A Report From the Field
Today at work after lunch we had a class of kids in and that meant that work would be impossible. So I took the opportunity of a free hour to go play some bocce in Peter Cooper Village, where they have 2 outdoor courts. The walk from the office is literally about 3 minutes and we have this salty older guy named Randy who is a regular in the park where he helps by picking up trash. He's also a world-class wiseacre who is always busting someone's balls - he's an ex-Marine, ex-alcoholic, chain smoker who was never married or had kids as far as I know. His sense of humor is a combination of military, vaudeville and 100% USDA pure sarcasm. At any rate, he's won a couple of bocce championships in the PCV tournaments that they have and we've keep saying that we need to play some time. The combination of a loud class, nice weather and a boss on vacation made today the day. We were joined by one of my co-workers and a guy named Eddie who could politely be described as Randy's toady. Kind of a big, dumpy guy who would hang out outside the general store waiting for anyone to talk to him if he lived anywhere but NYC.
A quick description of the court: it's much different from that at Floyd. It's about twice as wide, maybe 50% longer and has a much thicker, softer layer of clay. Randy had raked the court when we arrived, so it was relatively flat but the quantity of clay made it so that any step or drop of the ball moved a significant amount of it to create craters. and little hills. Eddie was a little too eager to have my female co-worker as his partner, so Randy and I teamed up. On their court, the pollino had to go past the halfway point but the other balls did not. Also, balls could hit the back wall without penalty and games were played to 11, which makes more sense after you play and realize how much easier it is to get multiple points. We never changed the order of throw at all, meaning I always thre the 1st and 3rd balls for our team.
The whole thing took some getting used to. Firstly, the court was hard to gauge. The size difference makes it a whole 'nother animal. As much as you thought the court would retard the rolling of the ball, that wasn't always the case. If you found a groove, the ball might go 10 feet past where you wanted it, or else it might hit an especially slow spot and stop 10 feet short. Unlike Floyd, there were few breaks in the court, even with all the hills and valleys because the softness allowed the balls to just roll right through. Aim was even more paramount, but accuracy was elusive and even if you did manage to hit your opponents ball, they didn't often move as far as you wanted. This hurt us in the first game when my co-worker found that she had some sort of gift straight out of "The Natural". It was uncanny and time and again she left us with near-impossible shots. Eddie pulled his weight too and we found ourselves way behind, eventually losing 11-1 (and it would have been 14-1 if the score allowed). Eddie couldn't have been happier about this - he didn't shut up the whole fucking game cheering all of our bad shots while Randy was uncharacteristically quiet. Turns out Eddie almost never beats Randy. I felt bad because I had been talking some shit on previous occasions about our championship-winning ways, but it certainly wasn't all my fault.
Things turned around quickly after that, though. Eddie's string of luck ended and it became apparent that he actually had very few skills, and his teammate had some more good shots but left things open for us much more often. When we finally wrested control of the pollino back, I started playing a lot of short games, which she wasn't fond of. Meantime I started to find my range and we piled up multiple points more often than not as Randy would close things out with a succession of nice tosses. There's a reason he's the guy with the balls, the rake and the tpae measure. We won 11-4 and opened up a 10-2 lead in Game 3 before weathering a mini-comeback to win 11-6. This will certainly not be the last time I play out there this year. I'm even considering getting my own set of balls to keep at the office.
It was cool to play somewhere other than Floyd on a court that required an entirely different kind of approach. It was also cool to work up to the point where I felt confident in my throws again - I think we'd hold our own out there after a few games. It also makes me want to try out some more of the courts around town that Turkey has previously researched. But that should probably wait until after the spring playoffs.