Play ball Italian style to benefit community

By Stephen Hlawaty
Outdoors Columnist

I first saw it played in the parks and beaches around my childhood neighborhood: Forest Park, Queens; Fire Island, Long Island; Central Park, Manhattan; Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. Grown-up men playing what looked like a grown-up version of marbles.

The men were almost always Italian, sipping from cups that looked as if they had been borrowed from my sister Ingrid's miniature tea set, speaking to one another in an indecipherable language, and playing a game that looked almost as foreign.

With such an enigmatic introduction to the game, it would make sense that I would first play bocce ball one summer on a rented island on Lake George in the Adirondack Mountains, with a college friend we all knew simply as Squiggy. Squiggy played his character well, with an aspiration to becoming the next Penguin in the Batman comic series, and played his bocce ball even better. In spite of the many encounters growing up that I have had with the game, bocce ball always played a more central role in my surreal, rather than my real, life. But bocce ball is anything but an enigma.

To bocce ball enthusiasts, it is a precise sport with ancient roots. Some have suggested that the sport was derived from the ancient Egyptians as early as 5000 B.C., as hieroglyphics depict men throwing stones at a fixed object. Bocce ball's central objective of rolling balls in an attempt to come as close to a fixed target as possible serves as the tie that binds the sport to antiquity. From Egypt, the game traveled to Greece by 800 B.C. before the Romans adopted, named and spread it throughout the empire. Indeed, the name bocce, which is derived from the Vulgate Latin bottia for "boss," serves as a fitting namesake for this mighty sport.

Originally, coconuts from Africa were used as balls before being replaced by carved, hard olive wood. Emperor Augustus played the game often and influenced its standing as a sport of statesmen and rulers. Likewise, the early Greek physician Hippocrates, as well as the Italian Renaissance scientist Galileo, praised the game for rejuvenating the body through athletics and the spirit of competition. Evolving to its present form in Italy, bocce ball is played today throughout Europe and across the globe, wherever countries have received Italian immigrants.

While there are varieties to the sport of bocce ball that require courts to be of specific dimensions, the standard bocce court dimensions include a level dirt or asphalt surface that is approximately 76 feet long and 12 feet wide. Balls are typically made of bronze or various kinds of plastics.

A match begins with a flip of the coin by the two capos (captains) of each team. The winner of the coin flip chooses to toss the pallino or chooses the color of the balls to play. The pallino, also known as a jack or boccino, is a small, white ball that serves as the fixed object closest to which teams try to toss their balls. Once the pallino is in play, having crossed the centerline of the court without having hit the back wall, the team who first tossed the pallino will also toss the first of the larger bocce balls or boccia. The objective is to have the bocce ball come as close to the pallino as possible without touching it. The opposing team then tries to outdo the original toss. The game continues in this fashion until all of the eight balls have been tossed. The team with the closest ball to the pallino scores one point for its balls that are closer to the pallino than the opponent's closest ball. This ends the first frame. Subsequent frames resume until a team has scored 13 points, although, this varies by region. Precision and strategy also play a part, as players may use their balls to knock their opponent's balls away from the pallino, or to knock the pallino closer to their own balls.

The intuitive design to the sport's play makes it accessible to everyone, which is one reason why the annual Fort Collins Meals on Wheels bocce ball benefit has been so successful. According to Meals on Wheels Executive Director Valerie DiBenedetto, the third annual "Bocce for Meals" is scheduled for Sept. 16, with a rain date of Sept. 23. A $120 preregistration fee is required of all four-member teams. Each team is guaranteed to play three games. For more information on the event, call 484-6325 or e-mail bocceformeals@yahoo.com.