Let's roll! Major League Bocce makes an old game young again

"MAJOR League Bocce" is exactly the sort of tongue-in-cheek name that works for a league that's "major" mostly in how fast it has grown.

The casual, social sport league that is helping to rejuvenate the ancient game expects about 12,000 registered players this year in Philadelphia and 10 other cities nationwide.

In 2004, Sarah DeLucas and fellow co-founders started D.C. Bocce League with about 50 players as an alternative to an intramural kickball league that just wasn't cutting it.

"People took kickball a little too seriously," she said, "getting out of their crap jobs and taking everything to the next level."

"Basically, bocce is pairing sports recreation, all super casually, with going to the bar and getting drunk," DeLucas said. "We liked that concept a lot, but we really hated kickball."

"A lot of people, when they think of bocce, they think of an older Italian-American," DeLucas said. "They think of pleated pants."

And while bocce continues to be a tradition in many Italian families and where some "major leaguers" first learn to play, bocce is spreading the game to a new demographic: the young and the beer-drinking.

The league branded and branched out in 2011 to Philadelphia with the name Major League Bocce.

This year, the league will field teams in Washington, D.C., Philly, Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Cleveland, Houston, Dallas, New York City, Pittsburgh and Richmond.

In Philly this summer, teams are rolling balls in three divisions: at Dilworth Park in front of City Hall and at Spruce Street Harbor Park on Wednesdays, or at Jefferson Square Park on Thursdays.

Local bars pair up with each location to offer deals on beer and food, like Tavern on Broad, where Dilworth Park players gather afterward for Dogfish Head pitchers for $12. In fact, Dogfish Head came on in 2012 as the official beer sponsor in Philly. The league is 21+ and DeLucas said players average around 30 years of age.

"You'll see so many different ages," volunteer Dilworth Park facilitator Kamali Brooks said. "Some people have been playing so long that they don't care that there's people that are 21 or 22. They just come out to have fun."

James Nicholson, of Mount Airy, who plays on the undefeated "Satyrday Club," said, "It's just great to hang out with all these guys, they're a lot of fun."

"If you can get out one hour a week into Center City, it makes your whole week," Nicholson said.

The growth of Major League Bocce in Philadelphia, home to three of the four founders, mimicked the growth in D.C. and now about 700 players are participating in Philly's summer season. For the whole year, 2,000 registrations are expected. The league operates in all four seasons at indoor and outdoor locations around the city.

When volunteer Spruce Street Harbor facilitator Kerry O'Brien, of Marlton, N.J., is not calling the five-minute warning on each game or settling infrequent game disputes, she's rolling balls alongside her team members.

O'Brien had never played before, but tweeted league info she found online to a friend and found friends-of-friends on Facebook to create a team.

"We have doctors, engineers. We have guys that work in offices," Greg Omerza, O'Brien's teammate, said of the league.

Omerza has been playing bocce since he was a kid, one of the few on the team who had played before. But it didn't matter because mostly they come out to have a good time, he said.

"A year and a half later, we're still together and still friends," O'Brien said.

Each division hosts a range of creatively named teams from "Love is a Boccefield" at Jefferson Square Park to Dilworth Park's "Everybocce Loves Somebocce Sometime."

Teams at Spruce Street Harbor give high-fives and low-fives while being careful not to spill the beer in the other hand. The opposing teams kibitz with one another and shake hands after most games - teams stand on the same side of the court - but some games are very competitive depending on how into it the players are. Some teams are also very good and win their division frequently, Brooks said.

But Robert Welz, of Center City, said for him, bocce strategy is sort of like beer pong, where shots can be hit-or-miss. "I saw one team that was like weirdly competitive, and it was like 'what are you doing here?' " he said.

Next week, each location will wrap up its regular season play and move into the two-week playoffs - with a $50 registration fee, every team makes the playoffs and every player gets a T-shirt.

Winners of each division receive a trophy, bragging rights and a donation to a charity of their choosing. DeLucas said in 10 years, over $150,000 has been donated to charity through Major League Bocce.

"It literally just exploded," DeLucas said. Since the league started, registration has been known to sell out in minutes.

One time, a D.C.-based lawyer, annoyed about missing the entry deadline, sent some empty threats the league's way on his law firm stationary, claiming an unfair advantage in the registration process.

That experience, DeLucas said, was part of how the co-founders came to realize: "We tapped into something that was missing from the social sports landscape."

"It doesn't matter if you have all this athletic ability, or zero," DeLucas said. "Bocce is a very accessible game, anyone can play."