Sport: Jai Alai Boom

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The game of jai alai (pronounced high lie) is Cuba's contribution to Miami's sport life. Long popular in a grubby way, despite its commercialization — its bursts of breath-taking action punctuated by frequent intermissions while the audience was canvassed for bets — it may prove to be a big-time gambling game.

For 19 years, olive-skinned jai alai professionals, wielding elongated basket-like contraptions called cestas, have whipped pelotas from one end of a three-walled concrete court to the other, banged their heads against the wall in disgust when they muffed a point, and pulled off shots requiring marvels of footwork and timing. Despite these pulse-quickening bursts, most Miamians found they could take Cuba's fast-paced game or leave it alone. In either case, they kept on leaving their spare change at Miami's horse and dog tracks.

When racing was banned, jai alai suddenly became the lone remaining form of pari-mutuel wagering in Miami — and in the rest of the U.S. Since then, Cuba's national pastime has boomed at Miami's Biscayne Fronton, where attendance last week was almost double last season's and mutuel betting more than double. One night 3,478 fans watched the Latins strut their stuff and bet a record $66,335 on their favorite pelota-slingers.

The 27 tight-strung jai alaiers (16 Cubans, seven Spaniards, three Mexicans, one Brazilian) now playing in Miami and making $250 to $650 a month for their work, stepped up their frenzied game to win the new audiences for keeps. The present top performer is a veteran Spaniard, 40-year-old, balding José Garate, who played seven seasons in Shanghai before the war. The box-office star is Enrique ("Superman") Vallejo, a none-too-agile, 191-lb. Cuban who whips the ball with terrific force. Win, lose or draw, he is billed — and viewed by many female fans — as the Errol Flynn of jai alai.