Joe Maselli, 86, of Providence, has bowled for 51 consecutive years in the St. Augustine’s League at Town Hall Lanes.

The providence journal / Bill Murphy Bill Murphy

He comes from an era when a man would have felt nakedly embarrassed to appear in public in his undershirt. While most of the bowlers surrounding him wear T-shirts, Joe Maselli sports a Kelly green dress shirt nicely offset by pants of a darker green.

He’s lucky enough at 86 to still have a full head of thick white hair, but time has been less kind to his eyes and his knees. He plucks a duckpin bowling ball from the rack at Town Hall Lanes in Johnston then peers through thick lenses at the short, squat pins 60 feet away. He’s been bowling in the St. Augustine’s Thursday Night Men’s League for 51 consecutive years, but nowadays he needs a ride to the bowling alley for he no longer can drive at night.

The St. Augustine’s League, founded by the men of a Providence parish in 1951, is perhaps Rhode Island’s oldest duckpin league. Next year Maselli might not need a ride on Thursday nights — the league may fold for a lack of bowlers.

Maselli steps slowly toward the pins, guided by stiff, arthritic knees. He rolls the ball and the automated scoring system above the lanes records and flashes its speed at 8.8 mph. The ball is slow but accurate, plowing into the one-two pocket. Every pin but one falls.

Again Maselli steps slowly, arthritically and plops the ball on the lane. And in the first box of what may well be his last string after 51 years in the St. Augustine’s League, Joe Maselli rolls a spare.

He steps off the lane and takes a seat.

“I started in ’55. Just enjoy it I guess,” he says. “Some of the guys have been with me 40, 45 years, like the guy bowling with me there on the right.”

Then he excuses himself. “I gotta go put some cold water on my eyes.”

He bowls his third and fourth frames, notching another spare in the fourth.

From his blue plastic chair he says, “We used to have 80 men with a waiting list. We had lawyers, judges, teachers, principals of schools. Educated people. Some of them died. Some of them retired.”

Last year the league drew 36 men; this year it’s down to 24, perhaps its final roster.

“Everybody wants to stay home and watch TV,” Maselli says.

In his fifth and sixth boxes Maselli notches nines. He nearly makes a nifty spare by placing his ball between two pins, but the ball just doesn’t have enough oomph to kick those pins into a third standing pin.

“I’m getting old,” he says. “Eighty-seven in June.” He never was a great bowler; he believes his high average was 104. But he’s always liked the camaraderie and the ribbing from his teammates who call him “Last Box Joe” for his uncanny ability to come through in a game’s final frame.

He joined the St. Augustine League as a 30-year-old man, an Air Force veteran of the Second World War, married to his high school sweetheart, Norma, working in his father’s plant, the Ideal Knife Co., making jackknives. The most popular model was The Camper, a four-bladed folding knife. Joe worked more than 40 years at the plant, from after the war in ’45 till they “liquidated” the business some 20 years ago. “You just couldn’t compete with overseas labor,” Maselli says.

In the seventh box Maselli again drops nine pins with one ball. But this time he misses the spare, just inches to the right. “I miss too many though,” he says. Perhaps rattled by the miss he throws a six in his eighth frame.

His marriage to Norma lasted longer than the career: 50 years before she died. In many ways it’s never ended. They married at Blessed Sacrament, on Academy Avenue, their childhood parish. They switched to nearby St. Augustine’s in 1953 when they bought a house on Gentian Avenue, also in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood.

“When I bought the house, it was a half-mile of dirt road to a dead end. Now there’s a traffic light at each end. Yellow lines down the middle. And all sorts of crap in between. It was country then.”

He still lives there: same house for 54 years, same wife for 50, career for 42. And the same bowling league for 51 years.

Maselli says, “I don’t quit on a thing.”

He won’t even quit on bowling even if the league folds on him. He bowls in a Monday-morning seniors league and will continue to do that even if the St. Augustine’s League withers away.

After nine frames Maselli’s score is 97, already 2 pins higher than his average. Now the time comes for him to bowl his last box. He stands on the approach, peering through thick lenses far down a narrow lane. And in his final frame after 51 consecutive years of Thursday night bowling, “Last Box Joe” Maselli throws a strike.