Vince Staten: World's Greatest Bowler Comes to Kingsport

"World's Greatest Bowler" Jimmy Smith in 1927

Bowling arrived in Kingsport in December 1920 with the opening of the new Community Y, which featured a dormitory, a swimming pool, a gymnasium, a reading room, billiards tables and three bowling lanes! The lanes came from Cincinnati, took three weeks to assemble and cost $4,000.

Bowling was an immediate hit and proved so popular among Y members that a month later the board of the Y decided to open up the lanes to women, designating every Thursday as Ladies Day. No men or boys would be allowed on the lanes or in the pool or gymnasium anytime on Thursday.

And with bowling came bowling leagues with the local industries fielding teams. The final of the first Industrial League season was held March 11, 1921 with the Clinchfield Portland Cement Plant team lead by H.O. Bunn taking on the boys from Mead Fibre. (Mead, led by George MacNaughton, won. High score was 192 by the cement plant’s Charles Vance.)

Even Kingsport High started a team to compete with other local high schools.

Kingsport's Community Y in 1921

Then challenges took off. In one issue of the Kingsport Times the Sockmakers of the Kingsport Hosiery Mill challenged the team from J. Fred Johnson’s Big Store. It seemed every day one team was challenging another to find out who was best by meeting on the Y lanes. There were even internecine challenges: the Grocery Department of the Big Store challenged employees from the rest of the company to a match.

The highest individual score reported during that first year of bowling in Kingsport belonged to Conrad Miller of Clinchfield Portland Cement who rolled a 232 game. (Miller would marry Ruth Dodd, making him Bobby Dodd’s brother-in-law.)

Soon the Times began carrying a bowling column written by B.O. Ling.

Obviously that was a pseudonym (bo-ling, bowling). But in his two-year tenure Mr. Ling did manage one major accomplishment: he got the World’s Greatest Bowler to come to Kingsport for an exhibition.

Jimmy Smith in Chicago in 1905

The World’s Greatest Bowler by universal acclamation was Jimmy Smith of Brooklyn who had declared himself such in 1906 after defeating Johnny “Little Wizard” Voorhies of New York in a best-of-eleven match. Smith, whose real name was Jimmy Mellilo, declared he would take on any and all challengers. And he did, always coming out on top.

Until 1921 when Jimmy Blouin of Blue Island, Illinois defeated him in a 60-game match.

Smith kept billing himself as the World’s Greatest Bowler, for touring purposes, but there were other challengers. So by the time he came to Kingsport he should have been billed as One of the World’s Greatest Bowlers.

In the years leading up to his 1927 appearance in Kingsport, when accurate records were beginning to be kept, he averaged 211 over 12,000 games and recorded 16 perfect 300 games, said to be the most of any bowler.

The big announcement of Jimmy Smith’s appearance in Kingsport came in the Feb. 27, 1927 edition of the Kingsport Times:

GREATEST BOWLER OF TIME WILL BE HERE ON MARCH 31

Jimmy Smith, Holder of Unusual Records in Bowling Circles, to Give Exhibition on Y Alleys Next Month

B. O. Ling says "Make no other engagements for Thursday night, March 31; get this date firmly fixed in your mind and mark it up in your date book. This is the night that Jimmy Smith, the greatest bowler of all time, the one who has rolled more perfect scores than any other known bowler, will give an exhibition in Kingsport. Some of Kingsport's best bowlers will be picked to show their skill against him, and a large crowd is expected to root for the local boys.”

Ten days later “B.O. Ling” noted, “The idea has been adopted of having the bowlers of the city decide who they want to bowl against Jimmy Smith on his visit here March 31. In addition, to Lewis Moore of Bristol’s Y.M.C.A. team and Louis Thornberry of Erwin’s Southern Potteries team, two bowlers of Kingsport will roll Jimmy a series of three games each. A ballot box will be ready at the local alleys tonight and every bowler in the city is urged to vote. On Friday night the ballot box will be opened and votes counted.”

When the ballots were tallied, the winners, voted best local keglers by their compatriots, were Al “Bones” McConnell and H.S. Boda, both, of the Kingsport Press team.

“B.O. Ling” wrote, “Bristol fans will be here in full force, as will the Erwin bowlers, to witness an exhibition that is seldom seen in a city of this size. Arrangements have been made and seating capacity will take care of all spectators. Indications point to the fact that many ladies will attend, as many of the fair sex of Kingsport have caught the bowling fever, and next year will no doubt see a ladies league occupying the local alleys in the afternoons.”

The big day arrived and our man “B.O. Ling” was there to cover it:

“Before the largest crowd ever gathered in the bowling room of the Community Y, Jimmy Smith didn’t fail to awe the fans, which included contingents from Bristol and Erwin joining the Kingsport crowd. He bowled with such ease and grace as to draw favorable comment from all who saw him.”

Smith easily defeated Bristol’s Moore 551 to 467, Erwin’s Thornberry 542 to 488 and Kingsport’s Boda 535 to 444.

But it wasn’t so easy against the 20-year-old Bones McConnell. The first game was a squeaker with McConnell nudging The Great One 187 to 185.

Jimmy Smith came back in the second game with an easy 189-179 victory, putting everything on the final game.

It started out tight but then McConnell rolled strikes in the ninth and tenth frames to finish at 190, routing the World Champion who fell off to 169.

The Kingsport Lad had bested the World’s Greatest.

This wasn’t Al McConnell’s only moment in the bowling spotlight. Six weeks later he won the Kingsport Times’ first City Bowling Championship and went on to win the city championship six years in a row.

In 1935 he led the Industrial League in scoring with a season average of 177.

McConnell would continue to reign as Kingsport’s top bowler until 1938 when he was unseated by Monty Reams of the Eastman team.

Al McConnell in 1948

Al “Bones” McConnell died in 1974 at age 68.

His obituary noted that he “began work at the Kingsport Press in January 1923 as an office boy and rose to become southern sales manager. McConnell was a founder of the Kingsport Elks Club, holding the number one card. He served as chairman of the Salvation Army advisory board, was a charter member of the Kingsport Civitan Club and six times city bowling champion.”

There was no mention of that glorious day in 1927 when he took on the World’s Greatest Bowler and beat him at his own game.

By 1955 Jimmy Smith was hawking his own line of bowling shoes

Other claimants to the title of World’s Greatest Bowler over the years:

1930 – Sykes Thoma (designated by St. Louis Star and Times)

1935 – “Chesty Joe” Falcaro (Corsicana, Texas Daily Sun)

1940 - Andy Varipapa (Allentown, Pa. Morning Call)

1945 – Billy “Haywire” Benda (Rock Island, Illinois Argus)

1950 – Ned Day (Deseret News, Salt Lake City)

1955 – Buddy Bomar (Dayton, Ohio Daily News)

1955 – Don Carter (Nashville Tennessean)

1960 – Don Carter (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

1965 – Don Carter, Dick Weber, Buzz Fazio and Billy Hartwick (Akron Beacon Journal)

2021 – Pete Weber (Google: Who is the World’s Greatest Bowler?)

As many of you know I am a Championship Bowler (retired). On Saturday Dec. 31, 1960 David Good and I won the AJBC-sanctioned Warpath Lanes Christmas Tournament Junior Doubles. It is true that when the results were published in the Kingsport Times-News the next day, David and I were listed in second place, ten pins behind the team of Jim Beck and Joe Duncan. When David and I left the alley on Saturday afternoon, we had been declared the winners by ten pins. The win was somehow stolen from us during an unmonitored recount. The reader is left to draw his or her own conclusions.