Word: pelota
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...Southwestern Europe, it was Pelota Week. From Biarritz on the Atlantic coast to Orthez and Oloron-Sainta-Marie in the heart of the Pyrenees, Basques were playing their national game. Shepherds and schoolboys, fishermen and priests, customs inspectors and smugglers ran each other ragged as they whipped a goatskin-covered ball against any convenient wall and went through the swift gyrations of pelota, that rugged ancestor of jai alai, handball and most other court games...
...that is needed would be a few tons of reinforced concrete constructed in the form of flying buttresses on three walls to support the terrific impact of the pelota, and a neon sign erected over the middle portal to advertise the pari-mutuel windows...
...last night of the tournament, with Spain and France running neck & neck for the world title, San Sebastian was abuzz with pelota talk. The local fronton (court) was crammed with 3,000 spectators straining at the wire screen that separated them from the players (and also from the hard rubber ball, covered with goatskin, that zips up & down the court at a 100 m.p.h. clip...
Spain and Mexico were matched at Cesta Punto (considered the purest pelota form) in the final. Mexico's stocky Fernando Pareyon and Manuel Barrera, a ferocious hitter, were favored by the aficionados over the wiry Spanish brother team, Manolo and Joaquin Balet, sons of a wealthy Catalonian textile manufacturer and oldtime pelota champion. While the Mexican team led a carefree tourist life before the match, Papa Balet whisked his sons off to a secluded retreat...
...whipped the hard-hitting Mexicans, 40-20. The victory gave Spain the overall championship, over runner-up France, 44-39 Noting the five-point disparity between the two countries, and recalling that Spain had entered 18 teams to France's 13, the elderly, greying president of the French pelota federation said bitterly: "Those damned live balls . . . Had I known about the scoring system, I would have entered myself in some of those silly games. I would have looked foolish, but France would have carried off the championship...