PBA Documentary to Air on ESPN

The 2004 PBA documentary “A League of Ordinary Gentlemen” will air on ESPN Classic Wednesday, April 30 at 8 p.m. ET as part of ESPN Classic’s tribute to the Tribeca Sports Film Festival.

This year marks the second consecutive year the Tribeca Film Festival is teaming up with sports entertainment powerhouse ESPN for the Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival. All this week, ESPN Classic is celebrating the festival with a showcase of films celebrating the spirit of competition.

“A League of Ordinary Gentlemen,” which documented the 2002-03 PBA Tour, focuses on former PBA President and CEO Steve Miller and four of his charges: Pete Weber, Walter Ray Williams Jr., Chris Barnes and Wayne Webb. These professional bowlers were all at very different places in their careers at the time the documentary was filmed and the films chronicles their sometimes funny, sometimes sad adventures on Tour as professional athletes.

The movie focuses on the rivalry between Weber and Williams which has been a big part of the recent resurgence of pro bowling, which is documented in this highly entertaining film.

Though never the sport of Kings, at one point in time, bowling occupied a perfectly respectable place in the pantheon of American sports. When Eddie Elias convinced the country's top 33 bowlers to kick 50 bucks into a communal pot in a banquet hall in Syracuse, N.Y., in 1958, the Professional Bowlers Association was born.

ABC began televising PBA tournaments in 1962, and as the lead-in to Wide World of Sports, Chris Schenkel's Saturday afternoon bowling telecast was for many years one of the highest rated sports programs on television. By the late 1990's, that reign had ended. “A League of Ordinary Gentlemen” chronicles the resurgence of the Tour when three former Microsoft executives bought the league and set out to reinvent its image.

Source: http://www.pba.com/news/feature.asp?ID=757