There’s no sport like life in the oiled lanes

Every columnist has guidelines that serve as the conscience of his work. Based on culinary tastes and vacation preferences, I have but two.

I will cover any event sponsored by Denny’s.

I will cover any event whose athletes wear patches advertising Motel 6.

Thus I head down to the Dick Weber Open at Fountain Bowl in Fountain Valley on Thursday, hoping for a grand slam of a time, wondering if they will leave the light on for me.

It is, and they do, and I don’t even have to trade in my loafers for faded clown shoes.

The Professional Bowlers Assn. is my dream date.

“Hey, how you doing, I enjoy your work,” says Tony Reyes, leaving his lane, sticking out his hand, startling me.

Reyes is one of the tour’s top money winners. He is in the middle of a qualifying game. He needs a bunch of strikes to advance to the next round.

It’s like Kobe Bryant running off the court to make small talk with a fan during a fourth-quarter comeback.

“Should you really be talking to people in the middle of the competition?” I ask.

“Why not?” Reyes says.

“Shouldn’t you be, like, over there holding your ball and stressing out?” I ask.

“Nah,” he says. “It’s just a game.”

God bless the PBA, which drops everything to shake your hand and invite you inside and make you remember.

Bowling is the only professional sports event that smells like your first nice pair of shoes and feels like one of your first birthday parties.

Spectators at the Fountain Bowl lanes Thursday could slip away for a game of air hockey, or try to impossibly use a claw to grab a stuffed animal, or simply chill out in the nursery playroom.

Oops. Sorry. The playroom is converted into a media room, folks typing statistics on alphabet carpets beneath artfully colored drawings of Oscar the Grouch.

“We’re a sport for all ages,” publicity manager Rosie Leutzinger says with a grin.

All ages, and all types, bowling being the only pro sporting event where spectators can buy a club sandwich from a vendor, a pair of socks from a vending machine or a spot in the tournament.

A spot in the what?

Yep, the Dick Weber Open is one of three tour events each season that accepts non-PBA bowlers. Anybody with $500 and their own shoes can sign up and play. First come, first served up.

“Two days before it started, I just walked right in and signed up,” says Jason Carrillo, a 28-year-old vending machine operator from Montebello.

With his name plastered on the back of an untucked golf shirt, with a Del Taco breakfast dancing in his belly, Carrillo gamely endures the three qualifying rounds before being eliminated.

Only 892 pins behind the leader.

“Man, these lanes are really tough,” he says. “But I got some nice autographs.”

Those tough lanes are oiled, but, in a recent switch, the players aren’t.

Pronounced dead at the turn of the century, a victim of too little flash and too many channels, the PBA was purchased in 2000 by some Microsoft geeks who have waxed it and shined it.

Among the written rules are, no drinking or smoking while wearing your bowling shirt.

Among the unwritten rules are, you must actually attempt to fit into your bowling shirt.

Gone are days of the lumpy guys hitting the 11th Frame bar between rounds, or lighting up between shots. The players at Southern California’s only tour event Thursday were generally young, mostly slim and, in one case, female.

You don’t think fat matters here, you trying bowling as many as 40 games in four days.

Because only a dozen players earned more than $100,000 last season, these guys have to be tough for other reasons. Some of them have second jobs.

The tour includes a pickle maker, a candlestick maker and, yes, OK, Tom Baker.

All this, and no steroids.

“This is one sport where they don’t work,” says Hall of Famer Carmen Salvino.

All this, and the Crotch Chop.

“Not a day goes by when somebody doesn’t ask me to do it, and you know what I say?” says Pete Weber, son of the tournament’s namesake, and the big-haired, gravel-voiced throwback who uses that celebration move. “I say, ‘Sure, why not?’ ”

Stuck on ESPN opposite the NFL for half of its season, bowling doesn’t draw the big television numbers seen in the days of Chris Schenkel and Nelson Burton Jr.

Often stuck in remote bowling centers -- tour officials are instructed to never call them alleys -- bowling will never draw big crowds or buzz.

But that’s OK. What’s wrong with a sport surviving as a wonderful little throwback secret? Do even our living memories now have to be judged by ratings and razzle?

Now, if the folks at the Dick Weber Open could only find somebody to roll out Sunday afternoon’s first ball.

It’s a tradition before the finals telecast, and everyone from Jerome Bettis to the governor of Oregon has done it, but tournament officials can’t find anyone here.

Are you saying there are no celebrities in this town who wouldn’t benefit from a roll with real folks?

Officials will lend you a ball, shoes, and a second chance if you throw a gutter ball.

Bet you can also get a Moons Over My Hammy and $69 room out of it, but I can’t be certain.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at [email protected]. For previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.