nothin Salute! Annex Club Marks 80 Years With Bocce,… | New Haven Independent

Salute! Annex Club Marks 80 Years With Bocce, Bingo, & Beer

Allan Appel Photo

Lewis Maturo takes aim.

Mike Crisafi leaned in, took the measure of the distance down the 34-by-six foot bocce court, and then let his red ball roll toward the smaller yellow bullet” ball, or pallino.

If he and his three teammates rolled theirs closer to the pallino than the closest ball of the opposition, they each got a point in the frame.

Change sides of the court, roll again, and the first team to get to 16 points wins the game.

In the end, 93-year-old Crisafi and his team prevailed over the younger men playing with Bobby Astorino.

He’s the oldest member, and he beat me,” Astorino conceded.

Crisafi, foreground right, leads the bocce cheers.

Then they all took the camaraderie indoors for a Crown Royal and a beer at the lounge bar.

It was another day of games and good cheer for members of Annex Young Men’s Association at 554 Woodward Ave., which this month marks its 80th anniversary.

The Annex Club, as it is known, held a formal 80th anniversary dinner, on May 12 marking four generations of sports, camareaderie, and civic service. The club is making a push for new members to join what is one of New Haven’s best-kept secrets, especially if you like bocce, bingo, beer, and good cheer of the Italian variety.

The club currently 250 members, mostly middle-aged and older Italian-American men, plus 30 women who disbanded their auxiliary in 2009 to become full-fledged.

Members pay $100 a year. That entitles you to go to the modestly priced bar in the basement and to join in the popular bocce league on Wednesday nights, cards on Monday, and bingo on Thursday.

The lounge is in the basement along with a cozy labyrinth of rooms for pool, chatting, cards, and club memorabilia. The latter includes a framed memorial presentation of the 90 percent of club members who served in the armed forces during World War Two.

In 1938 the club began not with bocce but with football. Twenty-nine Annex guys, many of whom were accomplished football players, decided they needed their own club building. They found one on Forbes Avenue.

In 1951 the current building on Woodward was obtained, and along with it, the founding of the Annex YMA Little League, whose first games unfolded in the club’s spacious parking lots before the fields in East Shore Park were laid out.

On a beautifully temperate spring night, you’d be forgiven the illusion that the heart of the Annex Club is not football or baseball, but an avatar of that ancient Roman game of bocce.

There are three courts out back laid out end-to-end adjacent to a long rectangular patch of green grass, beyond which another expanse borders on the city’s sewage water treatment plant.

You picked a good [aroma-less] night,” said Lewis Maturo, during a break in one of the relaxed games.

Maturo and the other players said they get together weekly for games not for the competition as much as the camaraderie.

Ed Fitzgerald, a member for 30 years, joked that the club does occasionally let in an Irishman.

Veteran bocce player George D’Agostino, whose team was sitting on the nearby bench awaiting its turn, said he enjoys the friendship and the end-of-season cookouts. As to bocce itself, he judged that he is getting a little better after 22 years.”

Treasurer and past President Bobby Astorino said the club owns its own building and is solid financially. The club rents out the upstairs large room almost every Saturday night of the year for weddings and other social events.

George D’Agostino, foreground, planning his next toss.

There are also some venerable regular renters of the space, including The New Haven Philatelic Society, one of whose principals, Chapel West’s Brian McGrath, was spied shooting pool in the room beside the lounge.

Still, Astorino said, the club is conscious of the fate of other New Haven social clubs that have faded away. SO it is working hard to attract new members with, for example, a classic car show, upcoming on June 5.

Those interested in checking the place out — and maybe tossing a bocce ball —s hould be in touch with club corresponding secretary Cameron Bohan at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Crisafi enoys a Crown Roayl and beer in the lounge, after his bocce triumph.

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