I received this e-mail recently from Lethal Dose of Love:
"Sir,
It is with regret that i have to announce my secondment from IYWMB for the summer season. This is in the English tradition of cricketers playing the winter months in the southern hemisphere and the summer months up north.
I have been asked to establish a rival team. I will poach no players from IYWMB (apart from Beth) and will continue to play a part in what remains of our spring season. I will harbor no ill feelings towards IYWMB (How could I?).
I hope that you will be amused by our efforts during the summer months and that we may even meet upon the Bocce Court at some time in the future.
Yours in Rod,
Lethal Dose of Love"
We wish him well and can only hope that Beth comes to her senses and decides to stay with us.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Sunday, May 14, 2006
If You Want My Bocce's Swan Song (Spring '06)
Week 2 of the Playoffs
We felt ready and relaxed. We knew we could beat the number three seed and had a feeling that they had no idea what they were getting themselves into. Word on the court this week was that they were talking about us like we were an easy mark on their road to further dominance.
We saw our opponent (Boccelism) and they exuded overconfidence from the get-go. Not only did we think that we could win, we were very excited to see that their best player wasn't even there.
We took a quick 4-0 lead and our opponent (the number three seed) seemed scared.
Then the controversy!
With a number of balls already in play, Gladrags rolled. His ball just barely hit another ball before hitting the back wall. But a team member of The Notorious BRF (Notorious might not be so victorious today, but we'll see) snatched Dave's ball from the action mistakenly. What to do? The team captain of Boccelism decided to let Gladrags roll again because things were looking good for his team. How was he to know that Gladrags, given another chance, would roll a sublime roll?
At the end of the set, Team Captain Boccelism thought that maybe we should just redo the whole thing since our ball was closer and it didn't quite work out as well as he had hoped. I agreed at first but then wasn't sure. Another member of Boccelism insisted that it was our point and that we should just move on. If there had been a problem from the beginning of the mistake, we should have just restarted the frame from that point.
This discussion went on for at least five minutes.
Finally, it was decided that the point was ours and it was 5-0, us.
Then it was 5-1 and then 5-2.
I felt the tide turning.
Sure enough, Boccelism put up a fourspot on us on the way to a 7-5 victory. Yikes.
I was implored by members of the Coffee Flats Terrors to buy my team a round of shots but I was still convinced that we were going to win. We had blown a 5-0 lead in the first game of last week's eventual victory so why not again?
In Game 2, Reason to Believe and The Balltrap took a commanding 3-0 lead for us. Then Gettin' Hungry and I completely blew their socks off with a fourspot. Our team had rolled a total of 8 balls in Game 2 and we had a 7-0 victory!
You could really sense the fear in Boccelism at that point.
I decided to keep the same teams from Game 2. Reason to Believe and The Balltrap took a quick 2-0 lead and it seemed like we were on our way to a huge upset (not as huge as if The Terrors had ended up losing to ODIN) but still it would have been the number 18 seed taking down the number three seed. Oh glorious victory!
But then the tide turned. We had some bad rolls. Boccelism showed us why they were 7-1 in the regular season and we succumbed to the onslaught. The final score of the third game was 7-3.
It was a tough loss but at least we had put ourselves in a postion to win and just couldn't close the deal.
But we will be back and we will be better. There will be some changes in the structure of the team - more on that later. We will make sure to not let our mistakes be so fatal to us. All we have to do is remember - let's not hit the back wall!!!
Gladrags and I headed to Grimaldi's to bring back some pizza to console us all and to watch the Terrors march on to today's final day of play.
The Balltrap and I made up, yet once again, from our unkind words during play. We both said we would be more laidback and relaxed. We're getting there. I wonder if there are any psychologists that specialize in bocce group therapy?
In the meantime, it was fun.
We could have done better but I'll take the 5-7 record and be happy in the knowledge that we go into next season stronger then we entered this one. We will be a more seasoned squad and ready to conquer.
We felt ready and relaxed. We knew we could beat the number three seed and had a feeling that they had no idea what they were getting themselves into. Word on the court this week was that they were talking about us like we were an easy mark on their road to further dominance.
We saw our opponent (Boccelism) and they exuded overconfidence from the get-go. Not only did we think that we could win, we were very excited to see that their best player wasn't even there.
We took a quick 4-0 lead and our opponent (the number three seed) seemed scared.
Then the controversy!
With a number of balls already in play, Gladrags rolled. His ball just barely hit another ball before hitting the back wall. But a team member of The Notorious BRF (Notorious might not be so victorious today, but we'll see) snatched Dave's ball from the action mistakenly. What to do? The team captain of Boccelism decided to let Gladrags roll again because things were looking good for his team. How was he to know that Gladrags, given another chance, would roll a sublime roll?
At the end of the set, Team Captain Boccelism thought that maybe we should just redo the whole thing since our ball was closer and it didn't quite work out as well as he had hoped. I agreed at first but then wasn't sure. Another member of Boccelism insisted that it was our point and that we should just move on. If there had been a problem from the beginning of the mistake, we should have just restarted the frame from that point.
This discussion went on for at least five minutes.
Finally, it was decided that the point was ours and it was 5-0, us.
Then it was 5-1 and then 5-2.
I felt the tide turning.
Sure enough, Boccelism put up a fourspot on us on the way to a 7-5 victory. Yikes.
I was implored by members of the Coffee Flats Terrors to buy my team a round of shots but I was still convinced that we were going to win. We had blown a 5-0 lead in the first game of last week's eventual victory so why not again?
In Game 2, Reason to Believe and The Balltrap took a commanding 3-0 lead for us. Then Gettin' Hungry and I completely blew their socks off with a fourspot. Our team had rolled a total of 8 balls in Game 2 and we had a 7-0 victory!
You could really sense the fear in Boccelism at that point.
I decided to keep the same teams from Game 2. Reason to Believe and The Balltrap took a quick 2-0 lead and it seemed like we were on our way to a huge upset (not as huge as if The Terrors had ended up losing to ODIN) but still it would have been the number 18 seed taking down the number three seed. Oh glorious victory!
But then the tide turned. We had some bad rolls. Boccelism showed us why they were 7-1 in the regular season and we succumbed to the onslaught. The final score of the third game was 7-3.
It was a tough loss but at least we had put ourselves in a postion to win and just couldn't close the deal.
But we will be back and we will be better. There will be some changes in the structure of the team - more on that later. We will make sure to not let our mistakes be so fatal to us. All we have to do is remember - let's not hit the back wall!!!
Gladrags and I headed to Grimaldi's to bring back some pizza to console us all and to watch the Terrors march on to today's final day of play.
The Balltrap and I made up, yet once again, from our unkind words during play. We both said we would be more laidback and relaxed. We're getting there. I wonder if there are any psychologists that specialize in bocce group therapy?
In the meantime, it was fun.
We could have done better but I'll take the 5-7 record and be happy in the knowledge that we go into next season stronger then we entered this one. We will be a more seasoned squad and ready to conquer.
Monday, May 08, 2006
If You Want My Bocce vs. Team RIPE
This is how it ended. But it wasn't pretty getting there.
First, we got some beer in us, except for Alex, who was drinking Cokes, which the bartender dropped marischino cherries in (She must have been sweet on him):
Another pregame drinkin' shot. We did a lot of this, since the first game of the day was running pretty late. When it was our turn to play, the bartender tried to get us to hurry. But this is bocce. It is serious. It runs by its own clock. Believe that.
The Balltrap, pregame:
Listmaker is thinking: "Will this game EVER start?"
Muscling in on Rod Stewart, Alex Chilton would likely say: "When My Baby's Beside Me ... "
Oh. Here are pictures from the actual game. As "The Balltrap" noted in the postgame wrap-up, Team RIPE really liked to measure things:
Here's "The Balltrap" rolling:
Here's "The Balltrap" measuring. This time it was needed:
That's all the OK pix I have from the match. The rest suck. Plus, I noticed that I did better when I wasn't taking pictures. The minute I started worrying about capturing the moment, I wasn't living IN the moment. I think I'll bring my camera but lay off pix unless I'm sitting out for a match.
First, we got some beer in us, except for Alex, who was drinking Cokes, which the bartender dropped marischino cherries in (She must have been sweet on him):
Another pregame drinkin' shot. We did a lot of this, since the first game of the day was running pretty late. When it was our turn to play, the bartender tried to get us to hurry. But this is bocce. It is serious. It runs by its own clock. Believe that.
The Balltrap, pregame:
Listmaker is thinking: "Will this game EVER start?"
Muscling in on Rod Stewart, Alex Chilton would likely say: "When My Baby's Beside Me ... "
Oh. Here are pictures from the actual game. As "The Balltrap" noted in the postgame wrap-up, Team RIPE really liked to measure things:
Here's "The Balltrap" rolling:
Here's "The Balltrap" measuring. This time it was needed:
That's all the OK pix I have from the match. The rest suck. Plus, I noticed that I did better when I wasn't taking pictures. The minute I started worrying about capturing the moment, I wasn't living IN the moment. I think I'll bring my camera but lay off pix unless I'm sitting out for a match.
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