Le Mistral Club Summer Open 
Saturday, July 29, 2006

With temperatures soaring well into the 90's F, eight Triplet teams converged on a sunny Saturday at Clemente Field in Boston's Fens area to battle for the 2006 Summer Open tournament.  Pétanque teams were made up of players from  the Boston area, Worcester, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and New York City.  Several long, hot hours later, the visitors from NYC captured the Gold, making the long drive up especially rewarding.

With Boston's Prudential and John Hancock towers as a backdrop, the "Fenway Petanque Club", complete with team blue polos, holds the point over Team Walker.  After a close match with several lead changes, Team Walker overcame a 12-7 deficit with a come from behind 13-12 victory.

Measuring for that extra point that just might make a difference at 12-12!.

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We learned on the day that geese make for very interested but unusually messy pétanque spectators.  Speaking of unusual, one wonders what passing Bostonians thought when they looked over and saw the game of pétanque being played in their midst .... alongside a cricket match!

And the Winners were......

1st Place/Gold: Lucien Rakotojaona, Hery Rakotoarivony, Ernesto Santos

[from La Boule NewYorkaise club]

2nd Place/Silver: Albert Kallanian, Charlie Testa, Jean-Pierre Kallanian

With the roar from the crowd at nearby Fenway Park foretelling good news, we had time for a quick group photo of all the winning teams before we rushed off to the coolness of a nearby pub just in time to see *another* walk-off game-winning hit by the Red Sox' David Ortiz.  After all, pétanque doesn't rival baseball as the national pastime...yet!     

Winner of ImproperBostonian’s “Boston’s Best” 2004 for Indulgence – 
Dessert in the courtyard at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Gardner Café
http://www.gardnermuseum.org/information/cafe.asp