Jai Alai… the fastest game in the world
…that isn’t skeet shooting… (not that we’re saying skeet shooting is a sport).
That thing to the left is not the most uncomfortable (and rather proudly large) cup on the planet. It’s the instrument of death and destruction as brought to you by Spaniards. It’s worn with a glove and is used to hurl a small ball close to 200 mph at a wall (put it like that and the game sounds kinda silly *cough* Nascar *cough*). “Jai Alai”, meaning “Merry Festival” in the Basque language (Spain), is played in a “fronton” (an open-walled arena) and is pronounced “high lie” (like what you tell your parents when they smell something coming from your room…).
Get a nifty diagram and some sweet footage after the jump…
The game is relatively complicated compared to other games in which you throw things at walls. The game is played round-robin style with one on one matches or two teams of two (and typically eight players or teams). It starts when the server, behind line eleven (as seen in the illustration at right), hurls the ball at the front wall so that it bounces between lines four and seven. That poor sucker can only let the ball bounce once before scooping it up and hurling it back. If he doesn’t, he’s gone and the next victim steps in (and so on and so forth). The first team or player to score seven points wins.
Gambling on the sport made it “relatively” big in the U.S. but now pretty much resides in Florida. Outside the U.S. you can find it in Mexico and South America.
The Irish play a version of jai alai called “forshi” with teams of three instead of two… because they’re Irish, and that’s how they roll.
To get a grasp of just out awesome and fast the sport really is, check out the video below for some cool highlight reels.
http://www.betdania.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jai_alai