Why You've Never Heard Of The Greatest Sport Ever Invented
The moment mankind learned to throw a ball, he was destined to forever try to see if he could throw it harder than his fellow man ... and to make other people pay to watch him do it. Thus, we have "sports."
However, there once existed a sport that made all that came after it pale in comparison. A sport so great that versions of it have been played for nearly 3,000 years. A sport simply known as ...
The Mesoamerican ballgame
Forget everything you know about modern sports -- uniforms, pads, sportsmanship, not murdering the losing team -- all of that bullshit. In fact, give us any five professional football players, or UFC fighters, or five of your most brain-dead, toothless, hard-hitting Rugby players. All would be shitting themselves at the mere sight of the Mesoamerican ball game as it was played in ancient Mexico, in 1000 BC. Why?
#4.
The Game Could Kill You (Or At Least Crush Your Dick)
The rules seem simple: A bunch of guys would put on loin-cloths, gather in a stadium and knock a ball around until it went through one of the team's hoops. Sounds pretty innocuous. So what's the catch? Well, first, there's the fact that the hard rubber ball weighed nearly 10 pounds, and (under some rules) you could only hit it with your hips and stomach. If you don't see the problem, have a friend throw a bowling ball at you and bounce it back at them with your gut or hip. Notice how the slightest miscalculation leads to the ball crushing your nuts.
Madman2001
Most scholars now agree that the Mayans died out due to a sudden surge in shattered penises.
They played this game for days straight, without pause, with people just dying -- or winding up wishing they were dead -- constantly. Not out of exhaustion, but because a 10-pound ball made of solid rubber shattered their pelvis.
Although historians aren't sure about the exact rules of the game, we do know that the game ended once the ball went through one of the (20-foot-high) hoops. Guess what else ended? The lives of some or all the players on the losing team. That's right: In many cases, if you lost, you were decapitated and had your head stuck on a pole and displayed like a flag. Something tells us the Pittsburgh Pirates would have never made it back in the days of the Mesoamericans.
Daniel Lobo
Above: This year's MVP and the severed head of last year's MVP.
If that wasn't brutal enough, the Aztecs stepped it up a notch. Not only did they decapitate the losers, but they carved their skulls out a la Predator and laid them out for the gods. As terrifying as that would be for the players, think about the life of a Mayan sports fan. One day, your favorite player makes the game-winning shot, and the next day he gets his spinal column ripped out. Then somebody tosses your newborn off a pyramid.
Hey, people needed some way to pass the time in the days before Xbox Live.
Needless to say ...
#3.
The Games Were Way More Important Than Any Modern Sporting Event
You would be hard-pressed to find someone today who believes sports are as important in their lives as this game was to the Mayans and Aztecs. Maybe at a soccer riot, where you might run into a Liverpool fan whose teeth look like they were designed to cut glass and whose face has all the symmetry of a Picasso painting. That guy might try to convince you that his life completely revolves around the success or failure of his football club. Sorry, Mr. pin-the-tooth-on-the-lunatic, but the Aztecs and Mayans played a sport that was way, way more important than anything we'll ever see.
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Modern baseball games don't quite have the same draw.
See, the gap between sport and politics didn't exist in the Mesoamerican world, where this very ball game was actually used for a number of political reasons, one of which was in deciding the outcome of wars. That's right, instead of sending in Seal Team Five, or whatever the fuck Mayans and Aztecs used for combat, often proxy wars and other conflicts between societies were resolved with nothing more than a ball game. Rulers would put their best athletes together, and they'd go shatter each other's penises for a while until some Beyonce-hipped bastard ended the conflict with one gyration of raw talent.
And we consider ourselves more civilized? Why the hell didn't society just do it that way from then on? Imagine it's 2003, and the president sends in Peyton Manning and the Colts for a gridiron battle against Iraq's finest. Our best intelligence operatives would sit on the sidelines trying to figure out which offensive package Saddam will call on the next play. Brent Musburger would call the game, while Charles Barkley and the NBA on TNT crew would run the halftime show.
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The Iraq War: With music by the Black-Eyed Peas!
the pittsburgh pirates joke was perfect...if it wasnt for roberto clemente pittsburgh wouldnt have a baseball team
ReplyQuetzalcoatl also accepted spelling QUINOVSIDNFIUS
Replyif they think sports has been downhill since then i have 1 word hurling proper hurling like Tipperary hurling
ReplyActually, I did hear about this sport. I went to this thing called "school" and did this thing called "paying attention."
Reply Hide All See All 3 Repliesshhh, your ego is too loud.
Well, it was barely mentioned outside of spanish class at my school.
If you had "done" a bit more attention, you might have learned something about Mayan and Aztec culture you narcissistic piece of shit.
We actually studied this in school. And then we got to play it (without, you know, the murder and stuff). It was really fun. Very, very intense.
ReplyUmmm... From what I was taught, it was actually the WINNERS that got the opportunity to give their lives to their gods o ^o
Replytrue, but considering these guys were warriors, you think they'd keep the winners to defend there kingdom
Jeremy, you've gotta remember that everything the Aztecs did was for the gods. EVERYTHING.
So let's say you wanna give your boss a Christmas gift, and he happens to LOVE Japanese fighting fish. You go to the pet shop. Do you get him the wimp who lost or do you get him the grand champion of the pet shop?
Quetzal bird.. stupid autocomplete..
ReplyI've been to Chichen Itza and I've stood on the ball field. You really can hear from opposite ends of the field, and it's a HUGE field! The hoops are insanely high too
ReplyIt's an incredible place! There's a pyramid there that has a similar acoustic architecture design, when you clap the echo returns sounding exactly like a quetzcoal bird. It's eerie
now imagine being there as a player..and the ball goes through the hoop..kinda like the feeling when the last 3 point hits the mark at the buzzer..only with u..ya knoe.impending death
ReplyShoutout to the little guy in #1 getting a BJ from the statue
Replychallenge accepted
I've heard of it
ReplyAccording to a documentary on UK TV, the 'ball' was actually the severed head of a previous ball player, coated in latex for ease of handling. (A severed head probably weighs about 10-15 pounds...)
ReplyDo you think a head really weighs that much?? I'm not being a smart-ass, I'm honestly curious if a head really would weigh that much.
Well, think about it. The head is usually about 8% of an adult human's mass, so let's say you weighed 150 pounds or so...yeah, between 10 and 15 pounds sounds right.
The Wikipedia article for this has some Cracked-ish parts to it: "Sak Ch’een ............is dropping onto his knee to strike the ball, which is probably exaggerated to huge proportions. Probably."
ReplyIts all spot-on except for the small detail that you mention aztecs instead of mayans, you dummy you
ReplyIt was actually played by both the Mayans and Aztecs.
actually it was the winning team that was sacrificed, winning made them worthy of it.
ReplyI was in the COba ruins nears Cozumel earlier this year and got to see some of the courts that this game (Poq-du-Poq as the Mayan called it) was played on. It was pretty wild. I wish we still played it! (Without the death though.) LOL
ReplyI saw it played with the ball on fire.
I saw it played with a ball full of King Cobras on fire.
I vaguely remember having read this article months ago. Maybe I'm just hallucinating. There is a scene in the movie The Road to El Dorado (2000) where the lead characters play a game similar to this. The difference is they had bouncier balls and players came out alive, losers or not.
ReplyWrong on both accounts. The balls weren't bouncy, the armadillo was, which gave the "gods" the advantage. Also, the opposing team was about to get slaughtered but Miguel halted the process.
sweet article. awesome sport.
ReplyBut I have heard of it. It was featured prominently in The Gate of Worlds, by Robert Silverberg.
Reply"Why the hell didn't society just do it that way from then on? Imagine it's 2003, and the president sends in Peyton Manning and the Colts for a gridiron battle against Iraq's finest."
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesBecause you would have to play a game that is actually played outside the US, for one.
Attacker's choice.
It's just like dueling. One issues the challenge, defender gets to pick the weapons.
It probably worked out well until the losing team suddenly had a technologically superior weapon and refused to play to the rules.
Id say the whole concept of war is "not playing by the rules", war is not even legal anymore :P