Jai Alai: Fury At The Fronton

The best jai alai player in the world does not engage in any such feats of masochism, but then Patxi Churruca does not lose many big matches, either. "I have quiet, happy days as a boy in Motrico," said Churruca, "and perhaps it is difficult for me to become angry." The maestro's long journey from barefoot boy in the seaport town of Motrico to undisputed world champion of jai alai is a sort of Francisco Merriwell story committed to memory by the little Basque boys now padding over the mountains to play in the same church courtyard where Churruca first strapped on a cesta. As a national hero of Spain, Churruca goes first-class when he returns home, in marked contrast to the relative anonymity of his life in Miami. When the American season is over, he plays matches to as high as 45 points before howling crowds in Spain and the Basque country of southern France. Once each year Franco goes to see him play in San Sebastián, a beautiful Basque town, and Churruca regards this as a command performance.

But of all the rewards of his life, the one that satisfies Churruca the most is that he has pleased his father, "the strongest man in Motrico," as the proud son describes him. "There are some people in Motrico they say Arakistain's father is the strongest, but many say is my father. One day in my father's bar—he owns a bar now and he does not make the cheeps any longer—one day two fishermen break glasses, and my father throws them out. And soon one comes back and he says, 'Why you think you do that?' My father say, 'Out!' and the man grab hold of the door. My father go boom and knock the door off the hinges, and the man does not come back."

Fifteen years ago there came the inevitable scene when the boy Churruca wanted to go off to the world of professional jai alai against the wishes of the strongest man in Motrico. "A jai alai promoter came from Corunna to Motrico when I was 14," Churruca explained, "and he visited the basketmaker in Motrico and fie sees us play in the little fronton. He say to the basketmaker, 'Which one is that?' pointing to me. He say he would pay me 1,100 pesetas (about $20) a month and buy me free shoes, so I sign the contract. My mother said, 'You are crazy! Now go tell your father what you do.'

"My father was angry. He says, 'Why do you do that?' But the basketmaker saved me. He say to my father, "If you don't let him go now, he is remembering you all his life, that his father don't let him to start playing. Let him go, it is only four months. If he is no good he is going to come home, and he is going to stay happy.' With that word, my father say O.K."

Churruca went from Corunna to Zaragoza to Acapulco to Mexico City and finally to the big show in Miami at age 20. Now he is in his ninth season in Miami and his fourth as champion. His father owns the biggest cantina in Motrico, and Churruca is the idol of the Basques, a magnet for customers at his father's place. A few years ago Churruca married a Basque artist, Laura Maria Zambruno from Ondárroa, just over the hill from Motrico, and with her assistance he is battling the last despair of any traveling Basque's life: homesickness for the bays and mountains and valleys of the Pyrenees. In their apartment in Miami the Churrucas read El Diario Vasco, the Basque newspaper published daily in San Sebastián, and pore over hordes of picture postcards showing the orange-tile roofs and the skinny quays and twisting, climbing streets of their home towns. It is all but impossible to call on the Churrucas without spending hours going through their pictures, sipping the anise wine of their homeland and partaking of the hot chorizos and saffron paella that sustain them. "Now, if I could walk a mountain here," said Churruca recently, "it would be much more better. We love Miami, my wife and I, but always is fiat. I want to walk sometimes in the morning, so I go to the shopping center and back. Is only about 500 yards and feels like nothing, so I do it again and two or three times, and then all the people start looking to me and saying, That one is suspicious. What do he doing always for walking?'

"But I am not meaning harm. In Motrico you take two steps and you are walking up, down. Always up, down. I miss that one. Someday my wife and I will go back to stay, and I will help in my father's bar and play a little soccer and a little jai alai, and then maybe I will miss the days here when I am champion and making money." He paused and riffled through the deck of picture postcards. "Is easier things to do," said Francisco Maria Churruca Iriondo Azpiazu Alcorta, breaking into a grin, "than satisfy a Basque."