Nothing is more understandable than the allure Northern California holds for Italians. From the established “Genovesi” communities of Boston, New Orleans, New York and Philadelphia, and from the homeland region of Liguria, they came to a new land of milk and honey, a region that mirrored their homeland.
By the 1850s, Italian fishermen had established themselves in fishing villages from Eureka to Martinez, Pittsburg, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, and Monterey. By the 1880s, immigrant Italian laborers dominated the fruit and vegetable industry in the great Central Valleys, and the Del Monte cannery became the biggest in the world. Ghirardelli was selling chocolate and Amadeo Giannini was starting a new concept called branch banking, which a century later made his Bank of America the largest bank in the world.
In 1881, immigrants from the wine-growing regions of Italy founded the Italian Swiss Colony at Asti (in the Santa Rosa-Petaluma metro area of Sonoma County),which promoted their success in the California industry. They brought the tools of their trade, their families, their traditions, and, of course, their game of bocce to their new homeland, including the Sacramento region.
“My father’s father purchased land over by Hiram Johnson High School. They were farmers. When my father met my mother, her family of Italian immigrants was opening a bakery over in Southside Park. There was a very large Italiancommunity there,” explains Anna Stratton, the daughter of the late Tony Peretti, a bread deliverer/boxing manager and founder of the East Portal Bocce Club in Sacramento.
Old-timers define Sacramento’s “Little Italy” as the manicured, East Sacramento neighborhood, bounded by J Street to the north, 58th Street to the east, Folsom Boulevard to the south, and 51st Street to the west. Located in its heart are East Portal Park and the East Portal Bocce Club.
According to Vernon Cooper, the current president of the Club, in the 1940s, a tightknit group of Italian men gathered to play cards, drink a little vino, and roll the red and green balls down oyster-shell lanes. With the intensity and drama of an Italian opera, they argued, measuring the distance between balls with a twig. “I had no idea how many Italians there are around here until I started playing bocce,” marvels Cooper, a bocce “addict” of German descent.
Peretti took the helm of the 98 percent Italian, all-male, 80-member club in the early 1970s. “But Peretti,” says Stratton, who defines her father as an old-school traditionalist, “soon admitted the club’s precarious position as membership dwindled due to the inevitable – the ‘originals’ were dying.” He contacted Vic Cima, then president of the Piemonte Reale (an Italian social club) to invigorate the club. In 1991, when Cima climbed the ranks to become East Portal’s president, he convinced the members that it was time to allow women and non-Italians to play the ancient game.
“I was the first to let non-Italians and women play,” says Cima, 65, an insurance broker for John O. Bronson Co. “Some of the Italian men were resistant because the women are generally better players. Men have no touch,” he jibes.
Invigorated by newbies, Bocce is thriving in the region. For young and old alike, the game is now a regular slice of life for its enthusiasts. Encouraged by the ease of learning and the slow, leisurely pace of the game, players show up regularly at bocce courts peppered throughout the region. They come to get better, but mostly, they come to socialize; to exercise the soul. And though these games may not be of the extreme kind, all fans agree: When you play, you find out you don’t have to be an old-country Euro to understand the passion.
“It is the only game I know of where you can gain weight while you play,” laughs Cima. “A little cheese, a little wine and then dinner. That is the enjoyment of it.”
Traditional bocce is more of a bowling game, with grapefruit-size, wooden bocce balls rolled palm up, down a smooth and flat surface enclosed with wooden sideboards. Usually, a team of two or more plays another, although in tournament play, individuals compete. The idea is to come closest to the pallina, a small target ball rolled to start the game. Cutthroat play can send an opponent’s good roll into the outer limits by a collision of a fly ball landing on the opponent’s ball. “Shooters” – players that master that shot – hold their heads high at East Portal. “My husband thinks girls shouldn’t shoot,” says Sharon Cooper, Vernon’s wife and bocce partner, “but I’m learning how.”
The Sopranos, Homicidal Biscotti, Three Italians and One Smart Guy, Scouza Me, and Grappa are Tuesday-night teams listed on the board at East Portal. Enthusiasm is contagious, as some members are known to run down the side of the court, beating their just-thrown ball to its landing spot.
“Now there are a lot of husbands and wives, fathers and sons and co-workers. It is a different group now. We have all walks of life and everyone gets along. It is a great environment,” says Stratton, now retired from the grocery business. “Playing bocce is relaxing. When I got home from work, I was so tired, but I would go out to the courts, and it would be like going on vacation.”
The camaraderie at the club has ignited a surge in backyard bocce. Enthusiasts are incorporating bocce courts into their landscape design. Cima says he plays regularly now at the homes of friends who own one- or two-acre parcels that can easily accommodate a regulation, 90-feet long by 12-feet wide surface. “If I had enough room, I would have one in my own yard,” he quips.
Bocce today is a team-building corporate exercise, a hook to raise money for charity, an indoor sport with synthetic surfaces, and even an event on ESPN. But, despite its new-found sophistication, bocce’s simple appeal remains the same. “It’s the ultimate trash-talking sport. Someone is ribbing you all the time,” laughs Cooper, a competitive player who travels to bocce tournaments all over the United States.
As with all trends and fads, will the fast rise of bocce see a flattening out and take an eventual backseat to the next “thing”? Hardly, says David Brewer, owner of Boccebrew, a division of Brewer Landscape Construction, which has built more than 100 bocce courts in the region, mostly in residential backyards. “As America ages, there are a lot of bad knees and bum hips out there,” he theorizes. “These simple games will only gain in popularity.”
Here are some tips on how to build your own bocce court...
- Dig and level the playing area. Standard courts for amateur players are 60 by 12 feet, but personal bocce courts can vary in size.
- Build the box to contain the playing surface. Leveling is very important so use a builder's level.
- Install a French drain (an area in which water collects and runs through a perforated pipe) with 3/4-inch crushed rock.
- Cover the surface with 1/2-inch hardware cloth (steel mesh).
- Fill with class II base rock (the kind used under asphalt roadways).
- Cover with a 3-inch layer of decomposed granite or a mixture of clay and crushed oyster shells.
- Finish with a1/4-inch layer of crushed oyster shell "flour."
