With winds hovering between 20 mph and 35 mph blowing sand in our eyes and the court in really bad shape, four of us decided to play Bocce Saturday afternoon. We’re not quite sure who is in charge of the town’s Bocce courts but whoever is, isn’t!! The sand base seemed more like red clay, bumpy, pitted and has cracks and rocks and even weeds growing in it. There are actually two courts and apparently whoever is in charge has entirely forsaken that one because it is really overgrown with weeds.
So the plan was to bring some beverages cleverly disguised as something they were not and I brought a platter of hors d’ouevres and we brought along our brand new Bocce set. None of us were really sure of the rules and although I had played years ago, there were a few points I wasn’t sure of, so we decided to sort of wing it.
Ron threw down a gender challenge and so Trish and I teamed up to see if we could beat Peter and Ron at this ancient game which shares a common ancestry with Boules and Petanque. We jumped ahead in early lead only to be overtaken by Peter’s continuous improvement with each throw and Ron’s dead on aim at knocking one of our balls out of range of the pallino or boccino or jack – the small ball we hoped to kiss! But then again take a look at this and tell me if you even see a red ball anywhere in sight!
Two Points for Us
Our opponents;
Gimme the Ball, Peter!
The rules of the game are quite simple and IF I hadn’t been so Martha-organized-obsessed they might have been in the Bocce set case but they were not! I thought they might be in a folder at the cottage – I’m sure it seemed like a really good idea at the time. But anyway, now that I’m home, I have looked them up and see that we bent the rules quite a bit but now I know how to play and these are the basic rules; the game can be played as singles or as a team of two or four. A player tosses the pallino to the mid-section of the court and it has to land in a prescribed zone which is about 5 meters in length and about 2 meters from the backboard. If the player misses twice the other team gets to toss the jack ball into the zone. The player or team who threw the pallino gets to bowl first and then the opposing player or team bowls. However, from that point on, only the team who is not close to the pallino gets to bowl again and again until one of their balls is now closer or they use up their turn. At the point the first tosser gets to try to knock away any of the opponents balls that are close to the ball. Only one player or team can win points per frame. And the team with the closest number of balls to the pallino wins a point for each of their balls that are closer to the pallino than the opposing team. The game is usually 9-13 points
We had a cheer leader, Pacqui
- Pacqui Cheers the Good Girls On!
And even with our pretty pooch rooting for us , we lost in the end. Well not exactly lost, we had caught up and made the game a tie when Ron said, “he had to go pick up his pants from the dry cleaner” Oh sure……
My partner, Trish.
The Wind Up and the Pitch!
Bill Ding and his band of clowns are the security patrol for this blog site. He is a favorite toy from the 50*s. By the way sometimes a blog is just an ego-maniacal stream of conscience.
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