Columnist John Katsilometes: Lessons learned from a lifetime of strikes

Sunday, June 27, 1999 | 9:23 a.m.

John Katsilometes' column appears Tuesdays and Sundays. Reach him at 259-2327 or kats@lasvegassun.com.

He once found 2,000 yen lying on the floor of the strip club where he works as a bouncer, then excitedly called the newspaper for the latest Japanese-American currency exchange rate (about $17).

He lost a couple jobs driving cabs because of his Mr.-Toad's-Wild-Ride driving record: Four accidents, one crash-related lawsuit (filed by a passenger who happened to be a prostitute).

He's a very good bowler and, more soberingly, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. He wafts through life like a magnet for the obtuse (rare is the person who finds yen on the floor of a strip club and gets sued by a hooker), and his name is Dan.

I've known Dan for about three years. He's a big ol' lug of a guy with a bracing, cut-through-the-bullstuff honesty. "I used to be a sick, sick puppy," he once told me. "You'd never believe how sick I was."

Dan talks willingly of his once chemical-addled world, the weeks of skyrocketing on crack or buffeted by whiskey and malt liquor.

"There was the time I was smoking crack at a buddy's house and we took his grandfather's wallet off the counter. He had about $300 in it, and we spent it all on drugs. We came back and his grandfather was sitting on the porch. He just handed the wallet back, no money in it, and walked off."

Or ...

"I took my mom's car one time without her knowing, and me and a buddy drove it to get some crack. We were right in the middle of the bad part of town, bro, smoking right there in the car in broad daylight. About five houses up the street were a bunch of patrol cars. Cops were busting someone else, but we just kept on smoking, ducking under the dash board. We didn't care."

Or ...

"Four of us were sitting around a table and I was trying to tell them that we were all going to hell in a bucket, that we could change our lives. But we were also drinking malt liquor and Crown Royal, smoking meth. Like we used to say, we were methin' around."

That was the last time Dan succumbed to the altered state. He's been clean for five years. Not long ago, the same week he found the yen, Dan called with a much less harrowing tale.

"You're not going to believe this," he said, "but I bowled a 299 last night at the Gold Coast."

For those unfamiliar with bowling, a 299 is one pin shy of a perfect game. The only way to record a 299 is to roll 11 straight strikes and leave a single pin standing in the final frame. It's one of the most agonizing, bittersweet feats in sports.

"I don't know whether to be happy or sad," I said.

"Be happy," Dan said. "It was awesome. By the ninth frame, everyone in the whole league had stopped playing and everyone was watching me. My knees were knockin', I was sweating and the pressure was building and building."

In the last frame, Dan threw what felt like a perfect ball. It nearly was. But the eight pin failed to fall.

"When I let go of the ball, a huge cheer went up, but the eight (pin) was just glued to the floor," Dan said. "I turned around and everybody rushed up, high-fiving me, and it was a feeling I can't describe.

"I've used every kind of drug there is, but that moment was the best I've felt in my life."

There's a lesson in there. It has nothing to do with bowling.