Per a press release hyping up the new tournament, Magic City Chief Operating Officer Scott Savin said that “we are ready to take jai alai to a new level.
#Miami vice colors professional#
In order to give the sport a fighting chance at survival, Magic City, which just completed its fifth season of professional jai alai, debuted a tournament earlier this year called Battle Court. Magic City, as locals call it, is the last place in America where one can watch professional jai alai. The Casino at Dania Beach in Broward County ended its 70-year jai alai run last year, and Casino Miami has mercifully shut down the fronton I visited, but there’s one holdout aiming to keep jai alai alive and perhaps even restore the sport to its former glory - Magic City Casino. I bolted almost immediately, fearing that I’d be confined to that musty room with those ghostly men forever. I got the sense that whoever was in charge had simply forgotten to shut the operation down, that jai alai was less a sport than a purgatorial state. The pelota, even, was deadened, lacking the requisite bounce. There might’ve been a time when jai alai attracted top-tier athletic talent, but the men I’d come to see were clearly long past their primes and merely going through the motions. My appearance was met with the unadulterated apathy of men who had stopped caring long ago. The fronton, which resembles a racquetball court, was flanked by three or four rows of stadium seating, where a handful of Miami’s most disheveled and beat dozed off, occasionally looking up to take in the “action.” I took a seat in the back row, which I had all to myself. I hadn’t made it to a forgotten Shangri-La but to a place that had been simply forgotten. This was a portal after all - but there was no magic to be found. I considered running down the hall and trying my luck at the slots, but the decrepitude and the decay dragged me in. I pushed the door open and caught a glimpse of the fraying protective netting that kept the pelota inside the fronton. I’m about to enter a portal into that magical Miami that’s becoming increasingly difficult to access, I thought. I made it to the door at the end of the hallway and looked behind me. I asked a clerk where the jai alai was played, and he pointed at a deserted hallway that clearly hadn’t been renovated.
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I’d been hearing for years that jai alai was dying a slow death after peaking in the late 70s and early 80s, but as I walked into the renovated casino, past gleaming slot machines and finely dressed Cuban retirees giddy over the prospect of losing their remaining Social Security cents, I was hopeful that I’d discover some forgotten Shangri-La. I made a U-turn and pulled into the casino parking lot, which was surprisingly packed for a midday afternoon in the middle of the week.
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A few years back, I drove by Casino Miami, an old-school, slots-heavy joint frequented by working-class Hispanics, and decided that today would be the day I’d check out the long forgotten and most Miami of sports, jai alai.