PBA Xtra
“Mark Roth knows as well as anyone that there is more than one way to look at a lousy break. That is one thing 34 titles on the PBA Tour will teach you. You can let a bad break beat you, or you can dare it to try.”
///////////////////////////////// “And he has started bowling with a two-
step approach again, and we had letters from people who said they had given up on their physical therapy, and because they knew Mark had started bowling with a two-step approach, they went out bowling again, or they went to the gym again. So it’s been that kind of thing. “It is inspiring to know someone like
Mark can continually inspire people.” Those people Roth inspires saw him do things as a bowler they never could do; now they are seeing him do things as a stroke victim that doctors said were impossible. “I was upstate every morning five days
a week, six hours a day, doing therapy up there. And I went up to another place called St. Luke’s in Oswego County,” Roth explained. “That’s where they help all the stroke victims, too. The year after I had the stroke, they were having the fundraiser.
MARK ROTH “That was like old times,” Denise said. “There
were people wall-to-wall, door-to-door.” Old times—that place we revisit in our
memories for a glimpse of the way things were. If anyone knows the urge, the Roths do. They figured the old times also were a
TOUCH FOR MOVIE
When Mark Roth made the show at the 1995 IOF Foresters Open, he had not bowled a championship round in seven years. And to win it all that day, he had to overcome the man who would surpass him on the all-time PBA Tour titles list, Walter Ray Williams Jr. Watch Roth seize the opportunity to win his final title in grand style.
They asked me if I could come down and I said, ‘No problem.’ “I bowled somewhat. There was a guy
bowling in a wheelchair, and another using a cane to stand up to throw the ball. That’s something I went through. I said, ‘Let’s help these people.’ I was starting to do things, and they couldn’t get to where I was, so we try to help them.” Inspiring as it may be, Roth’s recovery
still very much is ongoing. He told Bowlers Journal he has recovered some function in his left hand, but the left leg remains un- yielding. “It’s going toward six years, and things haven’t gotten any easier,” Denise said. “He
has many needs . . . We would like to get him some aggressive rehab if he’s strong enough going forward.” Things certainly did not get any easier on June 20, when doctors rushed Roth into surgery to remove his gallbladder af- ter he developed a jaundiced appearance. The Roths do what they can to raise
money to fund that recovery. They book appearances here and there — some at storied sites in PBA Tour history such as Buckeye Lanes in North Olmsted, Ohio, home to PBA Tour tournaments in Roth’s touring days such as the Dutch Masters Open, the Ebonite Open, the Miller Lite Open and many others.
place they could reconstruct here in the present. And for a while, they did. They opened an eight-lane center in a fishing village outside Syracuse called Pulaski. They called it Retro Bowl, replaced the lane numbers with the names of bowling legends. One lane was Marshall Holman, another Johnny Petraglia, and so on. At first, it seemed to help. “It was just an opportunity to get Mark up and moving and doing rehab in a little place,” Denise said. “It was quite fun, and the area really appreciated this little retro place with over-ground ball returns. It was pretty unique. “The first year, it got him more moti-
vated and more mobile. The second year, his health was a little more compromised. I could see the stress. I didn’t think it was beneficial to keep pushing him. I thought maybe it was time to do something else. So we closed it in April.” But, in one way or another, Mark Roth
has to keep pushing. Everybody does. What else is there to do? “I haven’t bowled because of the [gall- bladder] surgery,” Roth explained. “They said not to lift anything more than 15 pounds, and my ball is 15 pounds. Right now, it’s just about getting through this, and then I am going to try again.”
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