Bernacchi and Jacobs decided to form their league three years ago on Venice Beach, while sharing a twelve-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a game of bocce, mostly as a way to get their friends out on the sand with them. Jacobs learned the game from his father at his grandparents' farm in Lyons, Wisconsin.
The two men are so obsessed with the sport that they once played a grudge match in a patch of poison oak after a 5km trail run in the mountains. "We totally joked about how ambitious it was to form a league," Jacobs said. "In Los Angeles, it's hard to get someone to commit to a 15-minute lunch."
In selling bocce to their friends, they were more pragmatic. "We positioned it as a simple game you could play with one hand while the other was holding a beer tightly," Bernacchi said.
As in bowling, a player doesn't have to be completely focused on the game, which makes bocce ideal for socializing. "No one talks to you in Los Angeles," said Jerry Torgerson, 38, of Bocce Bocce and Sons. "Then you start throwing bocce and you're buddies."
Bocce is also a sport in which some women say they feel comfortable competing against men. Sarah DeLucas, 28, a marketing coordinator at CQ Press, a publishing company, and a founder of the DC League, had previously joined a mixed kickball league when she moved to Washington, but became disenchanted when she found her male competitors to be too aggressive. "There was a lot of screaming from men at girls," she said.
In bocce, DeLucas added: "Those gender lines disappear. You could be the greatest athlete in the world and stink at bocce. It's nice not to have to worry about some guy screaming at a girl, 'I can't believe you didn't catch the ball.'"
The mixed competitions can lead to romantic match-ups at parties after a game. (The name of the game, after all, is derived from the Italian word for "kiss.")
Bernacchi met his girlfriend, Camille Labouchere, 28, through the league. She agreed to go out with him only after he shaved the mustache he had grown during what he called his "Bukowski phase."
"I showed up to practice one day and there he was, clean-shaven and holding his clipboard," she said. "We kissed a week later."
In Venice, the championship match was all about adrenaline. James Moore, 36, and Sean Stortroen, 26, two rookies on Team America, were dressed in camouflage shorts and hats, and did push-ups between throws. Their opponents, Cory Noonan, 36, and Chad Einbinder, 37, were three-year veterans on the Chrispan McNuts team.
It was a lopsided contest from the start. The McNuts' arms were tired; one of the early tosses missed the pallino by about 1.5m.
"Come on, Nuts," Bernacchi shouted from the sideline. "Don't let these boys do it."
But Team America landed toss after toss as close as they could to the pallino. Their fans cheered: "Stunning!" "Gorgeous!" "They're cyborgs!" Soon, the score was 9-0.
In a desperate attempt to salvage a victory, the McNuts moved the match to the hard-packed sand at the edge of the water where, they said, they played better. But even that didn't help. Team America won, 11-4, and was given the league's version of the Stanley Cup: a sand-filled glass boot on which their names would be etched. They raised the trophy in the air and cheered, "Mission accomplished."
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