Mexico to Encourage Cultural Revival of "Field Hockey for Pyros" Chuck Shepherd – UExpress go to original April 21, 2010
A new sports center in Mexico City will be devoted to the revival of ancient Aztec- and Mayan-created games that are rarely played in Mexico because they are dangerous, including a field-hockey-like competition played with a fireball.
In another game, "pelota mixteca," players wearing metal-knuckled leather gloves punch a 2-pound, hard-rubber ball that could knock opponents unconscious.
One thrill of the flaming-ball game, "pelota purepecha," is that some play it at night on unlighted fields.
In Mayan culture, according to a March USA Today dispatch, the world began with the gods challenging two humans to a ball game, and beating them, at which point the two die and are resurrected as the sun and moon.
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