LOCAL

Bowling alley built by baseball great Nellie Fox is for sale

Jim Hook
Chambersburg Public Opinion

 

CHAMBERSBURG - The bowling alley that baseball great Nellie Fox built in 1956 is up for sale.

Owner Rudy Goetz, 65, is retiring after 31 years leaning over the counter and the pinsetters.

An auction sign is up at Nellie Fox Bowl at 3587 Molly Pitcher Highway, Chambersburg. Owner Rudy Goetz is selling the business.

“I put in too many hours,” said Goetz, who bought the bowling alley at 3587 Molly Pitcher Highway from one-time Fox partner, Joseph Wertime. “I just don’t want 80 hours a week.”

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Fox built the bowling alley while he was an All-Star second baseman for the Chicago White Sox. He went on to become the American League’s most valuable player in 1959 and played in 798 consecutive games. He was inducted posthumously into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1997.

“I know when people come in from Chicago they want a picture of the sign and his picture,” Goetz said. “I guess younger kids don’t know. The older folks say how much fun he was and how they joked around with him.”

Born in the village of St. Thomas, Fox hustled his way to a career in professional baseball. The 5-foot, 9-inch 160-pound Golden Glove fielder built a reputation for being hard-working and honest. He died in 1975 of cancer. He was 47.

Nellie Fox Bowl owner Rudy Goetz has a plaque in the business that features original owner and baseball hall of Famer, Nellie Fox.

Fox lived in the Chambersburg area during and after his baseball career.

“In the wintertime he bowled all the time,” Goetz said.

Fox and Lambert “Lucky” Everett were the original partners in Nellie Fox Bowl, then among the “the largest and most modern bowling centers in this section of the state.” Wertime became Fox’s partner in 1961. Goetz bought the business from Wertime.

Goetz said he’s optimistic that Nellie Fox Bowl will remain a bowling alley. There have been several interested buyers. Hurley Auctions is handling the sealed-bid auction slated for 1 p.m. on Oct. 18.

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Goetz started in the bowling business by pushing broom at age 13 at Buchanan Lanes in Mercersburg.

“I started off as a janitor and after a couple of months ended up as a mechanic,” Goetz said.

Owner Rudy Goetz carries bowling balls back to storage on Tuesday, September 19, 2017 at Nellie Fox Bowl, 3587 Molly Pitcher Highway, Chambersburg. Goetz is selling the business after owning it for 31 years.

He still babysits the pinsetters, the equipment that places pins at the end of the lane.

“I don’t tell anybody it’s going to be easy,” Goetz said. “I can’t let somebody else work when the leagues are on. I’ve got to make sure the machines are working right. It’s just me. I’ve got to make sure everything is working right down there. (The new owner) really shouldn’t try to handle it all like I did.”

The bowling alley has one full-time employee and about 10 part-timers. Goetz said the passing of his wife and co-manager, Deborah, in April sped up his retirement.

The bowling business has changed through the decades. The invention of the automated pinsetter drove the construction of more than 20,000 lanes in the U.S. from the end of World War II in 1945 to 1957.

An undated aerial photo of Nellie Fox Bowl. This was before the parking lot was extended to the right of the building.

America had 12,000 bowling centers in the glory days of the mid-1960s, according to White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group in Kansas City. Today there are fewer than 4,000. Locally, Buchanan Lanes in Mercersburg, Park Lane and Wright’s in Shippensburg and DJ’s in Waynesboro have shut down. Lincoln Lanes in Fayetteville and Sunshine Lanes in Rouzerville remain.

“People don’t bowl as many nights a week as they used to,” Goetz said. “Leagues. If you didn’t have them you’d be in big trouble.”

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The 20 ten-pin bowling alleys at Nellie Fox are no longer wood, but synthetic. A computer automatically keeps score for bowlers. “Laser bowling” that features special lighting is a hit with the younger crowd.

Goetz added a grill after customers complained about the taste of the food in vending machines.

He taught many people how to bowl and their game proved to be better than his. He gave up his own bowling several years ago.

“I don’t have time for that,” he said.

Jim Hook, 717-262-4759