Ten strikes to open the game and one pin left standing in the tenth: that near miss at a nationally televised perfect game, in the semifinal of the 1987 PBA National Championship, was the shot that first announced Randy Pedersen as a coming champion. Pedersen, who went on to become one of the few people enshrined in a bowling hall of fame as both a player and a broadcaster, died on Wednesday, September 16, 2026, at 64, the PBA announced. Thirteen PBA Tour titles carried him into the PBA Hall of Fame in 2011, and a quarter century as the sport's television voice carried him into the USBC Hall of Fame in 2025.

Raised in Southern California, Pedersen broke through on tour in 1986 with a win at the AC-Delco Classic in Union City, California, according to the USBC Hall of Fame. The next year he reached the final of the PBA National Championship in Toledo, Ohio, beating three future Hall of Famers, David Ozio, Marshall Holman and Amleto Monacelli, for the only major title of his career, then backed it up the following week with a win at the Fair Lanes Open in Washington, D.C. It was against Holman in the semifinal that he strung together ten consecutive strikes before a stray tenth frame shot cost him the perfect game, a run Awful Announcing recalled in the days after his death.

He kept winning through the turn of the decade: a PBA Senior/Touring Pro Doubles Championship with Carmen Salvino in 1988, three tour titles in 1989, his most productive year, and further wins in 1990, 1993, 1994, 1995 and 1999. His thirteenth and final PBA Tour title came at the 2002 Pepsi Open in Springfield, Pennsylvania. Across his career he reached 17 PBA title matches in 34 nationally televised telecasts and won 13 of them, a winning percentage of about 76.5 percent, one of the best conversion rates in tour history. He was later named a three time Bowlers Journal First Team All-American and placed 35th on the PBA's list of the 50 greatest players in the tour's history.

In 2001, Pedersen left the lanes for the broadcast booth as the PBA's lead color analyst, a role he held for 25 years, longer than anyone else in the sport's television history. He later described the move as an overlap rather than a clean break: "When I got the job, I was still competing fairly well. So, it was like, 'OK, I'll just double dip and see how that goes.' Then eventually, the bowling part came to an end." Across ESPN, Fox and CBS Sports Network broadcasts, he called out the play just before Kelly Kulick's decisive ninth frame shot in the 2010 Tournament of Champions final, when she became the first woman to win a title on the regular PBA Tour: "Biggest shot of her career. Right here. Right now." He also called Pete Weber's 2012 U.S. Open championship and every major Jason Belmonte won during his record run, working alongside a rotating cast of broadcast partners that included Rob Stone, Dave Ryan, Mike Jakubowski, Lon McEachern, John Fanta and Dave LaMont.

When the PBA moved its television package to The CW Network for the 2026 season and named Kyle Sherman as the new lead analyst, Sherman said of the man he was succeeding, "I've had tremendous respect for him. For how long he did it, I can't even try to think of filling his shoes. Replacing a legend like Randy, the voice of the PBA for 25 years, you can't." Pedersen did not stay away from a microphone for long: by March 2026 he was back calling PBA events for the streaming service BowlTV, starting with that year's U.S. Open, six months before his death.

Fox Sports play by play announcer John Fanta, who joined the PBA broadcast team in 2023, wrote that "he would talk to any fan and he treated every bowler on tour with respect and dignity," recalling that Pedersen told him on his first day simply, "We're here to have fun and here to tell people about the best sport in the world." Announcing his death, PBA Commissioner Tom Clark said Pedersen was "supremely talented in everything he did. Bowling, golf, comedy, broadcasting, anything." He was, Clark added, "a force, a giant in sports and on TV. He was our friend, our partner. Randy was our voice. He was my brother."

At his USBC Hall of Fame induction at the South Point Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas in May 2025, Pedersen reflected on the long gap between his two enshrinements: "This journey has been almost 50 years in the making, and this is like the final bow in my career," he told the crowd, according to the USBC Hall of Fame.

That final bow turned out to be literal. Pedersen's name now hangs in two halls of fame for two different reasons, the plaques in Toledo and Union City that trace his run as a champion, and 25 years of broadcasts that taught a national television audience how to watch a sport most of them had only ever played in rented shoes. The strikes he called for Kulick, Weber and Belmonte are still on tape, alongside the reel of his own near perfect game from 1987, two careers of the same man sitting side by side in the sport's record.