The scene could have taken place in northern Spain's Basque region in the late 1700s or on Dale Mabry Highway in the 1970s. It could have been last Saturday night in Miami as well. Since its creation, jai-alai (pronounced hi-li) has mixed grace, skill, speed and danger in an exciting combination for players and fans. And for a few decades, those players and fans flocked to Tampa for world-class professional contests. Jai-alai, which includes both singles and doubles competition, usually features round-robin tournament-style play where eight individuals or teams vie for a spot on the court and an opportunity to score points. Armed with his cesta, a player must intercept the pelota after no more than one bounce and deliver it to his opponent within the prescribed boundaries marked on the cancha. The losing team or player is sent off the court and to the back of the line, waiting (or hoping) for another chance to compete before the game ends. The winning side is awarded points and faces a new challenger.
Jai-alai players on the fronton, Tampa, Florida, 1957.
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Before the Buccaneers, the Lightning & the Rays, jai-alai wasn’t just a sport in Tampa. It was the sport in Tampa. The game that was played against the walls of Spanish churches centuries earlier made its way to the United States in the early 20th century. Cuba (then under United States jurisdiction) already had a fronton and jai-alai magazines of its own. But after debuting at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, fans all over the country, including northeast states such as Connecticut and Rhode Island, and even at select casinos in Las Vegas, embraced the sport. Over the years, celebrities such as Jackie Gleason and athletes such as Casey Stengel and Babe Ruth were known to watch games, and (not surprisingly) writer Ernest Hemingway expressed his appreciation for the Spanish sport. But jai-alai found a particularly warm welcome in Florida. The first professional games in the country were played in Miami in the 1920s, and with its strong Cuban roots, jai-alai survives in Florida to this day. Within a few decades of its introduction (and after wagering on the sport was legalized), the state was boasting nearly a dozen frontons in locations such as Daytona Beach, Ocala, Fort Pierce and Tampa-more than any other state in the country. In the 1960s and 1970s, jai-alai was entrenched in cities across Florida. Attendance for a weekend date often approached 10,000 spectators (a slate of games in Miami drew more than 15,000 in 1975), and seasonal handles (money wagered) were reaching tens of millions of dollars for successful frontons. Millions of fans were attending games in Florida alone, but an evening of jai-alai was about more than just casual wagering. It was a significant social event for the community.
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