· Am I the only one who has prayed for a power outage while television cameras have scanned the vast number of spectators dressed as empty seats at some of these arena finals? What an embarrassment! The Welsh Auditorium setting in Grand Rapids, Michigan had to be the worst; at times, it looked like a jayvee basketball crowd, for gosh sakes.

At this writing, the AMF Dick Weber Classic finals in Richmond have yet to take place, but I'm sure things will improve. A conscious effort was made there last year by tournament promoter extraordinare Gary Beck to ensure appropriate visuals for the television audience.

· Speaking of Grand Rapids, I've generally praised Earl Anthony's work as a television analyst through the years, but can anyone deny that the legendary left-hander was a tad slow in pointing out that eventual champion Danny Wiseman had, shall we say, a few extra boards to play with during at least his first two matches? In fact, Danny's facial expressions after a couple of shots said it all, but sadly, Earl said nothing about the situation until well into the telecast.

· Fact: Last season, ABC members recorded 29,032 perfect games. That's up from 25,387 in 1993-94 and 20,542 in 1992-93 and means that perfectos have increased by over 41 percent in two years. Is everybody happy?

Bob Cosgrove, editor of BOWL Magazine, is a past president of the Bowling Writers Association of America.