SHERBORN, Massachusetts.  This quiet town in the suburbs west of Boston features a traditional town green, a Colonial-style inn, and something a bit more sinister; a croquet lawn that is the site of viciously-competitive contests between teams from the American Croquet Association.

Sherborn, Mass.

The ACA was formed in the early twentieth century by six "original member" clubs up and down the Eastern seaboard, and has managed to remain out of the sports pages through the native shyness of its old-line members.  "A good WASP gets his name in the paper when he's born, when he's married, and when he dies," says Putnam Everly III, coach of the Boston Brahmins, repeating an old New England saying about white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants.  "Plus, by the time we finish everyone's so drunk we forget to call in the scores."

But the courtly game that was borrowed by the British from the French in the 14th century and never returned has been rocked in recent years by accusations that top players are "juicing" their swings with the same anabolic steroids that made a mockery of long-standing  home run records in major league baseball.  "You look at some of these guys, back in their forties they could 'send' somebody maybe thirty yards with the wind at their back," says Edward "Bink" Terwiliger, a reporter for Croquet Today, the leading--actually the only--magazine to cover the sport.  "Nowadays, if you don't launch a guy out onto Route 27," the state highway that runs alongside the lawn, "you're considered a wuss."

The good old days.

The most egregious violator of the long-standing code of ethics that kept the sport clean from the 1850's through the end of the twentieth century is Roderick "Treasury" Bonds, a stockbroker who plays for the New York Plutocrats.  "Treas is the man," his teammate Warner Herrick says.  "Man, when he puts his foot down on his ball"--the first step in "sending" an opponent's ball after striking it with one's own--"I just hide and watch."

"Treasury" Bonds prepares to "send" an opponent's ball.

But the prodigious blows of bashers like Bonds have caused an equal and opposite reaction--a backlash among old-line fans who long for the days of intellectually-stimulating matches instead of wood-on-wood explosions.  "This isn't the game I grew up with," says Millicent Minot, heiress to the Minot Mechanical Tape Dispenser fortune.

Just do it!

So as Bonds walks onto the lawn for today's match he is greeted by a chorus of boos from the customarily-reserved gallery of fans seated on the Sherborn Cricket Club's veranda.  "I wouldn't have an affair with your wife for all the alimony in the world!" one elderly gentlemen in a cable-knit sweater and Panama hat shouts.  The others begin to chant "STER-oids!  STER-oids!" in an effort to break the New York slugger's concentration as he lines up a shot.

The crowd gets ugly.

Bonds ignores the crowd and hits a shot that effectively blocks his opponent's path to the first wicket.  A torrent of cucumber sandwiches rains down on the lawn, and officials stop play to eject two troublemakers who have had a few too many Bloody Marys.

"Blow it out your Depends, you losers!"

Nathaniel Highsmith is first up for Boston and hits a rare double-tap, a fault that causes him to lose a turn and exposes him to the merciless Bonds, who promptly causes his ball to strike his opponent's, setting up a "send".  Bonds lines up his shot like a hunter drawing a bead on a deer, raises his mallet, then swings forcefully down--into his own foot!

"You'd better move!" 

A hush descends on the crowd as Bonds writhes in pain; although the rivalry between New York and Boston is intense and often bitter, the spectators rise as one and applaud quietly as Bonds is carried off on a stretcher. "I thought you hated him, Daddy," a young boy says as he sees his father wipe a tear from his eye.   

"I do, but the only doctor in town who isn't playing golf today is the veterinarian," the man says with a lump in his throat.  "I hate to see a great thoroughbred put down."

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman