The most-used ball on the 1992 PBA Tour was poured in Dundalk, Maryland, 800 a day, by workers earning about $6.50 an hour. The reason it was on every televised lane was a sticker.
Faball Enterprises was formed in 1978 by Johnny Wonders and Earl Widman, and the name came from an Ohio engineer, John Fabanich, who built the first two-piece polyester ball and whose name the buyers had to keep. In 1981 Faball put the second urethane ball on the market, after the AMF Angle, and the first two-piece urethane ball: a dense anchor block wrapped in about two inches of urethane in a market where every other ball was three pieces with a half-inch shell. The Black Hammer was the first bowling ball to carry its logo on the side instead of the top, where the camera on ABC’s Saturday Pro Bowlers Tour could see it. The brand’s own history says a PBA telecast made sales explode. The Baltimore Sun reported in April 1991 that the top three at a televised PBA stop on Long Island all threw Dundalk-made Hammers.
The Sun’s two plant reports are the buried detail. Manufacturing began around 1983 in the back room of a pro shop on Harford Road in Parkville, moved to Highlandtown, and by 1991 filled a 55,000-square-foot building on Broening Highway across from the GM minivan plant. Dennis Baldwin ran it; the patents belonged to Widman and Wonders. More than 250,000 Hammers sold in 1990 at more than $100 each, an average of $130 by 1992, with 60 to 80 workers, a Utah plant for the West, and a rule that an inspector who passed a defective ball lost three days’ pay. By December 1992 more Hammers were used on the PBA Tour than any other brand, Baldwin’s patent had expired, and Ebonite, Brunswick, Columbia and AMF were all pouring two-piece balls. Dundalk’s own Danny Wiseman wore the shirts and threw only Hammers, earning $74,175 for 13th on the 1992 money list. Then the hinge: in 1996 Faball Enterprises licensed the Hammer name to Faball USA; on February 8, 2002 Ebonite bought all rights to the brand; on November 15, 2019 Brunswick bought Ebonite’s brands. What changed hands was never the factory. It was the mark on the side of the ball.