What will most infuriate Irish handball players is any suggestion that the game might not be an Irish invention. It is an article of faith with the Irish that handball was played thousands of years ago in Ireland. This picture of Fred Flintstone characters relaxing after a day's work by playing handball is attractive but doesn't bear up to strict historical investigation. Handball has many aspects: the ball, the playing area, type of play and rules, which have probably developed independently and differently in many countries. The courts and rules, as are now in operation, owe most of their heritage to the game developed in Ireland in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. But the sine que non of the modern game, the rubber ball, is without doubt an American invention. The rubber tree is indigenous to American and it wasn't until this century that seedlings were smuggled out of Brazil. nurtured in the famous Kew Gardens in London and replanted in Malaysia and other tropical lands.

Most people are aware that a form of handball was a pastime and religious rite among the Incas and Aztecs (lose the game and you were sacrificed to the gods; quite a motivating factor). But recent research has shown that games using balls made of natural rubber were played by the far older Olmec civilisation of Central Mexico. The name Olmec in the Aztec language meant rubber people· Stone slabs at Dainzu show a masked player (the first eyeguards) poised to strike. And at El Manati, a heavy rubber ball over 3,000 years old was recovered from a natural spring. This type of heavy rubber is still used in a handball game popular in San Jose Megote and other towns in Mexico. A leather knuckle-duster (the first gloves) is used to strike the ball to the opponents. Similar games are played in Ecuador, Venezuela and Paraguay.

T.O'C.

America Got the Ball: Article provided by Tom O'Connor
Created: Created 11 January 2004 by Mike Fenn
efa@etonfives.co.uk

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