What Is a Brooklyn in Bowling?

A Brooklyn in bowling is a shot that crosses over and hits the pocket on the opposite side from your bowling hand. For a right-handed bowler, that means the ball crosses the head pin and strikes the left-side (1-2) pocket instead of the intended right-side (1-3) pocket; for a left-hander it is the reverse.

In other words, a Brooklyn is a crossover shot, and while it is not what you aimed for, it can still knock down all ten pins for a “Brooklyn strike.” Here is what the term means, where the odd New York name comes from, and why even a Brooklyn strike is not something serious bowlers celebrate.

The pocket, and the wrong side of it

To understand a Brooklyn you first need the pocket. The pocket is the gap between the head pin (the 1 pin) and the pin just behind and beside it that gives the best chance of a strike. A right-handed bowler aims for the 1-3 pocket (head pin and the pin to its right), because a hooking ball naturally sweeps into that gap at an angle and drives through the pins. A left-hander aims for the mirror-image 1-2 pocket on the left.

A Brooklyn happens when the ball misses that intended pocket and crosses over the head pin to the other side. So a right-hander’s ball ending up in the 1-2 pocket, or a left-hander’s ball in the 1-3, is a Brooklyn. The mechanics of getting a ball to sweep into the pocket in the first place come down to the release and hook, covered in our guide on how to hook a bowling ball.

Bowler	Intended pocket	Brooklyn (crossover) pocket
Right-handed	1-3 (right side)	1-2 (left side)
Left-handed	1-2 (left side)	1-3 (right side)

Where the name comes from

“Brooklyn” is bowling slang, and like a lot of the sport’s colorful vocabulary its origin is folklore rather than official record. The common explanation is geographic: in New York, crossing from Manhattan over to Brooklyn means crossing the East River to the other side, so a ball that “crosses over” to the wrong side of the head pin got nicknamed a Brooklyn. The United States Bowling Congress (USBC), the sport’s national governing body, and generations of league bowlers use the term, but no single documented moment gives it a definitive birthday, so treat the crossing-over story as the accepted lore.

Can a Brooklyn be a strike?

Yes, and that is exactly what makes it interesting. A ball that crosses over can still scatter all ten pins for a Brooklyn strike. It counts the same on the scoresheet as any other strike, ten pins on the first ball, and contributes to your score identically, as our explainer on how bowling scoring works lays out.

The catch is reliability. A crossover hit tends to carry the pins less consistently than a clean, on-side pocket hit, so over many frames a bowler who keeps going Brooklyn will leave more splits and stubborn corner pins than one hitting their proper pocket. A Brooklyn strike is a good result on that single frame, but it is not a repeatable recipe.

Why bowlers dislike them

If a Brooklyn can strike, why the bad reputation? Three reasons:

• It is unintended. A Brooklyn means the ball did not go where you aimed. Even a good outcome from a bad shot is still a bad shot, and competitive bowling is about repeatable execution.
• It carries less consistently. Crossover hits are more prone to leaving pins standing, so the long-run results are worse than clean pocket hits.
• It feels lucky. There is an unwritten etiquette that a Brooklyn strike is a fortunate one, and many bowlers will half-apologize for it, because they know they got away with a miss.

For a bowler trying to build a consistent game, repeatedly going Brooklyn is a signal to adjust, moving their starting position or target on the lane, whose fixed board layout is described in our guide to bowling lane dimensions, so the ball returns to its proper pocket.

Brooklyn vs other bowling slang

It helps to separate a Brooklyn from the sport’s other well-known terms, because they describe different things. A Brooklyn is about where the ball hits (the crossover side). Streak terms are about how many strikes you get in a row: three straight is a turkey, and longer runs get names like a “four-bagger” or “five-bagger.” You can absolutely have a Brooklyn strike that is also part of a turkey, but the two words are answering different questions, one about placement, one about consecutive strikes.

Should you ever aim for a Brooklyn?

Generally no. Because a Brooklyn is less reliable at carrying pins, the standard advice is to aim for your natural pocket, the 1-3 for right-handers and the 1-2 for left-handers, and to treat any Brooklyn as a miss to correct rather than a target to chase. A handful of bowlers with unusual releases can play a crossover line intentionally, but for the vast majority of players the goal is a clean, repeatable pocket hit, with a Brooklyn strike welcomed as the occasional lucky break rather than the plan.

The short version: a Brooklyn in bowling is a crossover shot that hits the pocket on the opposite side from your bowling hand, the 1-2 for a right-hander or the 1-3 for a left-hander. Named for the idea of crossing over from Manhattan to Brooklyn, it can still produce a strike, but because crossover hits are unintended and carry less reliably, bowlers treat even a Brooklyn strike as a lucky miss rather than a shot to aim for.