The International Bowling Museum and Hall of Fame is located in St. Louis, Missouri right next to the Busch Stadium, where the St. Louis Cardinals play. The museum is open 11am to 4pm Tuesday through Saturday from October to March. During the baseball season, April to September, the museum is open 9am to 5pm (6:30pm when the Cardinals are playing a night home game) daily. Admission is $7.50 for adults, $7 for seniors (66+), and $6 for kids under 16.
At the International Bowling Museum, you walk through an exhibit that takes you through the 5,000-year history of bowling, from its early beginnings to today. For each area, there were displays and signs on the wall explaining the history of bowling. At the end of the exhibit were the Bowling Halls of Fame. Bowlers from the following bowling associations are honored in the Halls of Fame: ABC, WIBC, PBA, PWBA, and BPAA. It was amazing to walk through the Halls, seeing busts of important bowlers and some of their personal items. The Halls included everything from trophies to bowling shirts, bowling balls to bowling pins, all used by Hall of Famers.
After enjoying the upper levels of the museum, I went to the basement, where I got to bowl a game. Included with admission are three frames of bowling, and they let me combine our three admissions to bowl a game. You could bowl on AMF or Brunswick lanes. They also had old-fashioned lanes that needed pin boys, but they only used those for renting out. Even though I bowled on the electronic lanes, we had to take score by using a paper because the scoring machine was broken. I thought it was cool to record my own score. The only problem here is that they do not give you bowling shoes (I was not going to go out to the car to get mine), so the approach can be dangerous when using tennis shoes and you are used to sliding.
Also, in the same building and included in admission is the Cardinals Hall of Fame. In the Cardinals Hall of Fame, you can see all kinds of mementos from the history of St. Louis baseball. Not only does it honor the St. Louis Cardinals that have been a National League team since 1892, but it also honors the American League St. Louis Browns that existed from 1902 to 1953 and the National Negro League St. Louis Stars that existed from 1920 to 1941. There are bats and a ball signed by famous players. There is even a bedroom decorated as if a Cardinals baseball-fan kid lived in it. The coolest thing for me to see was their World Series trophies.
Reference:
- Museum’s Website: www.bowlingmuseum.com/
