Word: sportingly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...good evening of exhibition football on television, except possibly an intelligent pre-game show. Fans will find both when they tune in the Super Bowl rematch between Pittsburgh and Dallas on Aug. 28. Before the game, ABC will air not the usual image-burnishing salute to the sport but a realistic study of football as a way of making a living (8 p.m. E.D.T.). It's Tough to Make It in This League neither glosses over the problems players face nor flogs the cliché of football as a paradigm of society's ills...
...most New Englanders, the correct pronunciation of jai alai was, like a suntan, something acquired on vacation in Florida. Since early this summer, however, when the sport made its first foray north with the opening of two jai alai frontons, or arenas, in Connecticut, bettors have learned to say hi-lie quite properly-and, for the state, very profitably. Nearly $1 million a day pours through the betting windows at Hartford and Bridgeport from capacity crowds newly hooked on the world's fastest game and the fast buck...
...alai, a three-walled version of handball, originated in the Basque region of the Pyrenees during the 17th century, and remained unchanged until the sport crossed the Atlantic and became the object of parimutuel betting. Jai alai was adapted to the requirements of the $2 windows around Miami, where it has been popular for 50 years. The eight players wear the numbers of the eight post positions on their jerseys. The march onto the court that opens each game resembles nothing so much as a parade of horses to the starting gate. Matches are either singles or doubles...
Groupie Pits. The beauty and ferocious speed of the sport have survived despite the transmutation. With long wicker baskets called cestas strapped to their arms, the players catch and in a single, fluid motion hurl the pelota toward a 40-ft. granite front wall. The pelota-three-fourths the size of a baseball and harder than a golf ball-caroms toward the 176-ft.-long side wall or arcs toward the back wall at speeds of up to 150 m.p.h. To spectators safe behind a wire screen, the ball seems to fly fast but true. A cesta is ribbed, however...
...perilous Ben-Hur style. To supply those circuses, hunters fanned through the empire, caging behemoths and great wild cats. So many animals were rounded up that even then there were endangered species: the hippopotamus was made extinct in Nubia, the lion in Mesopotamia, the elephant in North Africa. Sport was the adult's amusement and the child's obsession. Rather like a querulous Harvard professor, Tacitus complained that few students of 1st century Rome "are to be found who talk of any other subjects in their homes, and whenever we enter a classroom, what else is the conversation...