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North End Bocce - October |
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Gentlemen, whatever you've heard regarding the subject of size, have I got a sport for you. But I'm getting ahead of myself. (Ha. Did you see what I just did there?) I don't recall how I first heard of the North End Waterfront Health Fall Bocce Ball Tournament, but I found the combination of "bocce," "free," and "pizza" to be overwhelmingly compelling. Dozens of email messages later, we formed not one but two 4-person teams under the "Umberto" name: Umberto Uno and Umberto Dos. For those of you with an eye for this sort of thing, we only belatedly realized that bocce and "Umberto" are Italian in origin while "dos" is Spanish ("due" is "two" in Italian). Please accept our sincere apologies. Why "Umberto," you might ask? Well, in the shadow of a certain Lance Armstrong's fall from grace, none other than Umberto Granaglia lays claim to the title of greatest athlete of the last 100 years. As Wikipedia tells us, Signore Granaglia (May 20, 1931 – December 13, 2008) as awarded the honor of "Player of the Twentieth Century" by the Confédération Mondiale des Sports de Boules. Between 1957 and 1980 Granaglia won a record 13 World (Bocce) Championships, 12 such European Championship titles, and 46 (46!) Italian National Championships. Fast forward to the evening of Thursday, October 12. I arrived at the North End's Langone Park first, followed by Jackie, Betsy, and Jas. We put our names onto the tournament bracket as "Umberto Uno." Shortly thereafter, Diane, Rob, Mike, and Fred arrived to comprise "Umberto Due." By virtue of our earlier arrival, Umberto Uno found itself competing in the first round against the vaunted "RUFF 1" in the truncated four-frame format. "RUFF," as it happens, stands for "Responsible Urbanites For Fido," a North End dog group. Initially, we thought that this boded well for us, until we learned that a dog group is actually made up of humans. Game on. The details of the match remain hazy. Suffice it to say, Umberto Uno did well to take second place. In a head-to-head competition, however, second place is one place too low. By a final score that may or may not have been 3-2 (with rising bocce star Jackie earning both of our points!), RUFF advanced in the single-elimination tournament. A bit later in the evening, Umberto Duo faced off against their opponent. And met the same fate as its sister-team. Along the way, the matches were well officiated by a cadre of North End bocce experts. Diane's fire-balling style notwithstanding, we learned that it's better to leave one's bowl on the near (short) side of the pallino rather than bowl it past (long). The early exits provided a silver lining of sorts. With a chill in the air, with the event's free pizza long since consumed, and without the advance planning that would have provided some wine to appropriately accompany our sporting effort, we were free to make our way over to Hanover Street and Nico for a well-deserved nightcap. Next up, curling? Wayland's Broomstones Curling Club" offers a great venue and two November open houses through which we might try our broom. |