3/29/2008 - Obama bowls a 37

Barack Obama may be the biggest sports fan of any of our U.S. presidents. When he was still a Senator from Illinois, he appeared on the intro of Monday Night Football; when he visited the troops in Kuwait, he hit a three-pointer that, had he missed, would have assuredly been used in a McCain attack ad (it was used anyway); he threw out the first pitch of the 2009 MLB All-Star Game; he took in a meaningless Wizards game in 2009; and he even filled out a March Madness bracket and successfully picked the championship team.

Despite all that... his most notable appearance at a sports venue is an infamous one. While in Altoona, Pennsylvania Mr. Obama stopped to take in a game of bowling at the Pleasant Valley Lanes. It was an opportunity to show that he was a man of the people -- that he was just like the blue collar Americans who didn't go to Harvard, who weren't lawyers, and who loved to bowl. The problem was that he hadn't bowled in over thirty years, and it showed.

Out of a possible 300 score, Obama notched a paltry 37. What he had hoped to be a demonstration of common ground instead turned into political cannon fodder. "My economic plan is better than my bowling," he said sheepishly.

Obama would admit that while his score was bad, he only completed seven frames, not the regular ten, and that two of them were completed by ten and three year-old boys who took his place. Asked if he was making excuses, the future president told reporters, "I can't excuse the first two gutter balls."

He was hardly the only '08 candidate to have an incident that conflicted with their average-guy persona. Hillary Clinton had two bad moments at a gas station -- she needed directions on filling up a tank (as the former first lady, she hadn't driven in years) and then appeared lost when she tried to make a cup of coffee. John McCain had his own snafu. Asked if he was a Mac guy or a PC guy, the oldest presidential candidate in history did not help himself out, admitting, "Neither. I'm an illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance I can get."