Jai alai was a favorite pastime growing up in the small town of Markina-Xemein in northern Spain. One of the foreign players, Inaki Goitiandia, took up the sport at age 10.

Seven of them - from Spain, France and the Philippines - were hired after nearby Dania Beach Casino’s fronton ended its seven-decade run last year. The Casino Dania Beach announced last month that it's also giving the centuries-old sport a second chance, but the fate of the sport still largely depends on the shoulders - and overextended rotator cuffs - of Magic City’s roster of 28 athletes. “At least there’s a present, so that means we have a fighting chance at a future.” “We’re pretty confident there’s a future,” said Scott Savin, the chief operating officer of Magic City.

And many of the game’s top players who used to make the journey across the Atlantic have hung up their wicker cestas - curved baskets for catching and throwing - leaving a void that a roster of local, homegrown talent is hard-pressed to fill.īut the one advantage of having fallen so far is that the only direction left to go is up. Live wagering, which long drove the sport, has dried up in the era of YouTube and online gambling. Instead, just a few dozen family members and die-hard fans turned out for a recent match. Gone are the celebrities like Paul Newman and John Travolta who used to crowd into sweaty, smoke-filled grandstands on a Saturday night to watch elite athletes fling a goatskin ball called a pelota in a three-walled fronton, or court, at 130 mph (210 km/h). What could be jai alai’s curtain call is playing out at Magic City Casino, one of the last places the game is played as a professional sport. Now, a group of committed enthusiasts is doing all it can to save jai alai, a game that originated in the Basque region of Spain and France but took root in Miami during the go-go days of the 1970s and '80s. The world’s fastest ball sport has been dying a slow death for decades.

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