Milt Raymer for Ned Day Grip Mineralite (1940)

Milt Raymer, founder of the American Junior Bowling Congress, was elected to the Bowling Hall of Fame in 1972.

Brentwood Canyon Bowling Shirts (1949)

Coker Foul Detector (1939)

Roto-Star X-2 Bowling Ball (1973)

The Bowling Ball That Went Around the World

The year was 1914, and Brunswick was proud of its Mineralite bowling ball.  The vermillion-colored ball was made of hard rubber.  The company guaranteed it would not chip or lose its shape for three years.

Still, the $20 price tag was pretty steep for a ball in 1914.  Something had to be done to convince bowlers to part with that much cash.  That spring a Brunswick manager named Dell Heneman came up with a novel promotion.  Why not send a Mineralite around the world?

Travel was hard a century ago.  Cars and planes were primitive, and most people spent their entire life within fifty miles of the place where they were born.  Go around the world?  Now that was something to talk about!

The logistics weren’t as difficult as they might seem.  This was the heyday of the British Empire, and there were YMCAs in most of the British colonies.  Brunswick would simply ship the ball from one YMCA to another, using the Wells Fargo Express Company.  Regular reports would be sent back, and bowlers could track the ball as it made its journey.

The saga began on May 28, 1914, when Brunswick Mineralite #391914 left the company offices in Chicago.  It arrived in San Francisco two days later.  There was a match at the local YMCA, then the ball was sent back across the country to New York.  After a match there, the traveling Mineralite was put on a ship and brought to London.  Another ceremony, and another match.  The next scheduled stop was the International Bowling Tournament in Berlin.

Now things got complicated.  While the ball was on its way to Berlin, war broke out between Germany and Britain—a little scrap called World War I.  The Mineralite arrived, and German customs was suspicious. Nobody had ever seen a big, American-style bowling ball.  They thought it might be a bomb.  So the Germans sent the ball back. Somehow it wound up in Paris.  After sitting around there for a few months, the French returned it to London.

The original plan had been to send the ball from Berlin to Vienna, then to Rome for a hoped-for blessing from the Pope, and from Rome to Bombay. Since that wasn’t going to work, the Brits put the ball on a ship and sent it directly to India.  It reached Bombay in November.

After yet another YMCA ceremony, the Mineralite was loaded onto a ship headed for Australia.  On the way, the ship sank.  Oh, well . . .  But wait!  The first reports were wrong!  The ball had missed the boat and was still safe in Bombay!

Now the Mineralite was really put on board a ship, and made its way to Sydney without incident.  From Sydney it sailed across the Pacific to San Diego, where the ball was exhibited at the California Pacific Exposition.  Finally, in June 1915, after thirteen months and 35,000 miles on the road and over the sea, Mineralite #391914 arrived back in San Francisco.  There it was proudly displayed at the Brunswick booth of the Panama Pacific World’s Fair.

Funny thing.  After the fair closed, and all that trouble, Brunswick lost the ball.  It was missing for nineteen years.  But in 1934, someone found #391914 tucked away in a warehouse.  Think of the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

In Chicago, there was another world’s fair that year, the Century of Progress Exposition.  Brunswick trotted out the lost-and-found Mineralite, and once more put it on display.  Stories in the papers related the amazing adventures of the world-touring bowling ball.  Then the Chicago fair closed.  And once again, the ball disappeared.

Where is it today?  Nobody seems to know.  But if you’re poking around in the attic, and come across Great-grandpa’s old Mineralite, and it’s marked #391914, hold on to it.  You have a piece of history.

First published in BOWLERS JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL in August 2010. For this story and 89 more, buy a copy of my book THE BOWLING CHRONICLES. Available on Amazon, or from McFarland Publishing for bulk orders. A better league prize than another trophy!

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