Players who love bocce are on a roll in Portland

Italian-style bowling has a new venue in the North Park Blocks

By Michaela Bancud

The Portland Tribune, May 27, 2003, Updated Oct 30, 2009

The leisurely construction of two bocce lanes is finished. Tucked between Northwest Park and Eighth avenues and Flanders and Glisan streets, the spanking new lanes sit in the North Park Blocks between basketball courts.

Bocce (pronounced botch-ee) is a centuries-old, come-as-you-are sport. It originated in ancient times, but most people today associate it with Italians who play the game in streets and shady parks, usually not far from a glass of vino.

Italy isn’t the only country with a version of lawn bowling, of course. The French have a similar game they call pŽtanque, and the English have “bowls” and “crown green bowling.” Bocce is big in Spain, too.

Now it’s downtown Portland’s turn to give bocce a whirl.

Bill Marinelli is the feisty 68-year-old Italian-American who got the ball rolling almost three years ago. Marinelli, a graduate of Holy Redeemer Elementary School and Central Catholic High School, plays in Portland and Vancouver, Wash., bocce leagues and remembers his grandparents playing it in Portland’s Duniway Park when he was a boy.

“The whole area was Italian back then,” says the dapper Marinelli, dressed this day in a blue blazer with brass buttons, pins with the flags of Italy and the United States affixed to his lapel. Something of a charmer, Marinelli wears a handlebar mustache. His car has a bumper sticker that reads: “The Luckiest People Marry Italians.”

Here’s how bocce, a game that rewards finesse over sweat, is played: Two teams one red, one green are required. The object of the game is to roll the hard rubber balls, which are about the size of grapefruits, as close to the small white ball, or pallino, as possible. Players can “kiss,” or nudge, the pallino closer or farther, depending on their opponent’s position. Points are earned and added up at the end of each round.

The new Portland courts have unique qualities. At 60 feet by 12 feet, they are shorter than the standard 90-by-13-foot lanes. These lanes’ sandy surfaces are made of ash, clay and finely ground oyster shells. A French drain a gravel-filled trench with sand on top surrounds the lanes both to keep rainwater from collecting and to direct runoff away from the sewer system.

Marinelli is a member of the Paisan Club and the Sons of Italy, both Italian-American social clubs. As such, he’s earned himself the nickname “Mr. Network.” He belongs to the Italian American Chamber of Commerce, a group that is helping establish sister-city status between Portland and Bologna, Italy.

When Marinelli first decided that the neighborhood could use a couple of bocce courts, he enlisted fellow bocce player and Pearl District neighbor Dianna Hanken-Hu as his liaison. They teamed up with Fredrick Zal, a young architect who became the project’s pro-bono landscape designer.

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