Handball with Daiquiris

If Florida ever leaves a time capsule for future generations, it will probably be filled with losing pari-mutuel tick ets. SEE YOU AT TROPICAL PARK-EXCITING TWIN DOUBLE, read roadside billboards. DOG RACING HOLLYWOOD KENNEL CLUB TONIGHT. There is no state income tax and no funded debt; almost five percent of the annual state budget is financed by revenues from gambling. Florida boasts four horse tracks and more dog tracks (17) than any other state. What's more, it is the only place in the U.S. that permits pari-mutuel betting on human beings.

The game is jai alai, pronounced "hi lie" and meaning, roughly, "merry festival." It is a kind of jet-propelled handball that probably originated with the Aztecs, traveled to Spain with Cortes, and was reintroduced to the New World by the Basques, who claim it as their native sport. The object is simple enough: players wearing basketlike cestas heave a ball against a wall until someone misses. But ah, the details. The court is about 200 ft. long; the ball is so hard (rubber core wound with nylon string, covered with goatskin) and goes so fast (up to 175 m.p.h.) that the front wall has to made of 12-in.-thick granite block--concrete would crack from the impact. The ricocheting angles are infinite, requiring incredible feats of agility, timing and strength. And there are times when just staying alive amid the buzzing missiles can be a victory.

"Come On, Choo Choo!" Florida's six jai alai frontons tempt fans with drinks, dinners, dames--and enough pageantry to make Nero jealous. At the world's biggest (capacity: 6,000) and costliest ($4,500,000) fronton in suburban Miami, customers do not even have to leave their upholstered seats to get taken to the cleaners--pretty girls in green and gold uniforms prance up and down the aisles collecting bets.

Wagers can be made in any amount from $2 up, on single players or teams (win, place or show) or on combinations called quinielas and correctas. Betting is not on a par with the ponies, but a well-placed $3 on a long-shot combination can bring back more than $1,200. And each year 1,400,000 fans pour $41 million into the frontons' pari-mutuel machines (the state's cut: $2,300,000). Lounging behind a protective wire screen, the fans sip daiquiris and cheer wildly for players whose names they cannot pronounce. "Come on, Choo Choo!" they yell to Churruca, an acrobatic Basque whose specialty is running straight up a side wall to pick off a pelota 15 ft. above the floor. "Attababy, Orby!" they scream to Orbea, who can slam the ball into the front wall so accurately that it will hit a handkerchief halfway back down the court on the rebound.

The Short, Happy Life. The players in Florida are mostly Basques, and they are groomed and guarded as carefully as any race horse. They start training at eight or nine, arrive in the U.S. at 16, spend two years playing in minor-league Florida frontons before getting a crack at Miami's big time. They are forbidden to drink anything stronger than wine, are locked into their quarters before every night's matches --so that they cannot be approached by gamblers. But there are compensations: top players get $20,000 a season, and late Saturday night, when the week's work is over, the stage-door Jeanies cluster around. "All you have to do is pick up a cesta" grins one player, "and the women will come."

But jai alai is no game for amateurs --and the life of a pelotari is short as well as happy. After a few years, shoulders and arms are noticeably deformed by the strain, and biceps bulge almost as large as Sonny Listen's. Few professionals risk playing past 35. When their legs tire and their reflexes slow down, they are likely to catch a pelota where it hurts--like Erdoza, a Basque champion of the World War I era, who was known as "El Fenomeno" until he put a little extra on a forehand one day and wound up whistling through a baseball-sized gap in his front teeth. Pelotaris like to compare themselves to bullfighters: the pelota is a charging bull, and the closer it comes, the bigger the thrill. In Miami some years back, one player was beaned and killed, and frontons tried to talk the players into wearing protective helmets. The suggestion brought hoots of disdain. Sneered one player: "Would a bullfighter enter the ring in a tank?"

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