Bocce Addiction

The story/confessions of a man who built his own backyard bocce court.

(And we used to mock old folks and shuffleboard.)

My road to bocce glory started and ended with ignorance. I'd never heard of the Italian game of kiss-ball until 1996, when I was living in Hoboken, N.J. One summer afternoon, my wife and I went to a nearby public pool, where I noticed a long, gravelly rectangle off to the side. Closer inspection revealed that it was a beat-up old bocce court. Before long, I got into a game with a competitive Italian-American geezer who haunted the place like a trapdoor spider.

Looking me over and no doubt thinking "meat," my opponent explained the basics. He started by throwing out a little ball called the pallino—the target. Then he rolled one of his four larger bocce balls, establishing the distance from the pallino that I had to beat. After that, I rolled until I got closer or used up all my balls. If I did get closer, he had to roll, and so on. At the end of each frame, you got a point for every ball closer to the pallino than your foe's closest shot. Four points max per frame, play to 12.