Wasp magnetism key to being bocce MVP

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/09/2021 (1819 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What with the federal election campaign, the fourth wave of the coronavirus epidemic, the huge infestation of wasps, and the chaos in Afghanistan, I’m guessing most of you are champing at the bit to hear how my bocce ball team is doing.

I personally do not wish to brag about our success, but my bocce team is heading for the playoffs, which start this week. Technically speaking, all 24 teams in our league are going to the playoffs, but we are not about to let that fact dampen our enthusiasm.

I know what some of you are thinking. You are thinking: “Bocce? Huh???” I can understand your confusion. Unless you spend a huge portion of your free time hanging around an Italian restaurant, chances are you have never heard of this action-packed game.

What you need to know is that bocce was invented by the ancient Egyptians, who used to play with polished rocks. It was eventually taken over by the Italians and someone came up with the genius idea of using grapefruit-sized balls made of rubber and resin and — voilá! — the modern game, roughly pronounced “BOW-chay,” was born.

The way it works is two teams of four players roll balls called “boccia” down a narrow grass court known as the “campo.” The object is to get your balls closer than your opponents’ balls to a little white ball called the “pallino.” When you’re not busy eating, drinking, smoking or lying on the grass, you are trying to be the first team to score 21 points so you can go back in the bar and order more wine.

If you’ve never seen a bocce game before, it is a real roller-coaster ride packed with thrills and spills. I am, of course, lying through my teeth. The reality is bocce is the perfect activity for people whose hearts can’t handle the excitement of watching curling on TV.

It combines the heart-pounding drama of lawn darts with the adrenalin rush of watching older men in Hawaiian shorts playing poker on TV. It’s an excellent game for everyone in the sense that, assuming you currently have a pulse, you have a shot at being one of the best bocce players in the country.

Again, I hate to brag, but the truth is I play a vital role on my team. They don’t let me throw many balls, because I have all the accuracy of a government weather forecast, but they encourage me to sit on the bench and protect everyone else from wasps, which this year tend to outnumber the actual players.

As I have written previously, I am a human wasp magnet. In a recent game, a wasp the size of a bowling ball kept bumping into my head because he was in love with the flowery scent of my new honey-yogurt shampoo.

As this stinging insect repeatedly crashed into my forehead, all six-foot-four, 320 pounds of me began running around in circles, slapping at my hair and shrieking like a participant in a kindergarten Christmas pageant.

This went on until two women, one from each team, stopped playing, and began slapping at my head with their hats to chase the wasp away. My wife, She Who Must Not Be Named, was deeply impressed by my courage.

Our team is known as the “No-show Joes,” because our star player is my buddy Joe Grande, the owner of Mona Lisa Ristorante, the landmark Corydon Avenue restaurant where we play all of our games.

When he is there, Joe is the Wayne Gretzky of bocce, capable of flinging a bocce ball from inside the bar and hitting the head of an opponent standing outside on the grass. The thing is Joe also has an uncanny ability to forget to show up on the nights we are scheduled to play.

Sadly, we are heading into the playoffs on a bit of a down note, because we lost our last regular season game amid a bit of internal dissension.

Things got even more dramatic than usual when Joe and his lovely wife, Alfina, accused one another of throwing errant shots because they did not want to hurt the feelings of their future son-in-law, Max, who was playing for the other team.

“No lasagna for you on Sunday!” is what Alfina warned after Max pulled off one particularly damaging shot.

The hardest part of this game is when you are forced to crouch down in the accepted bowling stance before rolling your balls down the court.

Like the tray tables attached to airline seats, it can take a long time and a great deal of exertion to get us older players back into the upright position.

Things can get pretty heated, because the players rarely agree on whether the green ball or the red ball is closer to the white “target” ball, forcing the restaurant staff serving as referees to pull out their tape measures while all the players on both teams hover over them, staring down with the same laser-like intensity they display when examining dead bodies on an episode of CSI.

What I am trying to say is that bocce is a lot like the coronavirus in the sense it is extremely contagious. I highly recommend you sign up to play, or just come out and watch us flinging our balls in random directions.

If you’d like a few tips from a bocce master, you’ll find me sitting in the bar … because there aren’t nearly as many (bad word) wasps in there.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca