of mine had to investigate a local clown organization for the same sort of thing: dues money missing.  His investigation in that case was hampered by the clowns' practice of only referring to each other by their clown name, so his notes on the case said things such as, "Mr Flopsy said that he saw Pee-Poe with a large stack of cash on the night that they all went to celebrate Baggy Britches's engagement to Miss Choo Choo."

The money was eventually recovered in that case, but still missing are one (1) six-foot Styrofoam hot dog and roll, and a pair of men's shoes, black, size 37.