Jillian Chantal

I am a big fan of names. I like to take note of names of towns on exit signs. It’s interesting to see the crazy names people come up with to name their cities.  My friends know about this quirk of mine and on the way home from RWA conference, Leigh pointed out to me a sign at an exit that said Jai Alai. Because my brain is full of arcane crap, I explained that it was not a town but a game similar to racquetball.  Her reply: that would be a great Friday Fact. So, here we are, it’s Friday and here’s your fact.  All credit goes to Leigh for this one.

Jai Alai was first played in the Basque region of Spain. It originated from people throwing a ball against the church wall as a fun past time.  It grew from there and the first games were played in the United States at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and the first fronton was built in Miami in the mid 1920s.  The arenas where they play are called frontons.  The game is played with a very hard ball called a pelota and the ball is caught in a curved net with a handle called a cesta (Spanish for basket).

Jai Alai means Merry Festival in Basque.  The game is very similar to racquetball in that one side serves and the other must catch it in the basket and fling it back to the wall.  The ball must be in play all the time. No holding the ball in the basket.  The balls get up to very high speeds. The highest clocked speed was 188 mph. Since the ball is harder than a rock, don’t you know that could break your bones if it hit you at that speed? Since the balls are so hard and hit the granite wall so hard, a ball lasts about 20 minutes in play before it splits.

This sport draws quite a number of gamblers and seems very exciting to me. Much more so than a staid game of tennis.

Cesta