Joanie beats The Little Lasso's: 7-4, 7-4

Today was a good day for bocce. We've had some trouble fielding a full team lately. Today, only Eric, Hugh and I were available. Luckily for us, Joanie is a likeable team. Early in the season, I made nice with one of the new teams, Count Boccula (nice name!), and when I asked their captain (I think), Lauren, if one of their teammates would be willing to be our fourth, she told me to take my pick. I picked Valerie, who seemed to be their best player. They were eager to help, since we were playing the Little Lassos, a team that has gotten a reputation for being a little obnoxious. Lauren and Val wanted to see the Lassos lose, and Joanie was just the team to make that happen.

Val and I played at the North end, Hugh and Eric at the South. For the most part we played our game, kept the bocces close, picked away at them, wore them down. It helped that the Lassos were drunk. It also helped that Val was cute and perfectly willing to flirt with the other team in order to distract. I don't know if that accomplished anything, but it was fun to watch. Personally, I just think we were just the better team today. Thanks to Val and Count Boccula, Joanie kicked some ass today.

Val -- You and the rest of Count Boccula can now count yourselves honorary Joanies.

Val even gets her own Happy Days name... Jenny Piccolo. Congrats Val! Go Joanie!

Joanie "loses" to The Mo I Bocce...

So I don't like to complain about the other bocce teams, really I don't. But sometimes, I am left with no choice. We had a double-header scheduled our last time out, both against rookie teams. The first team had only two players and forfeited. The second team, The Mo I Bocce (another bad name--honestly, there are some great named teams in this league, see, e.g. Do These Droids Speak Bocce, If You Want My Bocce, Boccelism, Veni Vedi Bocce, etc.; it doesn't take that much effort) had only three players. Since I didn't want to waste the double header, rather than make them forfeit, I agreed to play--also Eric had schlepped in from New Jersey. They won 2-7, 7-5, 7-5. Fine, I'll live with that; I agreed to play. But what really bothers me is that they didn't seem to know that they were supposed to forfeit. They also didn't seem to know some other league rules and at least one basic rule of how to play. Perhaps it wouldn't have bothered me so much if we won. But is it asking too much that the new teams acquaint themselves with the league rules? I don't think it is.

The era of the kinder gentler Fonz is over.