COMMANDER TANK'S ANCIENT AZTEC BALL GAMES MAGIC TIME PORTAL

The name is a combination of two words: ullama, which means the playing of a
game with a ball, and ulli, rubber, because it's played with a solid rubber ball.
So in other words "Ballgame", like "take me out to the ball game and I could
loooose my head!"

The ball symbolized the sun, moon, or stars, and the rings signified sunrise
and sunset, or equinoxes.

Rubber balls were primarily used both for offerings and for ritual ballgames
Solid rubber balls were burned in front of images of deities and inside
pyramids and shrines. Archeologists have uncovered 700 ball courts, rubber
balls that have been dated as far back as 1500 BC, and figurines recognizable
as ulama players dating from c. AD 400!

The ballgame was played by the Aztecs and other Nahuatl-speaking peoples in
Mexico. For the Aztecs, it was a nobles' game and was often associated with
heavy betting. Heavy as in some gambled their homes, their fields, their corn
granaries, their maguey plants. They sold their children in order to bet and even
staked themselves and became slaves, to be sacrificed later if they were not
ransomed.

Ullamaliztli was as much areligious rite as sandlot sport for the Aztecs and
other Mesoamericans. In their codices, or sacred books, the Aztecs compared
the bouncing ball to the cosmic journey of the sun into and out of the
underworld.

Highly ritualized ballgames enacted at key religious festivals helped to ensure
the continuous cycles of nature and the cosmos. Ball courts in Tenochtitlan, the
Aztec capital (in what is now Mexico City), were adorned with sculptures
depicting local gods and other supernatural beings.

Priests initiated important games with offerings of incense in nearby temples.
At least some of the games saw human sacrifice.

On some occasions, post-game ceremonies featured the sacrifice of the
captain and other players on the losing (some references say "winning")
side.The losing players�or unlucky stand-ins captured in battle�could literally
lose their heads in post-game ceremonies. Some assert that the prize for the
winning team was to be deified by losing their heads, supposedly at the hands of
the losing team.

In one graphic depiction on the walls of the monumental ninth-century Maya
ball court at Chich�n Itz� in the Yucat�n, serpents and squash plants sprout
from the neck of a kneeling, decapitated player, bestowing fertility on the land
and the living. A rival player wields a stone knife and the freshly severed head
as his grisly trophy. One way or the other, now you can see why I was running!
I certainly didn't have time to ask which was the case. Going back in time does
present certain challenges!

Possibly, the original game was played on a levelled field without limits marked
by walls or earthen curbs. It was an extremely powerful place and was the
transitional portal between the world of the gods and the world of humans. As
a source of sacred power it was a place where transformations occur:
Death-Life, Underworld-Middleworld, Humanity-Divinity, Drought-Fertility.

The players deflected the ball with their hips and buttocks. The essential
garment for these hip players consisted of a maxtlatl (loincloth), leather
hipguards, and wide leather bands around the buttocks. The game could,
however, also be played using the arms and elbows to deflect the ball, with a
stick, or with a manopla ( a handstone) used to bat the ball.

The game has three main forms: most common is ulama de cadera or hip ulama;
ulama de antebrazo, where predominantly female players on three-player
teams hit a smaller ball with their forearms; and ulama de palo or de mazo,
which is played with a wooden bat. According to historians, hip ulama is the
form closest to the original ballgame.

Hip ulama is played with two five-man teams that are only permitted to bounce
the ball with their hips after the first throw. The modern form uses knitted
loincloths and rubber balls that weighs about 4 kg (9 lb). The court is about 50
m(165 ft) long and 4 m (13 ft) wide and is divided by a central line separating
the two teams.

The object of the game is to keep the ball in play and in bounds. Depending on
the score � and the local variant of the rules � the ball is played either high or
low. A team scores a point when a player of the opposing team hits the ball out
of turn; misses the ball; knocks the ball out of bounds; touches the ball with his
hands or some other body part aside from the hip; accidentally touches a
teammate; lets the ball stop moving before it reaches the center line, or even if
they fail to announce the score after they have scored a point.

The team that first scores eight points wins. Keeping score is a rather
complicated process; the score can jump directly from one point to three
points, for example. If both teams end up having the same number of points
after a turn, both sides begin again from zero. One record-setting game
reputedly lasted for eight days but most modern games are stopped after
about two hours.

Children also played the game casually for simple recreation. Guess they were
practising for the real thing!