Rahway Bowler Marty Cassio
Submitted by Al Shipley, City Historian and Rahway Library Research Consultant
In the annals of athletes who came out of Rahway, Marty Cassio, who became a nationally known bowler, ranks right up with the best of them. In a career that spanned four decades (1920s-1950s), Cassio’s accomplishments on the alleys earned him a place in the United States Bowling Congress Hall of Fame, the New Jersey Hall of Fame, and the UC Hall of Fame where he was the first from his sport to be included. Known as “the Little Bowling Tailor,” (he stood at 5’5” and weighed 140 pounds), his accomplishments and records against the best in the sport are truly remarkable.
Born in Palermo, Italy in 1904, Cassio came to the United States at age five. When a teen, one of his first jobs was setting pins at the Rahway YMCA and at age fourteen he figured he would try the game from the other end of the alley. By sixteen, he was averaging 190.
Cassio family members were tailors and it was likely the young man would follow in the business. At seventeen he took on a job in a Milton Avenue tailor shop where an accident occurred that almost put an end to what would become a career as a professional bowler. One afternoon while carrying an armful of clothes, he slipped and fell into a plate glass window seriously cutting his right hand. Doctors told the seventeen-year-old, “We can save your hand, but it will never be normal again.” The doctors turned out to be correct in their prognosis. The mishap had left Cassio’s bowling hand shrunken with his ring finger and little finger permanently curled.
Less driven individuals might have given up any thoughts of a future in sports, but Cassio would not accept defeat and promised himself he would bowl again. Using a ball specially fitted for his grip, he would come to rely on accuracy rather than wrist strength as he continued practicing to exercise his hand. In time, his strenuous practice regimen paid off and he became good enough to join and excel on the professional level.
It was during the 1930s and 1940s that Cassio put up his best numbers. Over the two-decade period, he maintained an average of over 200. He won the State Individual Tournament in 1939 and held the title for ten years in a row and after losing it in 1949, regained it in 1953. His best All-Events showing in American Bowling Tournament play came in 1940 when he finished third with a 1,943-pin total. He bowled 300 three times in sanctioned play and held a high series of 803. One of his perfect games came in national competition in 1944. Speaking of perfect 300 games, over his career, he performed the feat twenty-three times and once hit twenty-two straight strikes pinning scores of 280 and 300. Overall, his tournament record included fifteen titles. He finished in the Top Ten sixteen times in ABC Tournaments in singles, doubles, and all-events and his ABC average for twenty-nine years was 197. He is listed in the Encyclopedia of Sports for having rolled six series of 1,800 or better for five and ten year averages of 208.25 and 203.67 respectively.
His success on the lanes came in no small part from his fierce competitive spirit perhaps a result of the strenuous work he put in after the accident suffered as a young man. He always played to win and was known to glare at the pins if they failed to fall, glare at his opponents, and even at teammates if he felt they were not taking a match seriously. Fans referred to him as a ”Money Bowler” who never got rattled and who was at his best when the match was on the line. He bowled in eighty match games winning seventy-two of them. In rematches of the eight he lost, he won seven with one having never been replayed. He was willing to take on all comers and once offered to bowl anyone in the country for a $1,000 stake in a sixty or eighty game home and home series.
In 1946 AMF (American Machine and Foundry), manufacture of recreational equipment, began producing bowling films to promote the sport. Cassio was selected to star in their first effort. The movie short titled “Ten Pin Magic” was shown throughout the country with a special showing at the Rahway Theater. An ad for the film announced, “Special Extra Attraction… Ten Pin Magic… Marty Cassio, Rahway’s own champion bowler…A real treat for those who have seen him and those who have not.”
Marty Cassio died in December, 1972. On March 23, of that year he became the fifty-forth bowler inducted into the American Bowling Congress Hall of Fame (The ABC became the United States Bowling Congress in 2005 after a number of mergers.) At his induction ceremony it was noted that although he never won an ABC Tournament Championship (he came in third in 1940), he had nine game all-events totals over 1,800 in twelve tournaments and in 1946 led the ABC Open Championships ten-year average list with 203 for ninety games across thirty sets of lanes. A bronze tablet bearing his likeness is housed in the USBC Hall of Fame Museum in Arlington, Texas.
