Pin Action: Small-Time Gangsters, High-Stakes Gambling, and the Teenage Hustler Who Became a Bowling Champion by Gianmarc Manzione Page B

flying over a ball return.
    “I am only gonna ask you once,” Stevie told him. “And that was it. Now, where’s my money?”
    Psycho Dave may have been psycho, but there is something about a swift fist to the face that restores sanity. Psycho Dave knew exactly what Stevie was talking about. He proved sane enough to pay up on the spot.
    The kind of company Schlegel kept was the kind that played a little game he liked to call “You hurt me, and they shoot you,”which was a pretty pointed reference to the mobsters who liked to gamble on him. But he had other means of protecting himself against the unsavory elements any sworn gambler had to run with on occasion. Years later, sports writer Herm Weiskopf would document the kind of garb Schlegel donned as a kid to keep the street gangs off his back: “He was fond of dressing in black stovepipe pants, a white silk shirt, an iridescent raincoat and high Roman heels,” Weiskopf wrote. “He also sported a Mohican haircut and carried an umbrella with its tip filed to a point.” What fool would step up to a kid who dressed that way in places where the people were as threatening as the weapons their coats concealed? Only the craziest of the crazy, and that alone made most folks steer clear of him.
    But if they did step up, Schlegel concealed his own assortment of weapons. One night he spotted some talent up at a place on 168th Street and Webster Avenue in the Bronx called Webster Lanes, a twenty-year-old kid out of Long Island named Mike Limongello. “Lemon,” as he was known, already was the king of the Long Island action scene. Nobody beat Lemon out there. Now he was making a name for himself in the five boroughs, where he heard he could make some real money. It would not be long before people uttered Lemon’s name in the same breath as guys like Schlegel, Richie Hornreich, or Johnny Petraglia.
    Lemon rivaled Schlegel’s flare for fashion as much as he rivaled his ability. At a ceremony in which he accepted the New York Metropolitan Bowler of the Year award in 1965, he sported a ducktail hairdo slathered in Pomade, a sharp, ivory-white suit with a flowered lapel, and a black bowtie that sparkled in the flash of reporters’ cameras. He could just as easily have been standing in for Frank Sinatra at a Rat Pack gig as accepting a bowling award. His remarkably huge, green eyes earned himthe nickname “Banjo Eyes” on the action scene; he always had the look of a doe staring directly into the headlights of an oncoming truck.
    Schlegel’s concern was money, not fashion, and he saw plenty of it in this brash bulldog from the Island who almost never missed the pocket and took on all comers for any amount of money, anywhere, anytime. One guy who could have told Schlegel about Lemon was Richie Hornreich, who already had clashed with Lemon at a Long Island house called Garden City Bowl. Hornreich was bowling league there one night when in walked Lemon and his crew, looking for action. The Horn gladly supplied it, but quickly fell behind as Lemon crushed him 220-170 in the first game, then did it again in the second. Then Hornreich got an idea.
    “Mikey, I got nothing on this pair,” he said. “If you want to keep bowling, we need to move to a different pair.”
    So move to a different pair of lanes they did, and the action exploded. Lemon started losing shooting 250s to The Horn’s 260s. But the action would not last for long that night. Just as Hornreich thought he was on his way to cleaning Lemon out, his thumb ripped open and began gushing blood. It was time for another idea. The Horn always had another idea, especially when it came to money.
    “Mikey, I can’t bowl, but I’m not gonna quit on ya,” Hornreich said. “Bet whatever you want and I will bowl one last game, blood and all.”
    Just in case Lemon thought he was kidding, Hornreich put down $2,500. Then he threw the first ten strikes in a row. On the second ball in the tenth frame, he left a 10 pin. Lemon had