Word: frontons
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...mother has a complaint. Her son the jai-alai player is the hottest betting commodity in town. Not only is he the first American to equal the Basque masters of the sport, he is, at 22, a reigning champion. Since around $350,000 is wagered each performance in the fronton where Joey holds sway, Mrs. Cornblit, a metalworker's wife, has been besieged by telephone calls: "Did Joey eat his breakfast?" "Did he sleep well...
While jai-alai has been played for centuries in the mountains of Spain-where boys begin strapping on the huge, curved wicker cesta as toddlers-the game is played mainly at the $2 window in the U.S. In Florida, minors are barred from frontons, but as a youngster Cornblit got around the rules by climbing to the roof and staring through a vent at the leaping, whirling players below. After three years of instruction, primarily from a Cuban coach, he won a bronze medal at the 1971 World Championships at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, France. He was just...
Elosegi lost 25 of his 100 or so men during the bombardment. He took pictures the next day in the smoke and the rubble, 48 hours before the Nationalists occupied the town. In 1970 he sneaked a mineral-water bottle filled with pure alcohol into the San Sebastian fronton, where Franco was attending an international jai alai tournament. Elosegi doused himself with alcohol, set it afire, and jumped into the arena from the second balcony, shouting, "Cora Euzkadi Askatuta!" (long live the free Basque country) and "Guernica, Guernica...
...Come on, Lucky Pierre," shouted the chap in the stands at a Miami jai alai fronton. "I can't miss with you." It was Jerry Wurf, Washington-based boss of the State, County and Municipal Workers, the nation's largest public employees union (750,000 members), cheering on a lanky player on the court. But when unlucky Pierre swung his curved basket at the speeding white jai alai ball and missed, Wurf, who had not won a bet all night, resignedly tore up his losing $2 ticket. "If we don't win the next one," he told...
...lines at the betting windows are long in both cities. The Hartford fronton had originally hoped for a wagering handle of $30 million during the seven-month season. The take topped that figure after 90 of 229 dates. Hartford aficionado, Engineer Frank Mirmina, likes the action on the court and on the tote board. Said Mirmina: "It's like watching an N.F.L. game that isn't decided until the final 20 seconds. You're not out of it until it's over...