{"id":84955,"date":"2009-12-16T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-16T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2009\/12\/16\/bowling-for-michigan-laid-off-gm-worker-wins-pba-championship\/"},"modified":"2009-12-16T08:30:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-16T13:30:00","slug":"bowling-for-michigan-laid-off-gm-worker-wins-pba-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/84955","title":{"rendered":"Bowling for Michigan: Laid-off GM worker wins PBA championship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Filed under: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/category\/etc\/\" rel=\"tag\">Etc.<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/category\/gm\/\" rel=\"tag\">GM<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" hspace=\"4\" border=\"1\" align=\"right\" vspace=\"4\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blogcdn.com\/www.autoblog.com\/media\/2009\/12\/smallwood.jpg\" \/>How cool is this? On minute Tom Smallwood is reeling after losing a (once) steady production job at General Motors&#8217; Truck Plant in Pontiac, MI, and the next minute he takes the PBA championship. In a real-life event that mimics some of the great tales in the history of underdog turned champion, Smallwood took third in a PBA qualifier event, making him eligible for one year on the prestigious bowling tour.<\/p>\n<p>That alone barely makes the story interesting, but the tale becomes far more compelling due to the fact that Smallwood rolled into Wichita, Kansas an also-ran and left holding the first place trophy and a $50,000 grand prize. Smallwood, a 15-year recreational bowler, even had to beat out PBA bowler of the year Wes &#8220;Big Nasty&#8221; Malott in the final round. The former GM line worker performed superbly under pressure by hitting two strikes in the decisive tenth frame to take the match 244-228. After Smallwood&#8217;s big win he was called by GM to take another plant job but the suddenly high-flying bowler turned down the offer in order to stick with his new profession.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re thinking Smallwood&#8217;s meteoric rise to the top of the bowling world will net him quite a bit more than his $50,000 top prize. Advertisers love a rags-to riches-story and Smallwood may be selling resin and those wrist things bowlers wear before you&#8217;re even finished reading this post. Congratulations Tom!<\/p>\n<p>[Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.cars.com\/kickingtires\/2009\/12\/laidoff-gm-worker-wins-pba-championship.html?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cars%2Fkickingtires+(Kicking+Tires)\">Kicking Tires<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2009\/12\/16\/bowling-for-michigan-laid-off-gm-worker-wins-pba-championship\/\">Bowling for Michigan: Laid-off GM worker wins PBA championship<\/a> originally appeared on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\">Autoblog<\/a> on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 08:30:00 EST.  Please see our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weblogsinc.com\/feed-terms\/\">terms for use of feeds<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h6 style=\"clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;\"><\/h6>\n<p><a href=http:\/\/blogs.cars.com\/kickingtires\/2009\/12\/laidoff-gm-worker-wins-pba-championship.html?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cars%2Fkickingtires+(Kicking+Tires)>Read<\/a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2009\/12\/16\/bowling-for-michigan-laid-off-gm-worker-wins-pba-championship\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permanent link to this entry\">Permalink<\/a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/forward\/19281112\/\" title=\"Send this entry to a friend via email\">Email this<\/a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2009\/12\/16\/bowling-for-michigan-laid-off-gm-worker-wins-pba-championship\/#comments\" title=\"View reader comments on this entry\">Comments<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Filed under: Etc., GM How cool is this? On minute Tom Smallwood is reeling after losing a (once) steady production job at General Motors&#8217; Truck Plant in Pontiac, MI, and the next minute he takes the PBA championship. In a real-life event that mimics some of the great tales in the history of underdog turned [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}