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Bocce

The modern game of bocce (also
sometimes written as “bocci” or “boccie”) developed
in Italy during the 19th century, and now has
well-defined regulations. Played on a court of
crushed stone, rather than on the grass lawns used
in English lawn bowling, bocce players attempt to
throw balls closest to a target ball called a
“pallino” (as opposed to lawn bowling's “jack”.)
Although it is enjoyed by all people, initially
bocce was played predominantly by Italian
communities, especially those in Philadelphia and
New York.
The first bocce courts in New York
City parks were established by Mayor La Guardia in
1934 at Thomas Jefferson Park in Manhattan, in the
middle of what was then a predominantly Italian
neighborhood. A Parks Department press release from
the time noted, “In order to furnish his former
neighbors an opportunity of playing the popular
Italian game of Bocce, Mayor La Guardia has
requested the Park Department to install courts in
Thomas Jefferson Park at 111th Street and First
Avenue, Manhattan.” The Parks Department built many
new playgrounds during this era, and bocce courts
were included at many of these sites.

The popularity of bocce meant that
by the 1950s, bocce courts had became common
features alongside shuffleboard courts, handball
courts, and horseshoe pits in playgrounds across the
city. The more “passive” sort of recreation that
bocce encouraged fit with the philosophy of the
Moses Administration to create all-purpose areas
that welcomed users of all ages and interests. By
the 1950s, Parks Department counted bocce as one of
the “popular activities that lure New Yorkers to
out-of-town vacation resorts [that] can be found
within a reasonable distance of every community in
the five boroughs.”
In 1958, bocce courts could be
found at 27 parks across the city. Also in 1958,
Parks hosted its first bocce tournament, sponsored
by the Schaefer Brewing Company. Teams competed in
elimination matches at the borough level, and the
ten successful teams moved on to citywide finals
held at Louis Cuvillier Playground in East Harlem.
Manhattan residents Ciro Carlino and Peter Favuzza
won the tournament, earning wristwatches donated by
Schaefer. The report in The New York Times
noted that the 50-year-old Carlino's “curving
wizardry with the boccia drew cheers that rent the
air. Without much of a wind-up, he rolls the boccia
fifty feet, and then it makes a vertical turn,
practically hugging the pallini.” Parks bocce
tournaments resumed in 1995 and have been held ever
since; each September, 80 teams of four compete for
borough championships and the chance to compete at
the citywide finals.

Fifty years later, bocce seems
just as popular as it was when Mayor La Guardia
decreed the first courts. Today, there are bocce
courts at 39 parks across the city. One of the most
famous is at William F. Moore Park in Queens— known
as “Spaghetti Park” to locals—where the Corona
Italian enclave decorated its local bocce court with
festive lighting, and where the court in the middle
of the square literally serves as the center of the
neighborhood, attracting young and old whenever the
weather permits. In addition, a contingent of
Maltese immigrants comes together to play bocce at
J.J. Walker Park near the marble sarcophagus on the
north side of the park that was dedicated in 1834 to
three fallen firemen.