What Happened to Jai Alai at the Original MGM?

Whatever happened to the jai alai league at the original MGM? I seem to have a very faint memory of it from my first visit to Las Vegas.

Jai alai (pronounced hie-a-lie) is the name of a sport that was developed by Basque people in the Pyrenees mountains between Spain and France in the 1700s. The game itself was called Pelota Vasca (Basque Ball) and some games were held at festivals called Jai-Alai (Merry Festival). The fastest and most daring of the Pelota Vasca was called cesta punta, which evolved into the game that's played today. The first indoor jai alai stadium (fronton) opened in Marquena, Spain, in 1798. A hundred years later, the first North American fronton opened in Cuba. The first successful U.S. fronton opened in Miami in 1924.

The fronton is made up of canchas, or courts. These have three walls (front, back, and one side) and a floor that are all in bounds. The court is divided by 14 parallel lines that dictate the action.

Players wear a long wicker basket (about 28 inches), with which they catch the ball and throw it with a very high velocity (the fastest speed ever recorded for a jai alai ball was 188 mph). Points are scored when the other team misses or drops the ball, holds the ball too long, or sends it out of bounds. Seven (or nine) points win a match.

Jai alai is a betting game. Today, only two in the U.S. are open year-round, both in south Florida. Four others, also in Florida, put on jai alai games about two months a year, mostly to maintain licenses for poker rooms.

Over the years, jai alai frontons came and went in New Orleans, New York City, Chicago, and of course Las Vegas. Several opened in Connecticut in the 1970s; that last one closed in 2001. The final fronton outside of Florida, in Newport, Rhode Island, shut down in 2003.

Jai alai made it out to Nevada, but only for a brief stay. A fronton opened with the original MGM Grand (now Horseshoe) in Las Vegas in 1973; it was in a large arena at the back of the casino. It lasted seven years, until 1980. The game also managed a two-year stint at the MGM Grand in Reno (now the Grand Sierra), from 1978, when it opened with a fronton, to 1980 when it, too, closed.

There was gambling on the games at the MGM Grands, which is why it was there.

In its decades of legalized gambling, Nevada has tried on the vast majority of games of chance, though like horse and greyhound racing and jai alai, and unlike, say, blackjack and poker, some fit and some don't.

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Jackie Jun-11-2023

When I first saw this question

I laughed and said 'back to Florida'.

I regularly bet on Jai Alai while living in Florida and in Las Vegas on occasional visits.
A great game and a lot like racquet ball except much faster.
It's astonishing watching them play with balls flying with such speed and never missing a catch or shooting a throw out of bounds.

A point not made in the court description is that the open wall faced the audience and was made of some unbreakable clear substance like thick glass or a clear plastic.  Although in all the games I attended I never witnessed the ball hitting the glass.

I would like to see it return to Las Vegas but not as a year round game since it is more like a sport and should be seasonable and even bet on at sports books.

Trainwreck Jun-11-2023

Jai Alai

Jackie is correct, except that the fourth 'wall', consists of a mesh fence from floor to ceiling and it is what protects the spectators from being hit by the pelota (ball). And a properly executed carom shot will first hit the side wall, then the front wall, bounce on the floor and then fly into the screen, which then ends the volley. It is a very effective kill shot.
When I played there in the mid 70's (just before the fire) the only other American player was Kenny, who was the son of the hotel's general manager.
The original goal of having a fronton in the hotel was to provide a spectator sport that would entertain the ladies thus enabling their spouses to play craps and blackjack without being nagged. However, turnout out for the games was lower than anticipated.
Trivia question: Jai Alai is one of only two sports in which you must use your right hand only. Regardless of your dominant hand, you must play right-handed.
Can you name the other sport?

gaattc2001 Jun-11-2023

Trainwreck: a quick google search ...

turns up field hockey [1] and polo [2] as right-hand-only sports, both because of the high risk of injury in certain situations.

Also, in feudal Japan, there were no left-handed samurai. To knock scabbards with another samurai was a deadly insult, and anyone wearing his sword on the wrong side would have been fighting one duel to the death after another. In fact, there were very few "southpaws" in Japan at all. In that conformist culture, left-handedness was seen as an aberration or even a disability [3]. It was similar in Europe, where school teachers just made all the kids write with their right hands. 

I saw a Jai-alai game in Miami once. Later read about the one at MGM Grand when it opened, but never actually got there.
 
1. https://thebridge.in/featured/there-no-left-handers-field-hockey/
2. https://dbpoloclub.com/polo-played-right-handed/
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSbK7W2TjZc#:~:text=however%20there%20are%20some%20samurai,the%20third%20squad%20of%20shinsegami.

Jeffrey Small Jun-11-2023

3 sports

My source says there are three sports where left handed people can not participate--polo, field hockey and jai alai. That was my excuse for not playing!  I recall going to the MGM fronton once--compared to all of the excitement of the casino it seemed too slow.  There is a fronton in Dania Beach Florida but it does not currently have regular games.  Since the law allowed the tracks to keep their other forms of gambling and eliminate racing jai alai, harness and (banned) dog racing locations are discontinuing their racing and now becoming exclusively "slot palaces".  Oddly, even though dog racing is now illegal in Florida you can still go the the simulcast screens at the greyhound track in West Palm Beach and bet on the dogs running in West Virginia--which many of the "regulars" who hung out at the track continue to do!  (There is also simulcast wagering on Jai Alai.)

Michael Yacko Jun-11-2023

MGM Grand

Checked out jai alai at MGM Grand March 1983 on our first Vegas trip, so it lasted longer than the article states.  It did close pretty soon after.

[email protected] Jun-11-2023

"Trainwreck"

Who are you?
Cary?
Dominick?

Scott Waller Jun-11-2023

Signals

It's my understanding that one of the problems with jai alai as a betting spot was the prevalance of betters in the crowd signaling to players when an opportunity to dump a point if the odds favored a loss.   I can recall hearing of scandals at Milford Jai Alai in Connecticut giving the sport a bad black eye.    In effect, it was like talking to the horses in a horse race.   Interested to know if any sport followers know more about this.....

Trainwreck Jun-11-2023

Signaling

Wagering on Jai Alai in the U.S. was pari-mutuel. In Spain and France, especially during a 'partido' match (a heads-up match played between the same two teams as opposed to a the 8 team round-robin format usually played here) there would be betting between each individual point or volley, thus creating real-time situations where signaling might create an opportunity for a strategic 'dump'. However, with pari-mutuel wagering all the best are 'locked in' before the start of the game. The player(s) would know what the various odds were before the match started. Just like a jockey would know the odds just prior to the start of a race. 
No fronton was immune from accusations of fixing, and certainly Milford and Bridgeport were no exception. 'Dumping' of points was not as prevalent as you might think, although it did happen. And it was usually orchestrated by an individual player rather than any collaborative effort.

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