Earl Roderick Anthony (April 27, 1938 – August 14, 2001) was an American professional bowler who amassed records of 43 titles and six Player of the Year awards on the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) Tour. For over two decades, his career title count was listed as 41. The count was amended to 43 in 2008, when the PBA chose to retroactively award PBA titles for ABC Masters championships if won by a PBA member at the time. He is widely credited (along with Dick Weber) for having increased bowling's popularity in the United States. He was the first bowler to earn over $100,000 in a season (1975), and the first to reach $1,000,000 in lifetime PBA earnings (1982). His ten professional major titles—six PBA National Championships, two Firestone Tournament of Champions titles, and two ABC Masters (now USBC Masters) titles—are the second most all time, tied with Pete Weber and four behind Jason Belmonte. Anthony is one of only three bowlers in history (with Walter Ray Williams Jr. and Norm Duke) to have reached the 40-title plateau on the PBA Tour. He is also one of three bowlers (with Williams Jr. and Pete Weber) to earn at least 50 combined titles between the PBA Tour and PBA Senior Tour (now PBA50 Tour). Never brash or flashy in a crew-cut and plastic-frame "marshwood" style eyewear (which he abandoned for more modern frames later in his career), Anthony was dubbed "Square Earl" by fellow pro bowlers. A new biography of Earl (focusing more on his bowling career but with a few personal insights) was published in October 2019 by Luby Publishing. Compiled by sportswriter Barry Sparks, it is titled Earl: The Greatest Bowler of All Time. PBA career Anthony's bowling career began when he hesitantly joined his company's bowling league, West Coast Grocery, after serving in the United States Air Force. In his first season bowling, Earl achieved an official league average of 165. By his third season, his average had surged to 217. In 1963, he bowled three PBA summer tournaments in the Pacific Northwest to get a feel for what it would take to successfully compete on the tour. Though he did not cash in any of the three events, he had succeeded in learning how much he would need to improve before he could entertain any idea of going out on the PBA Tour full-time. In order to prepare