Before the Dolphins or the lottery or legalized poker, jai alai, horses and dogs were Florida's bread and butter betting meccas.
Jai alai -- or as my Canadian grandfather pronounced it, "jally" -- was still a big deal in the late 1970s when I was old enough to go in person. Ocala still had a fall season back then, and the guys from our apartment would go a couple of times a year. Plus, Dad and I would go to either Dania or Miami during my Christmas break, depending on the traffic and whether Joey or one of the other big-name players was on the court.
One of my brother's friends, Mike, had an interesting theory as to which player was supposed to win the point. He was certain they wrote the player's number on the ball before it was served, since both teams have a chance to inspect the pelota.
As kids, my parents would take us to Hollywood Dog Track or Biscayne to the preseason when they ran "schooling races" to determine levels of new dogs added to the program. They'd run 50 or 60 races in one night, one after another, eight dogs at a time with no betting allowed.
When I took the job in Melbourne and the fronton was still active, there were several Basque players living in the same apartment complex, so it wouldn't be surprising to see them or their wives washing clothes or out by the pool. The guy nicknamed "Napa" was really Javier and "Solano" was Felipe. So it was fun to yell their real names when they made a nice play.
When it got prohibitively expensive to pay those guys anything worth a decent wage -- especially as interest in the sport waned -- most of the frontons went out of business or in the case of Melbourne, converted into a dog track. A players' strike and a huge betting syndicate scandal did jai alai no favors, either.
I'm not sad to see it end, especially knowing how poorly horses, greyhounds (and jai alai players) were treated. But it was something that made Florida unique when most of the state was still orange groves and beachfront resort towns.
