Mike Parker and Michael Mistretta became a team about 10 years ago.
Each needed a new bowling partner in the Lunch Bunch League at Irvine Lanes, a longtime bowling alley not far from where they both live in Irvine.
League coordinator Stephanie Mauer thought the two men would be a good fit.
She was so right.
They’ve been bowling buddies ever since, a dynamic duo they named Powerball because of the oomph behind the ball Mistretta sends barreling toward the pins.
But there’s another power at work in the partnership between Parker, 52, and Mistretta, 34.
Anyone watching them on the Tuesday afternoons when the Lunch Bunch is in full swing can see it.
These two guys, both dealing with lifelong disabilities and further challenged by bouts with cancer, are not quitters.
Parker was born with cerebral palsy and needs a power scooter to get around, including at the bowling alley. It takes patience to understand what he is saying but he’s a talkative guy with an upbeat personality. He no longer works but actively connects with friends and family on Facebook.
Parker doesn’t drive but loves to rev his Pride 1510 scooter up to 5 mph while exploring his community. He rides the mile from home to Irvine Lanes with the bowling ball ramp strapped to the back of his scooter like a sissy bar on a Harley Davidson.
Mistretta is on the autism spectrum, living on his own and working part-time scanning tickets at a movie theater, a job he’s held since he was 16.
But social engagement is a challenge for him. He is driven by routine and, as he puts it, will “zone out a lot daydreaming” during group conversations. He goes to the gym a couple of times a week, to Disneyland once a week, and watches a lot of movies. His company at his apartment is his cat.
Bowling is their own thing, Gina Mistretta said about her son and his teammate. She’s only watched them bowl a few times. Occasionally, Parker’s parents are there.
“It’s something they have together that has nothing to do with their families,” Gina Mistretta said. “They don’t want us hanging around them.”
She sums up why the bowling buddies work so well together: “What one might lack in physicality the other has, and what one might lack in emotion and connection, the other has.”
Just look at how dutifully Mistretta tends to placing Parker’s assistive bowling ramp on the lane and then positions his friend’s 15-pound ball atop it.
Or how an excitable Parker pops up from the seat of his power scooter and yells with pure joy when Mistretta, who throws a lighter 13-pound ball, knocks over all 10 pins with a strike.
“Powerball!” Parker whoops with a fist jabbing the air.
Yeah, they like to compete. One year, they came in second in their 18-team league, and they’ve also won money during sweeps.
Parker’s average is 140 and Mistretta’s is 160. They are always looking to improve.
“These guys are in the moment pretty much all the time,” Gina Mistretta said. “Their lives aren’t easy, but they don’t make it more complicated than it needs to be.”
Other Lunch Bunchers admire their bowling skills and the support they give each other.
The duo always bowls at the far side of the lanes the league occupies, to accommodate Parker’s scooter.
Amy and Sid Abalos, grandparents who bowl as a pastime, have competed next to the Powerball team for the past three years.
“It’s fun bowling with them,” Amy Abalos said. “We’re inspired.”
When Mistretta is still busy finishing his frame, Amy Abalos will help in getting Parker set up for his turn.
“They’re good sports and they play good,” Abalos added.
She smiles and laughs.
“They usually beat us.”
Baseball to bowling
Parker began bowling in his teens, back when he mainly used a walker. He was good enough to make the school team at Canyon High in Anaheim Hills.
His two older sisters and younger brother were all athletic. They played baseball and soccer.
Parker wanted to be like his brother and play baseball but had thought to himself, “I can’t do that.”
Fueled by his determination to participate, Parker ended up trying out for baseball in junior high and was allowed on the team. He went to every practice, but when it came gametime, he said, “It was like I wasn’t there.”
“I was very sad and frustrated,” Parker recalled. “All I wanted to do was play and I couldn’t.”
He stopped going.
A huge baseball fan, Parker closely followed his favorite team – the Los Angeles Dodgers. He even got to serve twice as an honorary bat boy for the team in 1983 and 1984, a reward for twice completing 20 miles in March of Dimes walk-a-thon fundraisers. It took nine and one-half hours to do it each time, but he kept going.
Parker remains delighted by the framed pictures on the wall of his apartment that show him on the field at Dodger Stadium and posing with various Dodgers of that era, including catcher Mike Scioscia, who would later manage the rival Angels baseball team to its only World Series win.
After the baseball disappointment, Parker’s mom suggested bowling. She called a bowling alley in Orange and they told Parker to come on over. For the next 10 years or so, he bowled regularly.
He had to put bowling on hold while adjusting to living on his own as a young adult. Parker trained for the workforce through Goodwill of Orange County, earning Goodwill’s Graduate of the Year award in 1993.
He has had various jobs over the years – doing inventory for an integrated circuit company, billing and accounts receivable for a mortgage company, helping other disabled people served by the Dayle McIntosh Center in Anaheim find jobs, and lobby attendant for a Regal Cinema.
He started thinking about bowling again after he moved to Irvine in 2005.
Mistretta also played youth baseball, starting before kindergarten. He became a good enough pitcher for his teammates to nickname him Mariano Rivera, after the New York Yankees legendary reliever.
But he said baseball became a “nightmare” when he developed a fear of getting hit by a ball while at the plate. He stopped playing in sixth grade. A good athlete, Mistretta was also on a swim team and served as a junior lifeguard.
His mom explained how after high school, young people with disabilities age out of the programs designed for their needs.
“They’ve got to find stuff on their own,” Gina Mistretta said.
For her son, she added, it had to be something that offered a regular routine he could count on.
That’s bowling.
When he was younger, Mistretta bowled for a bit in a program at Irvine Lanes. He remembers his late grandmother taking him on Saturdays to bowl two games.
And there was the occasional bowling birthday party.
The game, he said, is so “friendly” because “anybody with a disability can play.”
Parker and Mistretta hit it off as Lunch Bunch teammates right away. More than just good chemistry, they were good bowlers.
“At first, it didn’t look like they’d be much of a threat to other teams,” Gina Mistretta said. “They ended up being very good. That’s kind of like the icing on the cake.”
But their ideal partnership almost ended five years ago when Parker considered quitting because he could no longer get around with his walker.
“I told Michael I can’t walk anymore. I don’t know if I can bowl.”
Mistretta went to Mauer and asked if Parker could bowl from his scooter. That was that. The Powerball team continued.
When it’s his turn, Parker rolls his scooter up parallel to the foul line, adjusts the ball Mistretta readies for him, leans on the ramp to pull himself up, and then pushes the ball on its way with his stomach.
Parker is an animated bowler.
“You gotta talk to the ball, tell it where to go,” he said.
But, “it doesn’t always listen.”
At one point when he missed a single pin left after knocking down the other nine, Parker muttered to himself. Asked what he was saying, he replied, “I can’t tell you.”
Then he laughed and added: “I said, ‘Oh sh … shoot.’”
Mistretta is more stoic, but he’ll raise two clinched fists when he or Parker throw a strike and cheer on his teammate with a “Good, Mike!”
“What helps keep us together,” Mistretta said, “is he loves playing and so do I.
“As long as he wants to keep playing, then he’s the one.”
There was a recent serious threat to their partnership. In February 2023, Parker was diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer. He underwent radiation treatment early this year. But he kept bowling.
“I was tired, but I wanted to bowl,” he said.
Still on daily medication and a monthly shot, Parker is cancer-free right now.
Mistretta also knows what it is like to face a troubling health condition. He was diagnosed at 13 with chronic myeloid leukemia and spent weeks in the hospital. He needs to take lifelong targeted medication to keep the disease in check.
Both men persist, never feeling pity for themselves or dwelling on any limitations.
“We can do whatever we like,” Parker said.
“We’re not sorry because we’re disabled. That’s just the way we were born.”
Win or lose
Sometimes Mistretta and Parker hang around together beyond the bowling league. They might grab something to eat at Parker’s favorite food joint, Del Taco, or go enjoy the music, lasers and lights of Galaxy Bowling.
They’ve watched Dodger games together on TV. During this World Series, Mistretta sent his friend a series of fun GIFs as the Dodgers outplayed the Yankees to the championship.
“I believe it’s helping his health by keeping him happy,” Mistretta said of their mutual love of bowling and baseball.
They talk about attending a game together next season at Dodger Stadium. Parker goes often with his parents, sitting up in Top Deck.
Parker comes to the bowling league dressed head to toe in Dodger gear. His blue scooter is adorned with Dodger stickers. He knows that Dodgers superstar Mookie Betts also is an accomplished bowler.
Parker dreams about his love for bowling and his love for his favorite team melding someday.
“I want to go bowling with Mookie,” he said with a huge smile.
If that ever happens, it’s for sure he will bring along his bowling buddy, Mistretta.
The Powerball team takes one of the two games played against Sid and Amy Abalos.
“Sometimes we play good, sometimes we don’t,” said Mistretta.
His highest score ever was the 259 he achieved during recreational play at Forest Lanes last October in Lake Forest. He saved a picture of the scoreboard.
Parker’s all-time score was 218, back in high school.
Win or lose, Parker and Mistretta go home happy.
As they left the bowling alley, they discussed the rest of their day.
“So, you headed to Del Taco?” Mistretta asked Parker.
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to get ready for work,” Mistretta countered, putting his bowling gear in the back of his SUV as Parker rolled across the parking lot.
“Good seeing you.”
