Tacoma native Earl Anthony one of bowling’s all-time greats. Now he has a biography
Tacoma native Earl Anthony was one of the greatest bowlers of all time. For a time, he was professional bowling’s No. 1 title-winner and its first $1 million man.
And yet, despite reaching the pinnacle of his sport, the late Anthony had no official biography written about him. So longtime bowling writer and author Barry Sparks set out to rectify what he viewed as a gross injustice to one of the sport’s towering icons.
“I was surprised to find out there was no biography,” Sparks said. “That was a little shocking to me. He was perhaps the greatest bowler of all time and there’s not one biography of him. If you think of the five best athletes of any sport, the odds would be each one of those athletes would have a biography. In bowling, there are no biographies.”
Anthony, who died in 2001 at age 63, carved out a dominant career on the PBA Tour from 1970 to 1983, winning 43 titles. In 2008, he was named The Greatest Player in the PBA’s 50-year history by a panel of bowlers and media members.
Sparks’ biography, titled “EARL: The Greatest Bowler of All Time,” released last year. Sparks said he interviewed over 100 people for the book, including 29 PBA Hall of Fame members.
Anthony originally wanted to become a professional baseball player. A graduate of Lincoln High School and a left-handed pitcher, Anthony had a minor league tryout with the Baltimore Orioles’ minor league team. But he suffered an injury, twisting his ankle covering first base, and never signed a contract, opting instead to move back to Tacoma.
Anthony got a job at the West Coast Grocery, a wholesale distributor, in 1960, working the forklift on the graveyard shift. Some of his co-workers invited him to come bowling when their shift ended, around 7:30 a.m.
“They’d get breakfast and go bowl,” Sparks said. “Earl had never bowled before. He found out he was pretty good at it.”
Sparks calls Anthony “bowling’s unlikeliest superstar.” He didn’t pick up a bowling ball until he was 21 and didn’t go on the PBA Tour full-time until he was 31.
In 1963, Anthony started competing in some local tournaments, hoping to see how he stacked up against the competition.
“He beat 100 other guys that were out there,” Sparks said.
For the next seven years, Anthony became obsessed with bowling, practicing five to six hours every day. When Sparks was conducting research for the biography, the intensity of Anthony’s work ethic and obsession jumped out to him.
“He was preparing himself for the pro tour,” Sparks said. “He wanted to be able to bowl and succeed on any lane condition. … He would practice and develop a lot of different styles.”
Over and over again, for hours on end, he’d practice ‘shadow bowling,’ trying to roll the ball down the lane to hit certain spots — with no pins in play.
“That has to be the most boring thing to do,” Sparks said, laughing. “Most people would not be able to do 15, 30 minutes practicing that way. That was just amazing to me, how much he practiced and how dedicated he was. He practiced with a purpose. He practiced on different lane conditions, that’s what separated him.”
Once he joined the PBA Tour, Anthony quickly rose to the top, winning 43 titles in his career — which at one point was the PBA record, until Walter Ray Williams, Jr., eclipsed the mark in 2006, five years after Anthony’s death.
Through all his interviews, Sparks said he often heard the same things from Anthony’s peers.
“They all said he was one of the fiercest competitors they ever met,” Sparks said. “But then they’d follow that up with, ‘He was a true gentleman.’ That’s pretty good. Sometimes you get one, but not the other.
“No matter how close the match was, if Earl lost, you would always be guaranteed that he would look you in the eye, shake your hand and congratulate you, because he knew how difficult it was to win. It didn’t matter whether you had 10 titles or none, he called you by your name, remembered who you were. That’s something special.”
Interested in purchasing Spark’s biography on Earl Anthony? It can be purchased at www.earlanthonybook.com.
This story was originally published May 7, 2020 at 5:22 AM.
