STRIKE OUT

You’re so dumb that you think a woman who is out of your league bowls on a different night.

What’s so funny about this? This is the kind of joke we used to call a “rank out” or ranking joke, when I was a teenager. The idea was to come up with as many clever insults as possible. In the African American community this is called “the dozens”. But let’s examine the insult. Why, in fact, is it an insult? It all turns on the word “league”, which generally means a kind of association such as the predecessor to the United Nations, which was called the League of Nations. A bowling league is simply a group of bowling teams which gather into an association and have competitions called tournaments. They bowl all year round and at the end of year, the best team gets a championship trophy. There are many, many bowling leagues all over the US, though not nearly as many as 40 and 50 years ago, when bowling was a much more popular sport. Some people just like to bowl for fun while really good bowle