Walter Ray Williams Jr. is a 54 year old professional bowler from Eureka, California. In his professional bowling career he has won a record 47 PBA Tour titles and earned over $4.4 million in prize money. He was been named PBA Player of the Year a record seven times. Among the many PBA records he holds is for the most games bowled in a season with 1,300 in 1993. He has bowled 93 career 300 games. Nicknamed “Dead-eye,” he is ranked with Earl Anthony and Pete Weber as American’s greatest and most successful bowlers. In 2008 Williams joined Team USA to bowl in the International Federation of Bowlers World Championship in Thailand. “Dead-eye” Williams was the most successful bowler in the tournament, winning three gold and one bronze medal. Williams joined the Senior Bowlers Tour in 2010 and was named Senior Tour Rookie of the Year. In 2008 a panel of bowling experts named him the number #2 all time bowler behind Anthony. Walter Ray Williams, however, excels in another sport — horseshoe pitching, where he has become a legend, winning nine world horseshoe pitching championships, three junior and six men’s titles. It is also in this sporting endeavor that he picked up the name “Dead-eye” when at the age of 10 he threw 45 out of 50 ringers in a junior horseshoes tournament. In 1989 he pitched several games against President Bush at the Texas White House. Just to rub in it a bit more, Williams has a 3 handicap in golf.
Harry Nelson Pillsbury was a chess prodigy born in Somerville, Massachusetts in 1872. His rise to the top of the American chess scene in the late 19th century was as dramatic and meteoric as his fall. Pillsbury popularized “The Queen’s Gambit” which became his signature opening move. At the height of his fame, Pillsbury would blindfold himself and engage in as many as 22 simultaneous games of chess, checkers, and whist all the while reciting a list of long words supplied by the audience. He would recite the words in order and then reverse order. In 1895 he was leading the prestigious St. Petersburg tournament with an eye toward challenging Emanuel Lasker for the world chess championship when he was overtaken by symptoms of a serious illness and had to withdraw. It turned out that he had contracted syphilis and it would affect him for the rest of his life. Despite his heath issues, Pillsbury won the United States Chess Championship in 1897 and held the title until his death at age 33 in 1906 from complications of his syphilitic infection.
Speaking of chess peculiarities, International Chess Grandmaster and world class nutjob Bobby Fischer attended Erasmus High School in Brooklyn where he was a classmate of both Barbara Streisand and Neil Diamond. Barbara is said to have had a major crush on Fischer and spent lots of time in his company. They swapped copies of Mad Magazine, at least until Bobby dropped out of school at age 16 to pursue his chess career.
In 1974 long distance swimmer Diana Nyad won the Bay of Naples 22 mile water race with a time of 8 hours and 11 minutes in the woman’s division. It’s a record that still stands. In 1979 she swam from Bimini to Florida nonstop in a wetsuit for a distance record that still stands. Last August, at age 64, Diane finally achieved her lifelong goal of swimming from Cuba to the Florida coast within a shark cage. It was her fifth attempt. Diane Nyad is a women’s sports and fitness journalist, has written two books and numerous magazine and newspaper articles. What many people don’t know is that Diane suffers from asthma.