Taylor Proves He Can Roll With the Breaks

A lot of guys in Lee Taylor’s shoes have trouble sleeping at night, wondering what might have been--or perhaps what should have been.

Taylor could have entered his 50s still haunted by visions of the professional baseball contract never offered to him. He could still be waking up in the middle of the night, his ears ringing with the hollow clapping sound of a bowling ball smashing pins.

But Taylor, who remains an outstanding bowler and was a standout baseball player at Utah, has moved forward smoothly with his life when dreams have fizzled.

“It would have been fun to play pro baseball for at least a couple of years,” said Taylor, 54, of Carlsbad. “I had played semipro for a couple summers and it was a lot of fun. (But) when I didn’t get signed pro, there was no use continuing it.”

A slick fielding shortstop from Lehi, Utah, who batted .404 as a junior and .378 as a senior, Taylor went bowling for the first time with his mother after the baseball draft passed him over in 1960.

Everything he threw down the alley resulted in a strike, it seemed. He joined his first league that year and averaged 182.

“It turned out I was pretty good at it,” Taylor said, “so I stayed with it.”

Seventeen years later, Taylor hit the big show, joining the Professional Bowlers Assn. Tour. But 18 months later, reality returned to play the spoiler.

He had a wife, two kids, a mortgage payment and no sponsor. He wasn’t winning enough cash, although $36,000 (or $2,000 a month) wasn’t bad for 1977 and ’78. Things were crumbling at home. So Taylor, 40 and in his prime, retired and headed back to Carlsbad.

Life, however, hasn’t exactly dealt Taylor a bad hand. As program director for Computer Sciences Corp. in San Diego, a $2 billion firm, he manages about 130 employees, makes good money, is happily remarried with two additional children and has found success on the Senior PBA in his spare time.

Taylor, a 5-foot-9, 175-pound right-hander, is considered one of the favorites in this week’s $75,000 Escondido Senior Open at Palomar Lanes. The second round starts at 8:45 a.m. today, with the finals being televised on ESPN from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Thursday. Taylor finished fourth here last year--beating Glenn Allison of Whittier in the first televised match--and went on to win more than $18,000 in 1991.

This year, he has pocketed almost $10,000 playing part-time on the Senior PBA and competing mostly on the Professional Coast Bowlers circuit, where he has been one of the leading money-winners.

Taylor plans to play in only five PBA events--he has already won $2,400 by finishing 13th at the Showboat Open in Las Vegas--but he hasn’t lost the touch that has made him one of the county’s top bowlers the past 30 years.

He’s a natural bowler. But people said the same about his baseball.

“I was really looking forward to getting drafted,” he said. “I was surprised that I didn’t. I made All-Western Region and All-(Western Athletic) Conference my last two years. But we just missed getting to the College World Series both years. If we’d have gotten there, we would have gotten more visability.

“You either had to be a home-run hitter or exceptionally fast. I was just a pretty consistent player.”

As he has proven to be as a professional bowler.

He has earned approximately $200,000 in his career, winning two regional PBA events and finishing second five times. He has also won five times on the PCB tour. In 1981, he set a state record for the highest five- and six-game averages (267.4 and 269.3) while playing in a league at Frontier Lanes in San Diego.

But a hefty job promotion and a struggling marriage eventually made life on PBA Tour a distant memory for Taylor.

“I figured I had to make $50,000 to stay out there,” he said. “I paid my own expenses, house payments, put two kids through school. I worked part-time and bowled full-time. I’d bowl, fly back and work on proposals, then fly out again.

“It was a hectic schedule, and I was gone for a year and a half. I think it’s tough if your wife doesn’t understand bowling, doesn’t like to go to tournaments . . . it makes it real tough.

“My current wife, Kaye, is great. She likes the tournaments, and she’s a good bowler in her own right. It makes it a lot of fun. And I’ve always had a good job. I make a lot more money on my work than I would my bowling.”

Bowling Notes

Matt Buxton of Marion, Ohio leads the standings with 2,734 pins. Dave Davis of North Palm Beach, Fl. is second with 2,652 pins.

A field of 152 bowlers completed 12 of 18 games Monday, with the final six games scheduled for today. The field will be cut to 24 and head-to-head competition will begin around 3:30 p.m. Other local bowlers trying to make the cut are Steve Balga of Santee, Joe Colley of El Cajon, Don Jackson of Bonita, Dennis Fitzsimonds of Spring Valley, Manny Mora, Sr. of Chula Vista and Dan Kramb of Oceanside.