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Gambling Fans Move On As Jai-Alai Fades In Florida

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The Associated Press

Published: September 8, 2008

MIAMI - The outside walls of Miami Jai-Alai are cracked. The paint is chipped and faded. The entrance to the world's largest fronton, once a grand spectrum filled with fans, is empty. A single teller guards the door, charging a $1 fee.

Inside, the betting windows have no wait and the balcony is filled only with decades of cigarette stench. Framed pictures that adorn the "Yankee Stadium of Frontons" highlight the better times of a proud sport now seemingly headed for extinction.

Soon, what might be the last generation of jai-alai players walks into the cagelike court, wearing their traditional fluorescent jerseys and white pants with a blood-red sash. An acrylic helmet is their only protection.

They line the court before each match, saluting a tiny crowd that shows no such love. The whistle blows and the goatskin ball is whipped, as it has been here for 82 years. But the few remaining cheers echo.

"It's an embarrassing place to go," said Benny Bueno, one of the sport's best players for 24 years before retiring in 2005.

"People don't want to be seen at jai-alai frontons. Everything is old and decaying. It looks like a house in shambles. And no one wants to go to a house in shambles."

Far removed from their glory days, Florida's six frontons - the only ones left in the United States - are losing money on jai-alai, according to state records and managers. Only two, Miami and Dania Beach, have games year-round. And both are shrinking as a neighboring Indian casino expands.

The others - in Fort Pierce, Ocala, Orlando and Jasper - hold matches as few as 30 days a year just to satisfy their gambling license. That allows them to run much more lucrative poker rooms.

"It's a very real possibility that the frontons left could soon close," said Bueno, who also serves as president of the Jai-Alai Athletic Society, a nonprofit organization that promotes interest and development in the sport.

It wasn't always like this. Touted as the world's fastest game, jai-alai (pronounced "HIGH-lie") features rock-hard balls (pelotas) flung against a wall with hand-worn curved baskets (cestas) at 100 to 180 mph, which the opposition tries to catch and return - sort of like handball on speed.

Fans love the fluid basket swings, the thud of the pelotas on granite walls, the balletlike footwork, and betting on which player or doubles team will win the match.

The sport enjoyed widespread popularity throughout the '60s, '70s and '80s in the United States, drawing crowds of more than 15,000 at the larger frontons such as Miami. Tampa was part of the prosperity, but the fronton on South Dale Mabry Highway closed in 1998.

Dania Jai-Alai was a jacket-only establishment. Women wore their Sunday best. Fans would buy Saturday tickets on Monday.

More than 10,000 people would cram inside the fronton that then had a capacity of about 5,600. Fans would stand in the aisles and watch on backroom televisions just to get a glimpse, silencing the pelota's pop with ear-piercing roars. Hundreds more were left outside.

"We even had a butler. It was like trying to get into the best club on South Beach," said Marty Fleischman, Dania's assistant general manager.

Miami alone saw $61.8 million bet in the 1986-87 fiscal year, the sport's peak.

But the landscape was different - except for race tracks, jai-alai had a monopoly on gambling in the Sunshine State. No luxury casinos. No poker. No state lottery.

Recently, the Miami and Dania Beach frontons have suffered in large part because of the expansion of nearby Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. A deal the Seminole Tribe of Florida reached with Gov. Charlie Crist in November added Las Vegas-style slots and games like blackjack and baccarat to the tribe's seven casinos, swiping gamblers from frontons, which are barred from offering such games.

"The last nail in the coffin," said Carlos Pita, general manager at Hamilton Jai-Alai & Poker in Jasper.

"You can't compete. You can only hope to stay alive," said W. Bennett Collett Jr., chief operating officer and president of Florida Gaming Corp., which owns the Miami and Fort Pierce frontons.

Now at Dania, there is no fancy dress - T-shirts, flip-flops and jean shorts adorn the fronton's bettors. The scarce crowd is grayer, more tourists and bettors than sportsmen.

At the Miami fronton, fans also have wrinkled. For most matinees, the crowd numbers only about 50 retirees. Miami's Cuban community still accounts for the majority of fans, though many would rather play dominoes or poker at the fronton than watch jai-alai. The betting is a third of what it was 20 years ago.

Mark Raminsky, 59, is one of the few fans left who live for jai-alai. He drives about 250 miles from his St. Petersburg home to South Florida three or four times a year just to watch.

"To me, jai-alai is a destination," Raminsky said, sitting in the front row of a near-empty Dania Jai-Alai at a recent Tuesday matinee. "For most people, it's just a stopping point, or something to kill time."

The cause of jai-alai's downfall is disputed.

Some argue a nasty three-year players strike that began in 1988 left fans feeling sour. Seasons went from four or seven months to year-round, and players say the long schedule diluted interests.

The Florida Lottery began in 1988 and provided a new option for bettors. National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball teams entered the state.

Blame also has been put on management for placing the focus more on gambling than sport, more on card games and slot machines than pelotas and cestas.

"The ultimate goal of these owners is to kill the sport so they can whine about money and get legislation to get slot machines and more poker," said Riki Lasa, who was president of the International Jai-Alai Players Association union from 1988 until May.

Owners contend the rise of Indian casinos, the Internet and cruises as means of gambling have bankrupted frontons. Such was the case in Rhode Island and Connecticut, where the sport operated for decades before Indian casinos became more popular. The last fronton in the Northeast, in Newport, R.I., closed in July 2003.

"That's basically what's happening in Florida now, and I don't know how the state could expect a different result," Collett said.

Managers say that if the state would give their slot machines the tax breaks that have been granted to the Seminoles, more fans would be attracted to frontons and watch jai-alai.

The game goes on. But for how long? The hard-core fans, the kind whose parents sneaked them into frontons when they were children, are dying. The gap between them and the poker-loving Internet generation is growing.

"Something needs to change," Bueno said. "Or jai-alai is going to be gone."

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