Carmen Salvino (born November 23, 1933 in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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) is an active professional
ten-pin
Ten-pin bowling is a type of bowling in which a bowler rolls a bowling ball down a wood or synthetic lane toward ten pins positioned evenly in four rows in an equilateral triangle. The objective is to knock down all ten pins on the first roll ...
bowler, inventor, author, ambassador, and a founding member of the
Professional Bowlers Association
The Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) is the major sanctioning body for the sport of professional ten-pin bowling in the United States. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, the PBA membership consists of over 3,000 members worldwide. Member ...
(PBA). Known as "PBA's Original Showman", Salvino won 17 PBA Tour titles –- among them the 1962
PBA National Championship where he defeated fellow bowling legend
Don Carter in the finals. He also won two PBA Senior Tour titles, including the 1984 Senior National Championship. The right-handed bowler was among the eight original inductees to the PBA Hall of Fame in 1975, and is also a member of the
USBC Hall of Fame (inducted 1979), the
National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame
The National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit institution honoring exceptional U.S. athletes of Italian descent. In 1977 George Randazzo created the Italian American Boxing Hall of Fame. This was as a means for ra ...
(inducted 1985), the Illinois Sports Hall of Fame, and the
Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame.
Early life
Carmen Salvino was born in Chicago, Illinois on November 23, 1933 to Michael and Philomena (Theresa) Salvino (nee DeVito). He has two brothers, Joseph and Richard, and a sister, Phylis. lived on the city's west side until the age of 5. In order to make a better living during the Great Depression, Salvino's father moved the entire family to Dania, Florida where he worked as a vegetable farmer in a job created by President Roosevelt's New Deal
Works Progress Administration (WPA) program. During his childhood years, Salvino learned his strong work ethic from helping his father manually plow vegetable fields for long, strenuous work days. Despite the hard work, his family was still very poor. For an entire year, he didn't own a pair of shoes, and for two straight years, he owned only one pair of overalls.
After living in Florida for 5 years, the family moved back to Chicago's west side and the young Salvino found work shining shoes on Madison Street. In 1945, at the age of 11, Salvino was introduced to bowling when he was walking down a street in his west-side neighborhood and noticed a bowling pin lying on the ground outside the Amalgamated Center located at 333 S. Ashland. The building was home to
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) was a United States labor union known for its support for "social unionism" and progressive political causes. Led by Sidney Hillman for its first thirty years, it helped found the Congress of Indus ...
labor union and it housed a private 6-lane bowling alley reserved for workers in the garment industry. Peaking his interest, Salvino walked inside the building and talked to a man who oversaw the bowling lanes. In a stroke of luck, he offered the young Salvino a job making three dollars a night as a pin-boy. He then began to practice. The first ball Salvino ever threw was a strike, and it was there, at the Amalgamated Center, that a legend was born.
Salvino attended
Crane Tech High School on Chicago's west side. At the age of 16, Salvino was averaging 203 (a very high average for the time), and at 17, he joined his high school's first bowling team and averaged 211. According to Salvino, he was the first person to letter in the sport of bowling which at the time was governed by the then American Junior Bowling Congress.
Also, while still in high school, he competed in a national tournament called the Dom DeVito Classic where he beat out 6,000 bowlers for the first place prize of $3,000. He then became the youngest bowler ever to compete in The Chicago Classic League, a renowned area competition, and earned the nickname "Chicago's Boy Wonder". In order to intimidate his opponents, Salvino would wear bib overalls with the statement, "I'm great and I'm gonna be the best bowler alive" written on the back. According to him, "The way to show 'em is to beat 'em, stomp on 'em and let 'em know how good I am. I was hated by the players and the public. After a while I didn't care. I was getting bigger and meaner all the time."
Salvino married his wife Virginia Morelli on May 17, 1956
Professional and PBA career
![Carmen Early](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Carmen_Early.jpg)
Before the PBA's founding in 1958, Salvino began his professional bowling career when in 1953 he won the National Match Game Doubles with his partner Joe Wilman. According to Salvino, “The National Doubles title really kicked off my career nationally, by the time I was 21, I had won the Chicago Match Game tournament, had an ABC Tournament team title and was Chicago Bowler of the Year, so I was getting a reputation as a pretty good bowler by that time.”
In 1954, Salvino won his first ABC (American Bowling Congress) title; a team event with the renowned squad Tri-Par Radio. Soon after the win, Salvino became a household name when he regularly appeared on televised bowling events, most notably the show ''Bowling Stars''. It was on ''Bowling Stars'' that he scored 846, which at the time was the highest three-game series ever broadcast on television.
After hearing a presentation by sports agent
Eddie Elias
Edward G. "Eddie" Elias (December 12, 1928 – November 15, 1998) was best known as the founder of the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA).
Elias grew up in the Akron, Ohio, Akron, Ohio, United States area, and attended West High School, Th ...
in 1958, Salvino and 32 other bowlers donated $50 each to help launch the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA). In the 1960s, Salvino's PBA career took off. He won ten PBA titles in that decade, with the first coming at the 1961 Empire State Open in Albany, N.Y. His first and only major came in the 1962
PBA National Championship.
Salvino continued to win PBA Tour titles through the 1970s, including two in the
1975 season in which he defeated
Earl Anthony
Earl Roderick Anthony (April 27, 1938 – August 14, 2001) was an American professional bowler who amassed records of 43 titles and six Player of the Year awards on the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) Tour. For over two decades, his care ...
in the championship match both times. His 17th and final singles title was earned at age 45 in the Miller High Life Open, the first event of the
1979 season.
Despite all his victories, Salvino listed a loss to his good friend
Dick Weber
Richard Anthony Weber (December 23, 1929 – February 14, 2005) was a ten-pin bowling professional and a founding member of the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA). Along with Don Carter, Weber is widely regarded as professional bowling's fi ...
in the finals of the 1988 PBA Showboat Senior Invitational among his most memorable tournaments. Although both Salvino and Weber were original PBA members when the organization was founded, the two had never met in a televised match until this 1988 tour stop. Due to the matches being completed ahead of schedule that day, Salvino and Weber were interviewed at the end of the broadcast and spent several minutes recalling memories of bowling's heyday.
Nicknamed "The Professor", Salvino claimed in the 1970s to have based his bowling style on a mathematical equation, which he never revealed. The equation covered the bowling stance and ball delivery that stressed accuracy.
PBA Tour titles
Major championships in bold text.
[
# 1961 Third Empire State Open (]Albany, New York
Albany ( ) is the capital of the U.S. state of New York, also the seat and largest city of Albany County. Albany is on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River, and about north of New York C ...
)
# 1962 Pontiac PBA Open ( Pontiac, Michigan)
# 1962 PBA National Championship (Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...
, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
)
# 1963 Jacksonville PBA Open (Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the List of United States cities by area, largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the co ...
)
# 1964 Rockford Coca-Cola Open ( Rockford, Illinois)
# 1965 Bergen Mall PBA Open (Paramus, New Jersey
Paramus ( Waggoner, Walter H ''The New York Times'', February 16, 1966. Accessed October 16, 2018. "Paramus – pronounced puh-RAHM-us, with the accent on the second syllable – may have taken its name from 'perremus' or 'perymus,' Indian for ...
)
# 1965 Birmingham PBA Open (Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of the U.S. state of Alabama. Birmingham is the seat of Jefferson County, Alabama's most populous county. As of the 2021 census estimates, Birmingham had a population of 197,575, down 1% fr ...
)
# 1967 Saint Paul Open (Saint Paul, Minnesota
Saint Paul (abbreviated St. Paul) is the capital of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County. Situated on high bluffs overlooking a bend in the Mississippi River, Saint Paul is a regional business hub and the center ...
)
# 1967 Mobile-Sertoma Open ( Mobile, Alabama)
# 1968 Venezuelan Invitational (Caracas, Venezuela
Caracas (, ), officially Santiago de León de Caracas, abbreviated as CCS, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas (or Greater Caracas). Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the ...
)
# 1973 Lincoln-Mercury Open ()
# 1974 New Jersey Open (Edison, New Jersey
Edison is a township located in Middlesex County,in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Situated in Central New Jersey within the core of the state's Raritan Valley region, Edison is a commercial hub, home to Menlo Park Mall and Little India. It ...
)
# 1975 Showboat Invitational (Las Vegas
Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...
, Nevada
Nevada ( ; ) is a state in the Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the 7th-most extensive, ...
)
# 1975 Home Box Office Open (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...
)
# 1976 Quad Cities Open ( Davenport, Iowa)
# 1977 Houston Open (Houston
Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 i ...
, Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
)
# 1979 Miller High Life Open (Anaheim, California
Anaheim ( ) is a city in northern Orange County, California, part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. As of the 2020 United States Census, the city had a population of 346,824, making it the most populous city in Orange County, the 10th-most ...
)
PBA Senior Tour titles
Major championships in bold text.[
# 1984 PBA Senior National Championship
# 1988 Kessler Senior/Touring Pro Doubles Championship w/]Randy Pedersen
Randy Pedersen (born May 28, 1962) is an American sportscaster and former professional Bowler (ten-pin), bowler. He is currently a color analyst for Fox Sports (United States), Fox Sports' coverage of the Professional Bowlers Association, PBA Tour ...
(Cheektowaga, NY
Cheektowaga () is a town in Erie County, New York, United States. As of the 2020 census, the town has grown to a population of 89,877. The town is in the north-central part of the county, and is an inner ring suburb of Buffalo. The town is th ...
)
Legacy
Salvino has made a number of memorable marks on the sport of bowling throughout his eight decades (1950s-2020s): champion, Hall-of-Famer, showman, entertainer, bowling health enthusiast, and bowling ball scientist in the areas of physics and chemistry. He also served the PBA in various capacities, including executive board and tournament committee positions, plus one term as PBA president (1985–86).
Salvino was ranked #17 on the PBA's 2008 list of "50 Greatest Players of the last 50 years." The 1999 ''Bowlers Journal'' ranking of 20th Century bowlers rated him #34. In 2008, Salvino won the BPAA's Dick Weber
Richard Anthony Weber (December 23, 1929 – February 14, 2005) was a ten-pin bowling professional and a founding member of the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA). Along with Don Carter, Weber is widely regarded as professional bowling's fi ...
Bowling Ambassador Award, an honor given annually to the "bowling athlete who has consistently shown grace on and off the lanes by promoting the sport of bowling in a positive manner."
One of the oil patterns the PBA uses tournaments is the "Carmen Salvino 44", which is 44 feet (13.41 meters) in length.
Antics on and off the lanes
Carmen Salvino is known for his trademark showmanship and colorful behavior on and off the lanes. In 2019, he both bowled in and provided live commentary on the PBA Tournament of Champions.
Later life
As of 2022, Salvino, along with his wife Virginia, has resided in Schaumburg, IL (USA). For the past 20 years he has remained active in various capacities in the PBA. In a 2013 interview, Salvino stated he has rolled 105 perfect 300 games and practices up to 20 games a session. He credits his in-depth study of physics, good health, and longevity as the primary reasons for his success in the sport.
Salvino competed in the Go Bowling! PBA 60th Anniversary Classic, held Feb. 13-18, 2018 in Indianapolis. This made him the oldest player (age 84) to ever participate in a standard PBA Tour event. Though he did not make it out of the qualifying round, Salvino rolled the honorary first ball for the televised finals and got a strike.
Resources
* www.pba.com, official website of the Professional Bowlers Association and the PBA Tour
* Carmen Salvino's daughte
Corinne Miller
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Salvino, Carmen
1933 births
Living people
American ten-pin bowling players
People from Schaumburg, Illinois