Playing The Game
The majority of the documented information about the ball game specific to the Caribbean islands comes from the historic accounts of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdez and Bartolomé de Las Casas (see picture to the right). The native name for the ball court and game was batey. Oviedo’s description of the balls is reminiscent of rubber or some kind of resin with rubber-like qualities; in all sources, some kind of reference is made to the unfamiliar bounciness of the balls.
The game was played by two teams, each team consisting anywhere from ten to thirty players. Normally, the teams were composed of only men, but occasionally women played the game as well. Oviedo noted that sometimes men and women would play on mixed teams, men and women against each other, and the married women against unwed female virgins. Married woman wore a shawl wrapped around their bodies while the men and virgin women went bare. Archaeologists have noted a connection between the ball courts and the stone “elbow” and “neck” collars prominent in Puerto Rico around the ball court sites. The function of these collars is not evident or explicitly detailed in historic accounts. However, it is interesting to note the similarity between the Caribbean stone collars and the Mexican stone yokes that were worn by Mesoamerican ball game players as ceremonial belts.
Faltas (errors or faults) were made when the ball came to a halt on the ground or if it had been thrown out of bounds (outside the stone boundary markers). The ball could only be struck from the shoulder, the elbow, the head, the hips, the buttock, or the knees and never with the hands. Las Casas noted that when women played the game they did not use their hips or shoulders, but their knees. Points were earned when the ball failed to be returned from a non-faulted play (similar to the earning of points in today’s volleyball). Play continued until the number of predetermined points was earned by a side. Often, players and chiefs made bets or wagers on the possible outcome of a game. These wagers were paid after a game was concluded.
Read more about this topic: Batey (game)
Famous quotes containing the words playing the game, playing the, playing and/or game:
“And there were present
the Picninnies,
and the Jobillies,
and the Garyulies,
and the great Panjandrum himself,
with the little round button at top;
and they all fell to playing the game
of catch-as-catch-can,
till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.”
—Samuel Foote (1720–1777)
““Come, come” said Tom’s father, “at your time of life,
There’s no longer excuse for thus playing the rake—
It is time you should think, boy, of taking a wife.”
“Why, so it is, father—whose wife shall I take?””
—Thomas Moore (1779–1852)
“While you’re playing cards with a regular guy or having a bite to eat with him, he seems a peaceable, good-humoured and not entirely dense person. But just begin a conversation with him about something inedible, politics or science, for instance, and he ends up in a deadend or starts in on such an obtuse and base philosophy that you can only wave your hand and leave.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“One of life’s primal situations; the game of hide and seek. Oh, the delicious thrill of hiding while the others come looking for you, the delicious terror of being discovered, but what panic when, after a long search, the others abandon you! You mustn’t hide too well. You mustn’t be too good at the game. The player must never be bigger than the game itself.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)