SPORT REPORT : Shooting the Boule

You can hear them before you see them.

“Bello, Umberto! Bello!”

“Gaspar! Perche non ti spari! (Why don’t you shoot yourself!)”

It’s a fresh green Sunday morning in San Diego’s Balboa Park, on the edge of a eucalyptus forest, and cries of victory and defeat--in Italian and Sicilian--echo from the boccie courts.

Across the lawn, at the petanque courts, a group of French players is in similar uproar over a tireur (shooter) who has blasted all the other side’s bowls off the court with one lethal grenade.

It’s just another Sunday for aficionados of these versions of boules--lawn bowling--that are 50% skill, 50% arguing and 50% laughing about it all.

Boccie and petanque hail from the dusty village squares of Provence and the Apennines. In the early 1900s, they crossed the Atlantic, to the parks and empty lots of the East Coast, and now they are gaining popularity in California.

“We have (petanque) clubs in San Diego, Santa Barbara, Chino, L. A., San Francisco, maybe 2,000 to 3,000 people playing,” says Jean-Pierre Paris, the honorary French consul in San Diego, and a petanque fanatic.

Petanque (named for the sound the balls make when they collide) is played like lawn bowls, but without the lawn. And without the formality: Noise and argument are half the fun. Players try to place their balls as close as possible to a little white jack, while keeping opponents’ balls as far away as possible. Unlike lawn bowling, a player can toss the ball in the air. A court is not necessary. Just a patch of dirt, a few friends and--absolutely essential--a bottle of pastis, the anise-based aperitif that cools the heated arguments. And any club can sell you a set of boules for $75 to $100, says Paris. Pastis not included.