With mallets towards none

Last Sunday, The Boston Globe had a mah-velous article on tournament croquet.

The timing could not have been better, given that our family’s annual summer co-ed get-together cum croquet “tournament” (on second thought, “croquet” should probably be in quotes, too) is being held tomorrow.

It will not be held at the Lenox Club, site of the recent Berkshire Invitational, but, rather in the side yard of my cousin Mary Beth’s lovely home on The Cape.

Nor will it use the official six-wicket, four-ball mode of play. We’re a six-ball, nine-wicket kind of family.

And we’ve been going longer than the Berkshire Invitational, thank you. The CRAB Invitational, if I’ve got this right, began in 1992, and, thus, we’re on our 20th such outing. Although there’s usually some type of crab dip on offer, CRAB actually stands for Chet-Ralph-Al-Betty, the names of the founding fathers/mother of the families that are part of the event. The CRABs, alas, had already passed on to the Croquet Court in the Sky before the first CRAB was held. Since then, the final two – Margaret and Liz – have also disembarked. Our host’s husband has also died, which is no fairsy, as he’s our generation.

Anyway, tomorrow’s gathering will include folks from age couple-of-months to early-seventies. (Yes, Dick, you are our alter cocker.)

Croquet will be played, haphazardly and half-heartedly by some, more competitively and aggressively by others. The final round is generally played by the golfers who, because they golf and can line up shots, are actually pretty good at croquet. During the final round – and during the rounds in which the majority of players are of the competitive-aggressive golf ilk – balls get sent. In the more refined flights, the game is played largely to see if anyone is bad enough to lose to me and/or my cousin Barbara.

One year, I did make the finals and I almost won, but I choked at the last moment, missing a gimme shot.

Since then, my already shaky game has deteriorated, and, while I will play, I am pretty much past caring. I play not for the love of the game, but, rather, for the love of the family.

Hard core, serious croquet players we are not. Rules are ad hoc, on the spot, arbitrary, in the moment, and "enforced” by force of will, bellowing power, ridicule, and just playing through. Before he died, my cousin’s husband Glenn was the referee. He actually kinda-sorta tried to occasionally go by the rule book, which has since sailed out the window, brought out only when there’s someone who looks like they’re going to win who we don’t want to win. For whatever reason, this person is generally my cousin Robert, and the folks who most vociferously do not want him to win are his three daughters. Now that the founding mothers are all gone, the word “asshole” will definitely be used at least once. (Of course, one of those founding mothers would not have minded at all. Just not mine.)

One year, I stopped in to a sporting goods store to see if I could get Glenn a referee’s shirt. When the salesperson asked what sport I was looking for, I told him croquet.

“I wasn’t aware that croquet needed referring,” he said.

“It does in our family,” I told him.

As for tournament croquet:

As one might imagine, given the need for exquisitely manicured lawns, sometimes pricey equipment, and hard-to-clean white shorts, the pool of people who can actually invest the time and money to become serious croquet players is fairly small and skews old. Across the country, the United States Croquet Association has nearly 3,000 members spread among 300 clubs. And aside from the current Bobby Fisher of croquet and number one player in the country, Ben Rothman – a highly touted 27-year-old from Mission Hills, California, who as far as anyone knows is one of only a few Americans able to make a living as a professional croquet player and teacher – most players tend to be older than 50 and either retired or wealthy or both.

Making a living at croquet?  Who knew?

Ben Rothman, apparently.

He’s sitting out the lousy job market by playing croquet, blogging (who isn’t?), and coaching.

We do not, as noted, play six-wicket croquet, which “is almost as complicated to pick up as that nebulous British bat game cricket.” Which would be well beyond our ken, what with the sun and the beer and the general jocularity of the occasion.

Plus, we’re Irish, so how seriously are we going to take a game that’s imported from the British Isles. (Other than golf.)

Croquet – the backyard version we all know and love -  was taken up in the US in the late 19th century:

…though according to the US Croquet Association, it “suffered a setback in the 1890s when the Boston clergy spoke out against the drinking, gambling, and licentious behavior associated with it on the Common.

Why, the Boston Common is just outside my front door. Licentious croquet behavior – now that I would have liked to have seen.

Thanks to The Globe article, I now know that official term for sending someone else’s ball: it’s “roqueting,” which is:

…widely recognized in the backyard version of croquet as the favored move of jerk uncles everywhere – or to some other horrible fate.

At Mary Beth’s, that horrible fate can be landing in the pond, so roqueting someone into the drink is greatly frowned upon.

But we could use some coaching.

So an open invite to Ben Rothman:

If you’re on The Cape tomorrow, give us a shout.

We’re in West Dennis. Lots of food and bev. Lots of cat-calling and bantering. This year, with two new little ones, a lot of coo-ing and ooh-ing over the new babies, Teagan and Olivia.

I can pretty much guarantee that we’re not as genteel and posh as the folks at the Berkshire Invitational. But we’re actually pretty nice. You may be able to do a bit of networking, if you’re trying to figure out your next career move is. Just in case professional croquet doesn’t pan out for you.

And you’ll love the CRAB motto: with mallets towards none.

Wicket-pissah, no?