At the old boule game

OK, first a primer, or perhaps a refresher course for those who may have dozed off momentarily during second-year French class when the subject du jour was, thankfully, sports.

Pétanque (pronounced PAY-tahnk), an outdoor game that originated a century ago in southern France (Marseille and surrounding villages), is played with metal boules (BOOls), similar to the more widely known game of boccie. The object of pétanque, typically competed by two teams composed of two or three players aside, is for competitors to roll their boules against the cochonnet (COSH-on-ay), a much smaller ball that is rolled out 6-10 meters (approximately 20-33 feet) on a hard surface (stone dust preferred) to start the game.

From there, points are awarded based on the boules' proximity to the cochonnet, which sometimes requires precise measurement (tape measure to settle modest disputes, s'il vous plait). On a warm summer night, with the romantic thought of a soft sea breeze wafting over Marseille, players anywhere in the world might sip on a glass of pastis liqueur, puff on a fine cigar, and ruminate over the many complexities and consequences of their next boule.

A simple game, pétanque . . . at least until you play.

"The first one to 13 points wins the game," said the Brighton-raised Brian Walsh, a 50-year-old Boston Latin grad whose pétanque addiction has led him to build a pétanque court in the backyard of his Stow home. "It's one of those games, you know, five minutes to learn it -- but a lifetime to master it."

Walsh this morning, beginning at 9:30, will be among the huddled pétanque masses who take over Clemente Field, just around the corner from Fenway Park, to compete in the daylong Federation of Pétanque national singles championship. A regional championship for doubles, the more common discipline de boules, will be held tomorrow at Green Hill Park in Worcester at 9:30 a.m.

If you've never seen the game played -- or even heard of it -- the next day or two will be the perfect pétanque take. But be warned: Pétanque players have an infectious enthusiasm and recruiting spirit, a combination guaranteed to send spectators home with gray stone dust embedded in fingernails and a hankering to dust off their "Ecouter et Parler" high school text.

Walsh and friends can be found on Clemente Field's stone dust running track most every Thursday evening, spring through fall. Walsh, a Cisco marketing manager whose office is in Boxborough, heads up the state's pétanque contingent (see: http://lemistralclub.home.comcast.net). Every Thursday night, beginning around 6:30, Walsh is often among a dozen or more players who meet for a relaxing, though competitive, night of boules.

Local pétanque players also sometimes boule in the South End, at Hayes Park, but by and large Clemente Field is ground zero for the tidy, little-known French game.

Two nights ago, Walsh and some 10 other players meandered their way up and down a small section of the oval track. Quizzical joggers, never breaking stride, nonchalantly detoured around the players, boules, and tiny red cochonnet (also sometimes known as a bouchon). Basketball players, Frisbee tossers, barking dogs, squawking geese, and the ringing bells of the adjacent Holy Trinity church filled the tableau, with the Hancock and Prudential monoliths towering in the distance.

"Quite a difference from when I went to Latin School," said Walsh, Class of '74, pointing in the direction of his alma mater, tucked behind a grove of maple trees at the edge of the park. "Back then, this area was all drug dealers, syringes. You wouldn't have wanted to set a foot out here."

It's a foot, be it right or left, that begins a pétanque mène, or end, what North Americans might consider an inning. The mène begins with a player using said foot to inscribe a circle, roughly 18 inches in diameter, in the stone dust. The player then tosses the cochonnet, and once it comes to rest, the same player then launches the first boule with the cochonnet as the target. No more than 6 points can be scored in one mène, which means that every match has a minimum of three mènes. Every boule must be tossed with both feet planted in the circle.

"At first, you might think it's silly," said Pete Crowley, who lives in Milton now but developed a love for pétanque when living in France in the late '90s.

"But as you understand the game, and all of its strategy . . . it can be very technical, and addictive."

Silly. Technical. Addictive. Not unlike the American pastime played just around the corner at Fenway Park.

Crowley and his wife, Trish, who operate the café at the nearby Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, are often part of the Thursday night crowd at Clemente. A couple of years ago, they made the trek to Grenoble to see the pétanque world championship.

"That," noted Pete Crowley, "shows you how obsessed we are." For further proof, he keeps a bright red pétanque scoring clicker, much like a baseball umpire's ball-and-strike counter, in his pocket. The ever-present tape measure is hitched to his belt.

Walsh, who developed the itch when assigned to France by Cisco for a few years, keeps a small stack of pétanque handouts at the ready for each visit to Clemente. Passersby typically stop and stare, trying to figure out what in the name of "Candlepins for Cash" is happening out there on the track.

"Kind of amazing," said Crowley, shaking his head, "almost everyone who goes by says, 'Hey, are you guys playing boccie?' "

"Boccie?" said the French-born Benoit Paquier, another regular among the Thursday night group. "What's boccie?"

If passersby linger, Walsh will wander over and hand them the printed primer, along with an invitation to give the game a try. All boulers, big and small, are welcome.

"No one knows anyone is playing the game in Boston," said Walsh, who figures only upward of 100 local players stay active in the Thursday night sessions. "We have all ages . . . from 20 and into their 80s. We've got one player, a gentleman in his 80s from Newton, who plays quite a bit. He's very fit . . . very well dressed . . . a retired tailor of fine men's clothing. And an excellent pétanque player."

Worcester, said Walsh, is a pétanque hotbed, tracing in part to a tragic chapter of world history. According to Walsh, the Armenian genocide brought about nearly a half-million emigres in the early 20th century to the Marseille area, where many of them learned both the local language and sport. Many of those Marseille-landed Armenians, speaking French and rolling boules, years later made their way to Worcester, where a significant Armenian population remains to this day.

The aged sons of those emigres carry on the tradition today in Worcester's hills, speaking Armenian-tinged French and English and deliberating arduously, said Walsh, over their next shot, or vehemently disputing whose boule is closest to the cochonnet.

"Great, great players," said Walsh. "And they take their pétanque very seriously."

Philippe Riand, a software architect in IBM's Westford office, grew up in St. Gervais in the French Alps. His family moved to Marseille, where he learned pétanque, but he gave up the game in his early teens.

"I don't know why," said the 40-year-old Riand, a father of two young daughters and now living in Chelmsford, where Emilie (4) and Fanny (7) have taken up soccer. "A teenager, you know?"

Once in the United States, Riand one day typed "pétanque" into an Internet search engine and, voila, found Walsh's website, and got back into his old game. A big man who speaks in beautifully accented English, the sharp-eyed Riand is superb at taking aim at an opponent's resting shot and sending it flying back to Marseille with a laser strike of his own boule. He is Matsuzaka-like for pounding the cochonnet zone.

A grimacing Crowley, having just watched Riand knock one of his resting shots astray, muttered the ubiquitous, "Aye . . . aye . . . aye," pétanque's equal of Charlie Brown's "Grrrrrrrrrr."

It took a move to America, and the rekindled passion of a sport he left behind, for Riand to turn into a pretty good bouler.

"Yes, my wife is playing a little bit now, and we've built a court in our backyard," said Riand. "It's funny, but you know, pétanque is a way for me to have a little bit of France with me, when I am here . . . far away from home."

Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at dupont@globe.com.