Paesano Days is a local three-day Italian heritage festival in Anderson River Park, held annually on the first weekend of August. The event features a Spaghetti feed and other italian food, live music, raffles, and vendors of various crafts. But the centerpiece of Paesano Days is the 32-team, 128-person, double-elimination bocce ball tournament. This was my rookie year in the event, replacing a friend who had moved to SoCal. The pressure was on, because my buddies who make up the team I was joining won the tournament two years ago and lost in the finals the year before that. After easily winning our first match on Friday night, we got crushed Saturday morning 11 – 0 by a group of four gals who the God of the Catholics had apparently decided were going to skunk us. It was utterly ridiculous how often we caught bad breaks in that game, which was over in about 10 minutes. That put us in the losers bracket, which is a tough route to the finals. You have to win about 5 or 6 matches in a row to reach the final, and then you have to beat the team that went through the winner’s bracket twice. We made it to Sunday, which is the annual baseline goal of my team. The highlight of the tournament was beating the team of flat-bellied youngsters who take the game very seriously — kin of the former MLB outfielder and vice-mayor of Redding, Rick Bocetti(known for his claim that he urinated in the outfields of every major league ballpark during his career). The youngsters looked like they’d just seen prophetic visions of how they were all going to die in a fire when we finished with ‘em. And I rolled the winning ball. Sweet. But in our second game Sunday morning we got hammered, in large part because my teammate and I on the west end of the court got ‘four-banged” by playing stupid and rolling bad.(«Four-banged» = your opponents scoring with all four of their balls in one frame.) It’s hard to come back from getting four-banged when you’re playing to 11. I had more than held my own throughout the tournament up to that point, but that decisive four-banger was mostly my fault. Bummer, but it was pretty cool getting schooled by an 75-year-old ringer — the tight-roller from Siciliy who was at my end of the court. That old guy was a sweetheart, but spoke halting English in one of the most impenetrable accents I’ve ever heard. Old Sicilian: «Dominic…eeesa ma sona.» My partner: «Excuse me?» Old Sicilian: «Dominic…(pointing at his son and partner Dom)…eeesa ma sona.» My partner: «Uh…yeah. I think it’s 4 – 2.» Whoever rolled a good shot — us or them — the old guy is mumbling, «Bella…bella…eeesa gooda.» If you’re going to get your ass handed to you, it’s an honor getting it handed to you by the old pro from Palermo who might have been there when they invented the game.
