I love thinking about the OG urethane Hammers. I was a kid when these were all that you saw being used. My first "performance" ball was a blue pearl Hammer, and I darn near slept with the thing at first because I was so excited to have it. If I force myself to try, I can almost make my brain remember the distinctive smell of those coverstocks.
I remember that scent as well! I remember it more distinctly for my Blue Pearl than the Blue as well. I still have that box at home in Omaha. Told my mother back in 1990 when we bought it to not get rid of it because I'd never find a ball like that again.
Never did I realize how right and prophetic that would be.
In any event, it's strange that they mention the Purple Hammer as having more backend than the Blue and the Red Pearl as having more backend than the Blue Pearl. In today's bowling environment, we know how manufacturers and drillers go about designing and laying out balls to save energy for the backend; however, in the urethane days, there really wasn't a way to do it, was there?
Not that I remember, especially because back then there were mainly two different types of lane conditioning: Long oil, and short oil. You never really saw that tyoe of backend unless it was on synthetic lanes, and even then, while urethane gave you that smooth arc, this was a sharper arc.
I mean, obviously, you could polish a coverstock to give it push, or you could try to lay a ball out to rev up later, but did that really work? Plus, with the urethane cover, there really couldn't be any big release of energy or pop down the lane, could there?
depends. Yes, you could polish up a ball to let it rev up later, but by the time it did that and started its arc, it was already 45 to 50 feet down the lane. So all it meant for you to do was either square up and face the pocket, or set it down earlier for it to start its roll earlier. No way to really save its energy...
.. unless the lanes were really that dry. But by then, we would have either moved so far left to dart and dive, or "balled down" to that Blue Pearl, or if you had it, Pink.
Back then, I was more under the impression that:
Blue Hammer + Polish = Black Hammer,
Black Hammer + Polish = Red Hammer, and
Red Hammer + polish = Pink Hammer.
Pearls just fit in between. I learned I was wrong on that, but at that time, the logic worked out.
I've heard a lot of interesting tidbits about some of these old Hammers from guys who were insiders back in the days when they were being developed and poured. To put it mildly, I have heard some eye-opening stuff! In any event, I miss the old Hammers so much. If I could, I'd seriously love to get one of each just to have or to use for league. Just talking about those balls brings me back to my childhood!
For the past 10 years, I've had a permanent search set up on eBay for anything Faball, just hoping that something would show up. I know that Danny Wiseman still kept a number of his Hammers NIB and was trying to sell them.. but they were expensive. You may want to put your feelers there, even for the used gear.
BL.
