The games are pretty much gender based. The young enjoy their time in the sun with continuous volley ball games. It is considered a great privilege to be asked to join one of their never-ending competitions. Not that the game is so important. Competition is simply the best way to advertise what one has to offer.
The games of the older generation are much more intricate. The combatants include school teachers who have survived decades of climbing the ladder of seniority and can now support themselves without working menial summer jobs Other municipal employees are also found in this group of elder athletes. They include policemen, firemen, and the more affluent sanitation workers.
By far the most exciting game on the beach is bocci. Like volleyball, it
is considered a great privilege to be asked to join in on one of the never- ending bocci tournaments. Also, like the other games, stars are given praise and are destined to become famous.
The father of this sport is a mountain of an-always-tanned man named, Dick Dwyer. He has been called the mayor and the commissioner of the game because if a competition has to be organized, Dick is the one to do it. As the years passed, his width quickly caught up with his height. But his trademark is not his size. It is the always-smoking Blackstone King cigar protruding from the front of his face. The participants wait for hours at a time for Dick to arrive at his appointed spot on the beach.
He never starts the games. He just sits on his dilapidated chair and pretends to be disinterested. But within minutes he is begged to precipitate the tournaments. The "municipal employee" is always part of the first round of games. He holds a perpetually-filled Diet Coke. The "ranter" is also always there, kicking sand and mumbling obscenities at both his opponent and partner. He rarely wins because as he puts it," He is always being paired up with someone who can't play the game". The poor bumbling 45 year old "child" is also there, even though he is only allowed to play if there is no other possible body to fill the fourth position.
Children are allowed to play only in exhibition games. You see, the winning of two out of three games brings in high stakes. A 14-ounce cold one delivered to the victor's chair in a small plain brown paper bag. This is the spoils of the victory which is given in front of your wife and family. A prouder moment can't exist. On the other hand, a loss precipitates the long walk through jeering spectators asking why you were traveling up to the store again.
Women are not allowed to play the game no matter what their age. Unlike all other institutions in this country, including Citadel, the women's movement has not evolved women into being allowed to play beach bocci. The women are allowed to watch the game. But I don't ever remember seeing any of them turn their chair toward the game. They are competing in their own form which is concerned with noticing who has the nerve to wear such and such a bathing suit and how much better they would look in the same. The most beautiful model in the world could pass their view only to be scorned for a crooked tooth or lower belly swell.
The game itself is actually very simple. Each team, which can consist from two to twenty-four men, tries to get his ball closest to the first smaller ball thrown. The first ball closest to the smaller ball gets one point. Two balls makes two points, three balls closest makes six points, and four balls closest makes eight. Any team who loses eight points obviously had a bocci breakdown. Eleven points wins a game but the match consists of best out of three. The smaller ball is called the Pauline.
Now I know that many bocci purists will say that the small ball is called the polino. Not in York Beach, Maine. One time, many years ago, a young lady was sunbathing where we played the game. The rantor, after losing his twenty-seventh straight game, through the smaller ball toward the young lady and it bounced on top of her belly. We explained that she was now part of the game and asked if she would mind if we played to her belly button. She agreed and a more concentrated game has never been played in the history of bocci itself. Her name was Pauline and from that time on the small ball thrown at the beginning of the game bears her name.
The bocci game evolves in its own traditional way.. The first few games are played on the hard part of the beach using an approximate legal distance. After a few of the "trophies" have been imbibed, the game goes through its own degeneration. The distance increases ten fold and the line of play goes knee deep into the water. God help any young child who dares cross the path of the bocci court. If they do, they must remain and become a living obstacle until the game comes to an end.
Other games have tried to usurp the popularity of the bocci tournaments. Once a group of obese and perpetually white professionals decided to set up a volleyball net and prove that age was not synonymous with health. The following day they started construction on an away-from- the-beach swimming pool.
The day ends, like all days must ,with the soda-filled municipal employee passed out on his chair, the ranter having screamed himself hoarse, and of course our star sitting quietly on his antiquated beach chair. He does eventually leave but only after the ocean breeze chills him away or his wife threatens divorce. But as he picks up and leaves, the other participants have complete confidence that tomorrow will begin another round of games.