Sport: Jai Alai

(See front cover)

A hard ball flying like a trapped bird in a courtyard with smooth stone walls, its floor marked into divisions by lines and trod by leaping black-haired men—such was the game the oldtime Aztecs played and drew pictures of on the rock walls of Central American amphitheatres. Hernan Cortes took it back to Andalusia, whence it penetrated the Pyrenees and the people called it pelota (ball). The game became the main diversion of so many festivals that the Basques gave it another name, now mispronounced all over the world, meaning "merry...