Dick Weber, at 69, Remains Ambassador of Bowling

Dick Weber walks into Cal Bowl in Lakewood and there is suddenly silence.

Heads turn, people whisper, bowlers stop and stare.

He is 69 years old, and he isn’t going to compete in many tournaments, not even senior ones, any more.

Still, there is no more popular ambassador for the sport of bowling. This is great, for Weber is a sweet man, a nonstop talker. He is charismatic enough that he was asked to appear on “The Late Show With David Letterman” and bowled on the streets of New York, knocking down champagne glasses and busting them up good.

And this is not great. When Weber walked into the Cal Bowl a couple of weeks ago, as part of pre-tournament publicity for the ACDelco All-Star Classic, which begins today with a pro-am and ends Saturday, probably two-thirds of the people getting wide-eyed in wonder at seeing Weber were over 50.

The finals will be seen on CBS. Bowling officials are proud to say that more than 75% of bowlers own their homes; 74% are married; median income is over $37,000, which is $7,000 more than the national average. The only problem is that means bowlers are old, married people and not hip, young trend-setters.

So Dick Weber appears on “Letterman” and he is a hoot. “I told them I had sponsors that could provide them with an outdoor alley and pins,” Weber says. “The program booker told me they could use the alley. But they didn’t need pins. I wouldn’t be knocking down pins.”

Weber speaks of the sport he loves while picking over Jamaican jerk chicken. The meat is pink and Weber is skeptical. “Does this look cooked? I don’t think I should eat it,” he says. Even as Weber is assured the meat is just pink with the trendy Jamaican spices, Weber digs into a safe salad instead.

He is trim and solid. No fat and plenty of muscle still. He has won tournaments in each of the last five decades and his son Pete, also a professional bowler, says his dad would love to win a tournament in the new millennium. “He’s thinking about it, believe me,” Pete says, “winning in six decades.”

Weber has rolled 14 perfect games of 300 in competition and has won 26 titles and is a member of the Professional Bowlers Assn. Hall of Fame. He has bowled a game on the beach and in the belly of a cargo airplane and would bowl a game on a space shuttle if that would help bring attention to the sport.

Growing up in Indianapolis, Weber says, his father called him “a bowling alley bum,” when he was still in grade school. “And it wasn’t a compliment,” Weber says. He went to college for a semester at Butler, but “that didn’t stick,” he says. He’s a three-time bowler of the year and appeared on the first-ever bowling telecast. He’s been a mailman (“I lasted a day,” he says) and a salesman.

But always, he says, he has been a bowler. “I don’t know why I loved the sport,” he says, “but I did.”

Pete, one of four Weber children, says he can’t totally explain his father’s popularity. “I don’t think dad can put it into words either,” Pete says from St. Louis, where he and his father live. “I just know that I’ve worked with my father several times at exhibitions and things and I might be the younger one, the one still competing, but believe me, people aren’t there to see me.

“In Japan, dad’s a bowling god, believe me. It’s unreal. We did an exhibition there. Maybe 1,500 people came. Dad was on one level of the building, I was on another one. On dad’s level, there were 1,400 people. On mine, the other 100. Why? He went to Japan in the mid-1950s with his Budweiser team and just made an impression. So much of an impression that he still gets invited back. Just go to any bowling center with my dad and you’ll see.

“All I can say is that it’s great to have Dick Weber as a father.”

As much as Weber loves his sport, he’s equally afraid for his sport. “It needs more money,” he says, “that’s what would make it attractive to kids. You need college teams and scholarships. You see all the millionaires in basketball and football and baseball. That’s what kids are attracted to. In our sport, a lot of our players, they go out there and starve.”

Weber, who calls himself “a natural ham, always have been,” doesn’t need to travel with a bodyguard or to register under an assumed name in a hotel. As popular as he is at bowling centers, Weber can walk down the street unnoticed. This is a good thing too. And a bad thing.

Bowling needs another Dick Weber. A Dick Weber who is 29 and not 69. A Dick Weber who has 20-year-olds coming into the bowling centers. “The young kids like those bowlers with the strong arms who throw the big curveballs,” Weber says and laughs. There is no big curve on Weber’s throws down the lane. But he will still sign all the autographs. He will go on “Letterman” and knock down anything the crazy staff thinks of. He will do it until another Dick Weber comes along.

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com