For most of the 2021-22 winter season, Jeff Gross has been “limping up there and chucking” the bowling ball.
But what the 68-year-old Perry Township right-hander attributed to a knee problem turned out to be something else.
“The pain that goes down my leg into my knee I thought it was the right knee,” said the U.S. Postal Service retiree. “The last three weeks I figured it out. I need a new hip.”
Due to the pain, Gross had taken the previous two weeks off after averaging 220 in leagues at Eastbury Bowling Center and Park Centre Lanes and 214 in the Ellsworth Auto Body-Budweiser Senior Traveling league.
But the morning of the final day of traveling league, Gross decided to give it a go.
“Body feels good. It’s the last time, so I’m going to go for it,” Gross wrote in a text to teammates.
It turned out to be the right decision.
Gross started with games of 287 and 290 before finding his rhythm again late in Game 3 for 224 and an 801 series — his sixth career 800 and first since 2017 at the former 77 Colonial Lanes. He also has 21 career 300 games.
“I wrapped up my leg real tight and I was able to bowl. I had support instead of kind of wobbling up there,” Gross said. “I’m going to have to have the right hip done and the left knee is bone on bone, so that will have to have something done also.
“I would have bet a million dollars that my knee was bad. I even looked up how many times MRIs are wrong. I just didn’t believe them when they told me. But this all proved it to me.”
It was not a promising start for Gross, leaving a 4-7-10 split to start Game 1. However, he converted it and then went on to run strikes until his final ball in the 10th frame when he left a 3-6-10 in his first quest for 290.
Then in Game 2, he started with an identical 3-6-10 on his first ball, converted the spare, and then filled the rest of the sheet with strikes for 290.
“That’s the two highest games I’ve ever rolled in my life during the same series,” Gross said. “I’m still shocked at age 68 and with all this going on I was able to do that.”
But the struggles emerged in Game 3, with one hole on a splt and a few corner pins early.
“The weird thing is, I actually started getting looser. I was only getting the ball back to my hip and chucking it like usual,” Gross said. “But then I started taking it back further and that changes everything.
“I had to make a few adjustments and then I was OK.”
Gross knew where he stood in his 800 quest entering the ninth frame.
“I knew I needed a strike there or it was over,” Gross said. “I almost threw a rocket to the pocket on that one. I was not going to miss the pocket.”
He then added two more strikes in the 10th frame to secure his milestone.
“It was weird because that last game I actually was able to throw the ball like I want to,” Gross said. “The wrap really made a difference.”
But it only was a one-time thing. Gross still will have to take next season off to have hip and knee procedures done. Then what?
“Hopefully I’ll come back better,” Gross added, “as the bionic man.”