(See front cover)
A hard ball flying like a trapped bird in a courtyard with smooth stone walls, its floor marked into divisions by lines and trod by leaping black-haired men—such was the game the oldtime Aztecs played and drew pictures of on the rock walls of Central American amphitheatres. Hernan Cortes took it back to Andalusia, whence it penetrated the Pyrenees and the people called it pelota (ball). The game became the main diversion of so many festivals that the Basques gave it another name, now mispronounced all over the world, meaning "merry festival"—jai alai (pronounced high lie).
From wall to wall the little trapped ball, hard as a modern golf ball, smaller than a modern baseball—a Turk's head of plaited rubber strips sewn in a membrane of goat-skin—flew so hard that it hurt bare hands. The players took to wearing gloves, then invented and strapped to their throwing wrists a long shallow wicker basket (called cesta). hooked like a giant's fingernail. The length of the throwing arc added speed to the little ball, heightened the game's excitement, sent it back across the ocean with other Spanish improvements to Mexico City, where it ranks next to bullfighting; to Havana, where another season of it is now in full stride.
From Havana it reached Miami, where at the Biscayne Fronton matches began again fortnight ago and will continue during the winter visiting time. Nightly also it is played in the Chicago Fronton on Clark Street and Lawrence Avenue. As the little ball flies the spectators become wildly excited and go home later to tell of the new winter game that has come to the U. S., saying that it is the fastest game in the world.
Technique. The fronton is a three-walled court about two-thirds as long as a football field. As in all court games, a player scores a point by acing his opponent or making him fault. Winning score varies from 6 (elimination singles) to 30 (elimination doubles). In elimination singles matches, two players start; when one loses a point he sits down and does not get on the court again until his turn comes. Bets are made on teams, on separate matches, on the length of time one player will hold the court. In a doubles match the players move so fast that without their bright shirts in solid contrasting colors you could not tell the teams apart. Two rhythms work in jai alai like the separate yet dependent movements of a fugue. One is the sweep of the cesta. catching the ball on the back swing, throwing it the same second with a stab or a sweep, depending upon whether the player wants to make a long shot or a cut. The other rhythm is the movement of the spectators' faces left and right—first toward the wall as the server, after bouncing the ball, hooks it, swings it back and then forward, sending it away— then toward the players as the ball leaps back off the wall. The speed of the play is equalled only by its intricacy. The floor is marked off in 12-ft. spaces into certain of which the serve must bounce to be fair. The strength and agility required by a game where the ball moves so fast that the eye can scarcely follow it gives jai alai players astonishing muscles in their forearms.