Pablo Torre Finds Out - What the World's Greatest (Two-Handed) Bowler Can Teach You About Daring to Look Stupid

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

It's easy to shot-shame a player at the free-throw line and athletes who throw funny. From the depths of that bullying and loneliness, though, a revolution is brewing, with adaptations so innovative that they may shame sports themselves. Pablo goes bowling with Jason Belmonte — the two-handed Tiger Woods of the lanes — and learns how to succeed in life while looking kinda stupid. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. Because I have a condition. Singular chirophobia. The fear of using one hand. Right after this ad. You're listening to Draf King's Network. You just said that you need a sense of yourself for this, because I want to talk about Ben Simmons.

Bro, you know how I feel about Ben Simmons. I've said some things off the record about Ben Simmons that I can't say on the record. actually, yeah, beyond the pale, like too much. That are actually true potentially? So Ben Simmons, for people who don't know, Ben Simmons is a fraud. Overall pick. Former Philadelphia 76er, now Brooklyn, that is back playing basketball. He came back.

Unfortunately. Just weeks ago after being away. And you and many people are already shitting all over his existence. He's an embarrassment, and I don't know why he's still doing this to himself. Have never stopped shitting all over his existence, I should say. Just go enjoy your millions of dollars and watch love is blind. Like, why are you continuing to embarrass yourself? You want him to just give up.

Bro, just enjoy the, like the spoils that you created. I'm not here to say that Ben Simmons should be free from criticism. I call him specifically, I call him a flying car without a stereo. Yeah, which sounds awesome until he's like, oh, you shoot the ball, bro. And then what does he look like? That's the stereo. A fucking camera or something. Like, enough.

That's the stereo. So look, I actually agree with you on this level. He needs to do something different. about his shot. And many people have been saying this to him. And he does refuse to change. And that part has been very frustrating. For me, the guy who's trying to carve out the lonely job of being Ben Simmons political strategist.

I've been trying to send him these messages around like, do something different about your shot. Because there have been many people who have struggled at the free throw line specifically, where Ben Simmons is abysmal. He's off out. Ben Simmons. He misses again. He's missed five consecutive free throws now. He's abysmal to the point where he's afraid even to, like, really drive to the hoop in the same way because he's afraid he'll get fouled. This was the whole thing with the Hawks, you know, where he passed the ball in game seven with the Sixers, and it was traumatic for me. And I just can point to many examples where, like, hey, Rick Berry became a over 80% free throw shooter. 89% because he did what? He shot Granny's style with two hands.

Like, and Rick Berry's been saying this forever. With my two-handed underhanded free throw, it's a lot easier, I feel, to get in a relaxed situation. I like to bounce the ball. My arms hang down. My knees are bent. I'm relaxed. Top the wrist. So do that.

The thing is as embarrassing as that looks, it's not as embarrassing as what Ben Simmons is doing because the ball's going in the net. Like, 89% of the time. I do want to be fair to Ben Simmons. three throw stats here because career, yeah, he's, this is bad. What's the number? Go ahead. Yeah, sub 60%. 59% career. Bro, bro, I'm not even kidding you.

I could do better than that. Sub 50% this season. No one's guarding him at the free throw line. You understand that, right? And in fact, he's taking fewer free throws than ever so far this year. Pathetic. Less than won a game because he doesn't want to even try. No, it's pathetic.

The other thing that's just crazy about this to me, if he will listen to me for a second, and Ben will listen to me, is that in Korea, in the Korean Basketball League, they're doing something completely different from Rick Berry. That's also working. Because watch this, Cortez. Look at this. So this is Korean basketball,

and these guys are deliberately shooting bank shots. Oh, interesting. At the free throw line. Huh. And so all of these, yes, they look stupid as hell, deliberately try to shoot it off the glass. But these guys are collectively shooting, like Rick Berry, over 80% doing this.

It's working. Clearly. It's ironic, right? You don't want to be humiliated. And so you do something repeatedly over and over again that results in more humiliation when the real solution, I would argue, is to embrace a technique that everybody does and has for a very long time laughed at. No, of 100%.

That's well said. And so if he started doing this and looked at it. look like an imbecile in his eyes, he'd look less like an imbecile in my eyes because the ball would be going in the net. And he's trying something different, right? And so to me, sports history is full of these things. Sports is such a great case study in the ways in which people's desire to not look stupid make them worse at their jobs. Right? Like, so for instance, I've been thinking a lot about Dick Fosbury. Who? Dick Fosberry is the guy who changed the high jump. He was an Olympian, 1968 Mexico City, summer games.

He changes the high jump because, as he explains it, he did this. When I was in grade school at Roosevelt, I learned the scissors style, which was an old style. Got into high school where my coach tried to convert me to the classic style. I was a complete failure, went back to the scissors, and I changed it. I moved my body position in order to jump higher and make it easier. He does my whole thing facing backwards, the way he came. It was so radically different that it garnered a lot of attention. And everywhere I went, the crowd was going nuts.

It took a generation for all of the high jumpers to adopt it. But today it's universal. I saw you. I saw you very, very obviously grinning. As soon as he said, I was scissoring. But he changed it to the point where he now moves his center of gravity because he's going backwards head first over the bar and he inspired literally everybody else in the sport to do the same thing and it looked stupid at first and so I wanted to do an episode today did you just burp

cleared my throat if you wanted me to burp I'll burp into the microphone I don't want you to okay very good what I wanted to do speaking of looking stupid is find the foremost example as an inspiration potentially for Ben Simmons for a guy who did exactly this right a more modern example because they decided to look dumb, got better and changed everything. And so I had to go bowling. Really? That's right.

You probably suck at bowling. Not anymore. We are sitting here at a bowling alley. I don't think I've bowled in maybe a dozen years. So this is not my comfort zone, leaving the studio and sitting here across from you. Do I call you, Jason? Do I call you Belma? What should I be doing here?

I don't matter. I'm good with... We did the one. Yeah. So I just want to even further simplify it. You're the two-hander. I'm the two-hander. Yeah.

I bow with two-hands. When you mentioned two-handed in this, you sort of imagine Rick Berry in my mind. Like, Granny's style, like underhand. Like... Doesn't quite, yeah, doesn't quite look like that. So I should just explain what Jason Belmonti's iconoclasm actually looks like here. Because Belmo and I have just finished lacing up our bowling shoes here at Bolero, this place in Times Square. And what I can tell you is that the dude's like 5'10, 40 years old, dark hair, light beer,

we talked about our kids for a little bit, he's just this deeply unthreatening and unassuming-looking dad. Unless, of course, you are a professional bowler, in which case, the man is a revolutionary. Because as every instructional bowling VHS tape throughout time will teach you, real bowlers roll the ball with one hand, with their thumb in the thumbhole. This is basically the first law of bowling biomechanics. Fred, you know, through the years, I've had a chance to watch the greatest players in our game. It went out question. They all have a master plan to greatness.

Listen, Danny, and that's what we'd like to share with our players today, is one, the biomechanical movements to the fall line, the movements of the body. But the movements of Belmo's body are, extremely different. This isn't Granny's style. He's actually grasping the ball with two hands at the same time, and he refuses to stick his thumb in the thumbhole at all. And so then he rolls the ball with both hands from his right side, having swung it backwards and then forwards,

generating this truly impressive amount of velocity. Here's the top seat. Not sure I expected anything different. And so what I wanted to find out here first is just how Bell's, Elmo wound up resembling and really epitomizing by conventional bowling standards, a completely idiotic technique. The action is from the side of the body. It's not from between the legs.

Yes. So you've got this athletic kind of approach. I want people who are not watching on YouTube in the Draftings Network to know that Jason just put athletic in scare quotes with his fingers. Well, because I think the traditional sense of the word athleticism is high. energy or, you know, huge exertion of power where bowling is more like golf, right, where you can see an athletic swing. And so the game has changed.

It is more athletic now than it ever was. And so my parents built a bowling center when I was born. In Australia. In Australia, a small little country town. They'd never bowled a ball in their life. Purely a business idea that came to them through a family conversation. And so they weren't coaches, they weren't experienced players themselves. They didn't inherit the traditions of bowling.

And to be truthful, I don't think they cared about how I bowled. I was 18 months old when I rolled my very first bowling ball. Today we have really light bowling balls, but in the 80s, they hadn't developed super light balls yet. They were quite heavy. And so as an 18-month-old toddler, I would kind of like grab the ball and roll it off the ball return it. hit the floor and I would push it and try and lift it up and then just kind of roll it down the

lane as best as I could. And so until I was old enough where that ball was light enough for me to throw it traditionally, I had too many years of me bowling in this way to just enable me to bowl, which was with two hands, that bowling traditionally didn't feel like me. And so it was probably from the ages of like five through 10 where you hear the, come on, you're a big boy now. Right. Like you can bowl like everyone else. And I was like, but this is just how I've always done it. There is one moment in particular that I will never forget.

There was this huge coaching clinic ran by the Australian team, the national team coach. coaches, selectors, this huge event. And so we get there, I sign up, it's my turn now to perform in front of the coaches. And so I bowl my style and the coaches are looking at me that don't say anything. And I bowl another shot and the coaches say, okay, now that you've done mucking around here, can you throw one properly, please? So I'm thinking, like, maybe they want more strikes. So like, I've got to get strikes.

So I get a strike. I'm quite proud of myself. And they time me out. They go, okay, listen, we don't know what you're doing here. If you ever want to be a great bowl, if you ever want to represent your country, if you ever want to win championships, you're going to have to bowl the way that we're going to teach it. So we need you to put your thumb in the ball and we need you to bowl traditionally. And so I humoured them for that moment and it killed me because here was the very first time a true bowling authority. Right, the actual institution of the game.

The actual institution of the game ripped me apart. They wouldn't help me. The kids wouldn't bowl with everyone. And it was just this very alone feeling. So the very last session is a tournament where we play three games and all the kids bowl. And I won the tournament. And the prize was a free entry into next year's clinic. I decline.

A prize. Long story short, I was stubborn enough to continue on my own little path. And I just found a way that works for me. Jason Belmonte. Seven in a row. That's how you do it. I'm just marveling at the specific, like, random chance that leads to this specific, like, laboratory of innovation in bowling technique.

Because you said your parents didn't give a shit about bowling the institution as its sort of like folk ways and best practices were concerned. And then you pop out and you're like this stubborn kid who's always been that way, like. Always. And you're like kind of this weirdly accidentally perfect messenger for this, uh, this larger idea that you don't need to do it this way. You can look at it from that lens when you, when you look back at it. But when you're in in the middle of it during the moment, you're not thinking about what this is going to turn into or you don't think about my decisions today are going to have this kind of an impact down the road. This was just one little boy

who wanted to do it his own way. And at the time, that's all I cared about. Now that I've had a career and I look back at it, the thing that I think I sometimes marvel at it is that, yeah, I mean, if I didn't start bowling at the age that I wanted to start bowling, would I have developed the style or would I be traditional? I don't know. Right. And so there are so many things which is the sliding doors, right? It's the butterfly effect.

It's like I couldn't have written this script any better than how it happened. That's what's so funny to me about this is that, yes, there's an alternate timeline where you're a one-handed bowler. I don't know. Would you suck in that world? Probably suck. Some other kid would invent two-handed bowl and I'd probably be like, that's not how you're supposed to do it.

It's supposed to bowl like me traditionally. You'd be the bully. You'd be one of the bullies. I'd be the traditionalist that's upset of this new wave coming through. Jason Couch, your take on two-handed bullet. I think it's a travesty that it's in this sport. I'm old school. If you couldn't do it with one hand, you didn't try and do it with two.

You just tried to make yourself better. I'm going to start this conversation off with I love my time here in America. Okay, so. Anytime someone begins to say that. Hold on. I'm going to start off with America, I love you. And this is. the home of bowling. This is, you know, the American idea of bowling is rooted in pop culture.

Yes. It is important to America. I get it. The Big Lebowski. I get it. Bowling ties the whole room that is America together. That rug really tied the room together, did it not? Friken A. This guy peed on it. Donnie, please. So when I came onto the scene, I'm Australian. I bowl differently. I knew I was going to ruffle feathers, but I didn't realize it was going to be that much. They have said, you are now here, this is the USA. The big leagues.

You are starting from the bottom again. And so I had to accept, right, I'm going to have to do this all over again. The biggest difference is Americans are loud. I would come back after a tournament going like, fuck, this is a hard day. because, you know, I'm getting heckled. No one else is getting heckled. I'm getting heckled from the crowd. And I haven't experienced that type of heckling.

You know, it is go back to your country. Right. It is, you're in our country, bowl the way we do. And again, I'm like, it's just a game of bowling, guys. Like, why are we doing this? And I had to fight through that. And that was hard. I apologize for smiling through your trauma.

I do too. It's a weird thing because I look back and there were so many sad days. because you're in this little environment and for me bowling was like my second home. It was a place I loved to be and I love the game so much and so when you have that passion and love with something you want to share it with the people around you

and when the people around you are like we don't want to bowl with you. Or you've got to change or you've got to do something different. Yeah, it was like I don't get it. The biggest I think switch in that which when it came from feeling a sadness to a feeling of joy, was when I would start beating them.

Because now when they would say something, my return was always, look at the scores. I just beat you. So whatever you're saying right now, it's even harder to convince me you're right because I'm not just, and I'm not just beating you by one or two pins.

Like I am smashing you guys. now what? And so it's always nice to have that ace up your sleeve when your scores tell a bigger picture. So not only was I stubborn, now I had the arrogance. Sinbel Monty earns his first PBA major. Sports often feels like it has antibodies that are rejecting foreign invaders.

And you were a foreign invader, and maybe the way that was just expressed, if I'm getting your story right, is that looks fucking stupid. Yeah. And that's the antibody. And it's not how the game was meant to play. Okay. So that's the traditional. That's any sport.

Yes. That's not how I grew up with it. This is not how I was taught it. And therefore, this new way of doing it doesn't compute. I would like to read you, Jason, a quote because it was the Players' Championship. It was 2012. There's a TV interview before the final. And your opponent, a gentleman named Mike Devaney, he said this.

Not watching Belmo and all that. Doesn't impress me. Not interested. Don't care. I throw it the right way. I put my thumb in there the way I was taught. Everybody should throw it. So I'm just show what's up right now.

Thanks, Mike. Good luck. I remember the day and I was so focused about winning that I heard the quote, but I didn't let it necessarily affect me in the moment. Mike Devaney needs a double and seven. Anything less. Jason Belmontie wins for the third. third time at this year's World Series of Bowling.

And Belmo wins it. It was until the moment where I had won and then I could reflect on what had just happened that that quote, yeah, cut a little deeper. But when I hear it, the one thing that always kind of rings in my ear about it is like, why do they care? That's the thing that always, I always go, why do you care so much? much. Right. And so if my score was worse than theirs, they probably wouldn't care. So this is what a Hall of Famer in your sport in the PBA here in America once called you. He called you, quote, a cancer to an already diseased sport. Yeah, that one hurt. End quote.

Brian Voss, Mr. Brian Voss. Why? What made you cancerous to Brian Voss? I'm going to defend him a little bit. Okay. I don't think he was a very much. He was a referencing me as a human, as an individual. I think he was referencing what I do by craft. And you can't deny that Brian had an extreme passion for the game. And he wanted to protect it, how he thought was best. He thought something that was challenging its fabric was this new technique. It was the two-handed backhand in tennis. It was the Frosby flop in high jump. Yeah, Big Farsbury. Yep. This was his. version of all of those things and he didn't like it. He was scared for the game that he grew up with, the game that he loved.

I think what saddened me at the time was this was one of the greatest players in our history, someone who I revered and someone who I competed against, someone who I had drinks with. He's actively trying to say that we cannot let this technique, your craft, your approach, destroy the game. And this is coming back around to the whole cheating aspect. And that allegation, though, on the level of the rule of law. So what does that mean? The word cheat hits me hardest because my understanding of the word cheat is you know the boundary of the rules and you are choosing to purposely step outside of them to break them. You are cheating the game. I am within the rules. There is no. There is no. no rule to say that what I do, I am breaking. And therefore, because I'm within the square of the rules, to call me a cheat, now you're attacking my character as a person. You're suggesting

that I will purposely go beyond the rules. So what I'm doing, it breaks that mold. And to them, it hurts them. And I have to accept that. But this is where I now need to officially inform you what the rest of bowling has had to accept about Belmo. Because the guy isn't just a really good two-handed bowler at this point. For the last decade, Jason Belmontie has been nothing short of this generation's most dominant professional bowler, period. He's won an all-time record 15 major titles. He has a record-tying seven Player of the Year awards.

And counting, all of which means that that kid in Australia who got bullied who no one wanted to bowl with, that kid is now, very arguably, the greatest bowler who ever lived. The best bowler on the planet steps up. Jason Belmontie, better known in the bowling world as Belmo, is a star of his chosen profession. There's no one else in this planet. I can bowl a ball at 10 pins better than me. And that is a really cool thing to say. And I never knew I'd ever be able to say it.

So now that I can, I plan to say it as often as I can. And look, yes, as Belmo told me at one point, he would love it if there were another zero at the end of the paychecks that you get for being the greatest of all time in bowling. You get $100,000 for winning the player's championship, for instance, which just means that Belmo, despite winning that thing three times, still flying coach from Australia. You know, just a reminder that the PBA is absolutely not the NBA.

But what Belmo does have somehow, which very few even NBA players have, is a song that someone wrote about him. It's a song that another bowler actually named Kevin Williams wrote and performed about Belmo's life. Keptive's a great I had a vision I followed through and knew I was earning

I said it's not worthy but I never listen doing myself and I get to working I did it on purpose Kev's a great young kid super talented bowler also a really talented musician

and loves the rap so I'm like hey we should do a song we should write a song like and maybe I can play it as like my strike song on the PBA show and so we did

we found a beat he thought up for some lyric And the only direction I gave him is I said, write about me from like your perspective. Which means that every time you bowl a strike. They play the music in the background and it's Kev's song, yeah. But let me ask about why it is that your response,

like in modern times now, we're catching up to the present, is something that a lot of the people who had been bullied or attempted to innovate and even successfully innovated, I don't see them do what you do, which is a lot of you do, which is you actively, like, lean in and mock the mockers and make fun and make videos that are defiant and unapologetic. And you gladly say, I'm the two-handed bowling guy. Like, that's not a thing that a lot of other people in your position in other sports have done to that degree. I don't mind trolling the trolls back.

And so there's so many things that I think about. What would be kind of funny? And one of the videos that I think you might be referencing is I purposely created this fake neurological disease. Because I have a condition. Singular chirophobia, the fear of using one hand. My earliest memories, I remember going to the doctors a lot and seeing one doctor and another doctor and a specialist.

and every doctor I just remember saying, you know, there's nothing we can do. There's nothing we can do. I'm afraid he was born with it. You know, there's no cure. Hey, I bowl with two hands, but don't hate me. I have this problem. Everything in my life, I do with two hands. You know, even using, you know, cutlery, I can't just butter bread, you know, it's a process.

You know, going out to restaurants. It's embarrassing. So I'm having a laugh about it. And in my mind, I released this video. It looks obvious. I'm having a laugh. Turns out, not everyone thought I was joking. And so I had this flood of people saying,

oh my God, I'm so sorry. I've been hating on you for so long. And now I realize it's not your fault. You were born this way. And there's nothing you can do about it. How you go through your life. So I'm like, okay, now, now I need to address this. Right.

Because you could go two ways. You can come clean or fundraise off of this. And my fear was is these people, now, like they're saying, they love me where they once hate me. So I'm like, if I tell them that I'm lying, this is all fake. This is actually my favorite of all the sliding door timelines of your life is the one in which you now have to perpetually argue that this is real. I end up shooting another video.

in which I find this underground doctor that has special pills that will cure me. All you need is one dose, hop it in, chew it up. You've got to chew it up. Are there a side effects that I should know about? There's too many side effects to go into right now, but believe me, it's going to cure all your pills. Doctor, thank you so much. You have no idea what this is going to do for me. Godspeed.

You are such a troll, man. You would think people would know that they would put two and two together. So this leads to this, like, fairly stunning phase to me as a bowling outsider, where unlike in these other sports, where, again, Rick Berry didn't inspire everybody, or all these people who shoot differently and shoot weirdly, they didn't change their games. And by there, I mean, their sport. They didn't change their sports.

Your problem now seems to be that everyone else, or at least a lot of these younger bowlers, now want to be specifically like you, and that your once-shamed technique has become, like, clearly in vogue. Yeah. I don't often get, like, emotional. There are moments where I'm like, I'll get a fan. or a kid will come up to me in person and he'll tell me a little bit about his story. And sometimes there's a lot of trauma in this kid's life and he uses bowling as a way to

escape it or to bring joy. And then he'll bowl the way that I do. Then you pan out and you see hundreds of thousands of people around the world now. Is it really that many now? Hundreds of thousands of people. Maybe more. The last, it is more. The last estimated count was somewhere in the 30% mark of bowlers, old and young, who are either starting off bowling the way that I do or adapting and adopting the new style, my style. And so that number is growing exponentially quicker as well. And so you hear these stories, then you go to a bowling center and you see the impact with your own eyes,

where when I was a kid, there was me. no one else to now as a 40-year-old guy walking into a bowling center and it's everywhere. The feeling, the overwhelming feeling of seeing a change of an evolution of just not just through my own personal game, but the sport, may that, that's one of those like, fuck me moments. That's like a whole... Fing with two hands. Yes. Gothenburg Sweden, Jesper Sensen.

Yep, needs three, gets out ten. Let's meet Anthony Simons. Simo is the baby-faced bad boy of bowling. Dropping out of high school at only 16 become a pro bowler, his scrappy style has gotten in thought. When you grow up on the lanes, you grow up fast and tough. He's known for his low-to-the-ground, aggressive two-hand style and aggressive attitude on the lanes.

some of these kids are really good super good and they're coming for you like they're actively like coming for the titles the trophies i mean you is it 15 major titles that you've won that's more than anyone else in history uh seven player of the awards um that's tied for the most all time there are these young two-hander who want everything that you got and they're using your tools to take it for from you. And I just wonder what it feels like to be somebody who's now seen the full circle. And truly, it's such a phenomenal sports story. You've seen the full circle of start by being shamed and laughed at and then try to be destroyed before being too effective. And now suffering potentially because people are going to use it against you. What does that feel like? What's that

emotional reaction when you get beaten by a two-hander? When I lose one-handed, two-handed, I'm equally disappointed. I'm pissed. And so I try not to separate who beats me by, well, he was two-handed, so it's a little bit okay because, you know, we bowl the same. No, I'm still pissed. The thing that I'm realizing now and why these kids are so good is because of what I've been able to do. and they've been able to put me up as a pin on the pin board to study. And I never had that. My son today can YouTube everything.

One of the biggest growing trends in bowling is two-handed bowling. Almost all the young competitors out there to generate that power are bowling two-handed. And today we're going to attempt as best as we can with coach to talk a little bit about the two-handed style. Yeah, as you mentioned, you are right, Mike. I was walking in blind. How do I fix my swing? I don't know. I guess I'm just going to have to go to the bowl

and for a week every day I'm going to have to try new things. Now someone takes my game, pulls it apart and says, are you having problems with this? This is what Belmo does. How about you use this kind of technique in your swing and it fixes them?

And then I have to combat watching the kids on tour go, hey, that looks a little bit like me. Like that rhythm looks a little bit like me. Or that role or what you're able to do with the boy, I think I've been doing that for a while. And it's the ultimate compliment. But it's also like, could you not have come like five years later? Like let me, let me have retired. I'm still here. Let me have retired. And then you can all go and break all of my records. It's kind of an amazing concept, the idea that the revolution comes back around for the

revolutionary. Yeah. I liken it to watching Tiger, would swing a golf club. Like when Tiger first came out, no one was as explosive. He was always the longest driver. He was always hitting the clubs the furthest. He happened to also be a great putter and chipper and he also happened to have touch and skill and creativity. And so when I watch somebody like that, watch the kids come through, hit it further and whatever, how did Tiger continue to win? Well, Tiger became even more creative. And I think that's something that I've learned from Tiger is look, I can't rely on certain aspects of my game as I could 10 years ago when I was the only good one doing it. Now you have to, you have to be creative. How are you going to separate

yourself from the kids that are learning from you? But the one thing they'll never be able to copy is how I think. And I think that's where I really want to separate myself is that mental game side is just be like, you can throw it like me or you want, but what's going on between the and how I'm strategizing, I'm not going to tell anyone that. So the title that you get often given is goat, is greatest of all time. How does the superlative that you get presented with feel? What do you find more valuable? How do you make sense of those honors?

The comparisons to like the Tiger Woods of bowling or Steph Curry of basketball, super flattering. And I think the one parallel to all of that is bowling seems to be just next in line of the evolution of its game, right? Like Tiger changed golf. Steph is changing the way we value the three-point shot. I'm changing the way you bowl. There is a part of me about that legacy, right, is when you get to a certain stature, you start thinking, right, well, what, How do you, if I could, how would you like to be remembered? Yes.

That's write your O bid. Yeah. Jason. So a huge part of me wants to be remembered as the greatest that has ever laced up the shoes and rolling a ball down the lane. There's a huge motivation for that. However, I'm really cautious to be labeled the best two-hander of all time. And so my victories in my mind is I'm chalking up more runs on the board that will separate me from just a two-handed player to know we're encompassing everyone that's ever rolled a ball down the lane because these stats are proven otherwise. So when I watch Steph play or watch LeBron score the most points, I ask myself, like I wonder what their legacy that they want to be remembered for.

And I promise you, Steph will be, we'll go down. maybe not as the goat of an all-round player, but he will be the goat of shooting the ball from the perimeter. And for me, that legacy isn't to be singular. He's the greatest at one thing. It is, I want to be the greatest at all. And that's not easy. And that's it.

That's a wild thought. And it's also an arrogant thought to presume I can. I was going to say, you're like, you're not pushing Steph Curry away with two heads. Right. You're like, nah, not for me. I've got to let my score do the talking again. And that's a huge motivator. And when I step up on the approach and I throw that strike,

I'm throwing it for today, but I'm also throwing it for what is going to be said about me into the future. And I love that pressure and I love that passion and I love been in that position to influence my future based on what I'm doing today. So embrace it, enjoy it, but also know that no one will set an expectation higher than I set for myself. So whatever you're thinking of my capabilities, I'm thinking beyond it, and I'm believing I'm going to get there now. That feels like a real warning to these kids. Maybe it is. I would like you to help me, though. I would like to peer inside of your brain because I am,

as I said, I am, I'm kind of like an infant when it comes to bowling. Listen, I have no problem helping out an infant. I have no problem helping out a total non-threat. If your plan was to secretly take over the game of bowling and you want to be I mean, I'm 39, buddy, still got some years left. Maybe I'd have second thoughts, but then no, we can definitely fix you up here. Yeah, because I, we're about to have the Pablo Tore finds out, like, staff bowling tournament later today.

What I need to do is show everybody else. You need that trophy. That's what you need. I cannot let my staff beat me. Yeah. How you're thinking about your staff is how I think about with my family. Like my son, he's 12 years old, he's a bowler, and he always wants the bowl against me. And I will never let him win.

He will always throw it in my face. And your staff are going to do the same thing. to you. That's right. You're going to yell at them for not been late and you know what they're going to say? Well, I got the bowling trophy. What do you say about that? It's going to be the worst thing in the world for you. Help me. So we're going to fix that up. Help me, Belbo. All right, let's, let's get some private tutoring. I can do it. Okay. Can you show me how it's done? So Jason Belmonte has taken his ball, his excalibur. So, so three in a row, do you know what that's called? What's three in a row called? I'll give you a clue. It's a bird.

The Flamingo. I can I've never seen a flamingo in real real bowling life. Turkey. Just showing off. I'm noticing that his shoes have his own image on them. They say belmo. I don't know what we're gonna expect here today. Yeah, typically I'm probably drunk the last time I played The good news is when you're drunk, there's more pins to look at usually. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 20 of them Confidence helps the score. Usually the way that I like to work is I ask the player Just throw me your shot. Yeah. So I know what I'm going.

You can surprise me. What it is that I'm here to do. So we're standing in front of, I don't even, the bowling rack? Sure. Ball return. Very confident in all of these terms. So I'm going to select the ball. Small, medium, large, extra large.

So what we're going to do is I believe you could probably take the green ball. Okay, that's a large. You can ever take mine if you wanted to. Whoa. Okay. Okay, all right. This is not a thing that I expected to be given the privilege. Touch my ball, mate.

You can touch my ball. Okay, so this is very heavy. It says absolute power. That's the name of the ball. With various lightning iconography on it. This is my sponsor's equipment. And I'm noticing that there are two holes. Two holes, no thumb hole.

No thumb. Right. And we're going to use our two middle fingers. Yeah, like this. Perfect. Stick them in. Ring and middle in there. Perfect.

Now this hand is going to essentially cruise. cradle the ball. So hold it by your waist with your hand underneath it. Yep, cradling balls. That's it. I kind of want you to stand on the side a little bit. And then just kind of rock it. Just kind of rock it. And so that natural rock that you're doing right now is going to generate rotation. Yeah. When you let it go, you're actually going to hook the ball. Yeah. If you do it like that. Go and throw a shot. Let me just see what we're working with and then we'll figure stuff out. Okay, here we go. There you go. There you go. It's not bad. It's okay, it's bad. All right. All right. To be very clear, it went into the gutter.

Yeah, okay, it's bad. It was not bad for like, until it was bad. I'm getting flashbacks to various things in my life that have involved a lot of this vocabulary, but yeah. When was the last time that specific ball has ever touched a gutter? It's been a while. Yeah.

It's been a little while. How deep should my fingers be in these holes? Well, your fingers and my fingers are different size. So the holes, this is designed for me. Yeah. I can't remember the last time. Someone stuck their fingers in my ball. This is a privilege.

Yeah, and it's very uncomfortable for me. I'm going to be gentle. Okay, thank you. Okay. Please. Yeah. Okay. So stick them in gently.

They're in there. For the podcast audience. Now, they're in there. All right. Try it again. Don't have to throw it too hard. Just kind of roll it through there. Be gentle with it.

Little outside, a little. But we have, we have an improvement. There's always a moment where it just, like, I get it. Oh, that's what I'm supposed to do. That's how it's supposed to feel. And when you hit that moment, there's usually a euphoric feeling of, let me do it again. Let me do it again. So I don't know when that moment's going to happen for you. I just want to hear. We may not have enough tape in the cameras. For that reason, I told them to bring more tape. And when that day happened, you better text me.

When that year comes to pass, call me in Australian or in August. I'll be on my deathbed 60 years from now and my phone will vibrate and it'll be like Pablo what oh he did it oh it's just gonna be me rapping your strike song alright try it again try to go here we go okay oh my god that's gonna be really close to like seven all right we got seven all right look at that three now seven our increments are going above I just want to be clear for the audio audience that what I'm feeling right now is a power unlike any I've ever felt What have I created? I've been emboldened

That's really really close hold on hold on hold on Yo That's a spare hit Dude that's the second best thing you can get when I tell you that I'm going to fucking destroy the Pablo Torre finds out staff tonight. I can deen it. I have no doubt. Anything is possible!

So I should just check back in here with a quick postcript about what it is that I found out today at the Pobitory Finds Out bowling tournament. I didn't win. My staff's good. Somehow bowling. Cortez is somehow good at bowling. How is he good at any of us? Nuch is like a pro, basically.

I went two-handed the whole time, as per my tutelage from the greatest bowler of all time, and I was not part of the revolution. You don't need to check the scores, like, just though, you know, don't need to dwell on it. I didn't win, didn't go well. Like, what the fuck? What I found out today is actually that I find myself relating at the end here to Belmost fellow Australian in a cruel bit of irony. Ben Simmons didn't come through in the clutch.

I should just be a man enough to admit that. Look, this is hard. It's supposed to be hard, right? Like maybe the real bowling title is the friends. The friends we made along the way. Now, the journalism we did. But no more questions. This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.