Joanie beats Count Boccula: 7-2, 7-5

The title says it all. Joanie bounced back from the painful season opener with a much better performance against rookie team Count Boccula. Teresa and Abby played at the North end, and Eric and I played at the South. As usual, the gang at the North end played a little looser of a game, more in the middle of the court, more hitting, more space between the balls. And Eric and I played a much tighter game, keeping the palino short, leaving less room for multiple points for either team. At least, until the middle of the second game. Count B generally controlled the second game. They were up 5-1, when Eric and I had the round of the day. As usual, we kept the balls close enough that after Count B expended all of their balls, we had two closer than their closest ball, but if we could knock away their closest ball, we'd be able to pick up 4. Eric didn't go for the hit and instead tried to just get it in closer than their ball. He laid it in short, in front of the pallino, but not close enough to add any points. I rolled our last ball intending to sneak around that ball, bump Count B's ball and stop near the pallino, in hopes of picking up 3, and maybe a 4th if their ball rolled away. I ended up bumping Eric's short ball, then carrying forward enough to bump their ball a little and land close to take all 4 points. We tied it up at 5-5. Teresa and Abby closed it out without having to roll more than 2 balls.

Doubleheader next week. Go Joanies!

A new season

I haven't blogged about the team in a while. We ended last season on a sour note. After dominating the league for most of the season, we lost our last two games again two veteran teams, Gowanus Iguanas and Old Dirty Barristers. We drew the Old Dirty in the first round of the playoffs, and lost to them again. And to make matters worse, I wasn't even there. On the bright side, I wasn't there because my employer sent me to Paris to manage a team of twenty other lawyers on a fairly important project. And then I had a week of vacation in Paris. And then I came back and got to announce that my wife is pregnant. So there were good things, just not in the bocce universe.

So today we started the summer season. And again, not in a good way. We played a very annoying team of rookies and drunks, the Little Lassos, and lost in straight games, 7-5, 7-0. I don't even want to write about.

This is probably my last season of captaining the mighty Joanies, since next season I'll have a baby right around playoff time, and the following season I'll have an infant and I'll have to focus on captaining the Trokensimons instead. So this loss doesn't really mean anything. There are lots of games ahead.