Take Me Out to the Ballgame, Two Millennia Ago

06_19_Ball_Game_01
Ball-court model from Nayarit, Mexico, 200 B.C.–A.D. 500. Ceramic with slip and other pigments. Length, 13 in. (33 cm). From the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Proctor Stafford Collection, purchased with funds provided... ©Museum Associates/LACMA

This article was first published on the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art's site.

How many ways are there to initiate play in a ballgame? A toss-up begins the game in basketball. A first pitch starts a baseball game. In football, the referee blows his whistle to indicate that kickoff may begin.

The idea that a sound could initiate play may also be at the heart of one of the world's oldest models of a ballgame.

A remarkable 2,000-year-old ceramic model, among the most ancient representations of a game played with a rubber ball, is currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, through September 18, in "Design for Eternity: Architectural Models From the Ancient Americas."

On loan from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, this model, one of perhaps a dozen known to have survived from ancient West Mexico, provides an exceptional glimpse into the early history of a ballgame.

Made in the form of an L-shaped ball court, this model features three rounded markers evenly spaced down the center of the court and parallel side walls that serve as viewing stands for spectators, with additional spectators watching from one of the end zones (the other end zone is broken off).

The players are in their positions as one of them, slightly larger than the rest, is primed to put the ball in play with a flip from his hip. A person in the stands seems to be about to blow on a conch-shell trumpet, the shell equivalent of a whistle or a starting gun.

The sense of excitement is palpable as the all-male cohort of spectators leans in animatedly, some with a friendly arm around another. Much may be at stake here: The textiles draped over one end of the viewing stand could be the players' tossed-off costuming, or they may have been reserved as prizes or even wagers, as Spanish accounts of the game in the 16th century note that betting on matches was not uncommon.

Let's also consider the question of how to begin a ballgame by looking into when (and where) the first ballgame originated. A ball court excavated by Warren Hill, Michael Blake and John Clark at the site of Paso de la Amada, in Chiapas, Mexico, may be the oldest known court, dating to about 1500 B.C.

Rubber balls—unknown in Europe before they came over with two Mexican ballplayers in the 16th century—have been excavated at a site known as El Manatí, in Veracruz, Mexico.

There, large, heavy balls, some weighing as much as 15 pounds, were excavated by Ponciano Ortiz and María del Carmen Rodríguez in the late 1980s and 1990s. The balls had been placed in a ritual deposit with wood busts, greenstone celts (ceremonial implements) and the bones of infants, which underscores the profoundly serious origins of the game and its close connections with ritual practices—including sacrifice—and ideas of fertility and regeneration.

However, from accounts in later periods and on into the present day across regions of Mexico, the game was also played on a friendlier basis. It was clearly played in different ways at different times and places, and some versions more resembled soccer while others were played more like hockey.

This model, from the area of Western Mexico that is now the modern state of Nayarit, shows a version of the game that is similar to the Aztec ullamaliztli, where players used their hips to propel the ball. A version played today in Sinaloa, called ulama, is also based on hip propulsion.

06_18_Ball_Game_02
Detail of the all-court model from Nayarit, Mexico, 200 B.C.–A.D. 500. Ceramic with slip and other pigments. Length 13 in. (33 cm). From the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Proctor Stafford Collection, purchased... ©Museum Associates/LACMA

Depictions of ballplayers remain from the first millennium B.C., including large-scale hollow ceramic figures from the area that is now the state of Jalisco in Western Mexico.

Both the ceramic ball-court models and the freestanding figures are thought to have been part of funerary assemblages in shaft tombs, in which a vertical shaft, occasionally in excess of 7 meters deep, leads to one or more burial chambers.

Such works would have served as funerary offerings, but recent research by Christopher Beekman suggests that it is possible such tableaux also had a role in community rituals before a body's final internment.

Often ballplayers are shown with heavy protective gear, as the large, presumably solid rubber balls could have inflicted considerable damage to the torso when propelled with force. A ceramic figure from Veracruz shows a player wearing a yoke-like form around his waist.

Intricately carved stone versions of such yokes have been discovered in tombs, and may have served as offerings or trophies. Such sculptures were often carved with images of toads and other creatures who move about on land as well as water.

Such liminal creatures—animals with an ability to move between realms—may have been seen as appropriate symbols for a game that had close associations with mediating between the world of the living and the world of the dead.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the ballgame in ancient Mesoamerica, the cultural region that extended from Central Mexico to northern Central America.

Scholars Manuel Aguilar-Moreno and Eric Taladoire have recently identified some 2,000 full-scale pre-Hispanic ball courts, built over the course of some 3,500 years, from the southeast United States to El Salvador. Closely associated with the foundation of cities, the maintenance of political authority and, most important, deeply held beliefs about the cosmos and the rituals necessary to maintain the world's equilibrium, the ballgame was central to community life in ancient Mesoamerica.

Do ballgames ever really end? Once begun, games everywhere become part of a cycle—ritual practices deeply embedded in all communities, be they in ancient Mexico or 21st-century New York City. And they live on in our imaginations.

Would anyone who saw Stephen Curry's long three-pointer against the Oklahoma City Thunder as time expired in overtime on February 27 soon forget the magic of this star basketball player for the Golden State Warriors? Or Zinedine Zidane's performance in the 2002 Champion League final? Or Ted Williams hitting a home run in late September of 1960 in front of his hometown fans in the last at-bat of his 21-year major-league career?

The Nayarit ball court model is a reminder of not only the antiquity of ballgames but also their enduring power for players, spectators and communities everywhere.

Joanne Pillsbury is the Andrall E. Pearson curator, Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The author wishes to give special thanks to Edward S. Harwood, Rob Hornbuckle, Diana Magaloni and Megan O'Neil.

References and Further Reading

Aguilar-Moreno, Manuel. "Ulama: Pasado, presente y futuro del juego de pelota mesoamericano." In Anales de Antropología 49-1 (2015): 73–112.

Beekman, Christopher S., and Robert B. Pickering, eds. Shaft Tombs and Figures in West Mexican Society: A Reassessment. Tulsa: Gilcrease Museum, 2016.

Bussel, Gerard W. van, Paul L.F. van Dongen, and Ted J.J. Leyenaar, eds. The Mesoamerican Ballgame: Papers Presented at the International Colloquium "The Mesoamerican Ballgame 2000 BC–AD 2000," Leiden, June 30–July 3, 1988. Leiden: Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, 1991.

Hill, Warren D., Michael Blake, and John E. Clark. "Ball Court Design Dates Back 3,400 Years." In Nature 392 (6679) (1998): 878–879.

Ortiz Ceballos, Ponciano, and María del Carmen Rodríguez. "The Sacred Hill of El Manatí: A Preliminary Discussion of the Site's Ritual Paraphernalia." In Olmec Art and Archaeology in Mesoamerica, edited by John E. Clark and Mary E. Pye, 75–93. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2000.

Pillsbury, Joanne, Patricia Sarro, James Doyle, and Juliet Wiersema. "Design for Eternity: Architectural Models From the Ancient Americas." New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015.

Scarborough, Vernon L., and David R. Wilcox, eds. The Mesoamerican Ballgame. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991.

Solís Olguín, Felipe R. Ulama: El juego de la vida y la muerte. Sinaloa: Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa, 2010.

Taladoire, Eric. "Ballcourt Models. Bi- and Tridimensional Representations of Ballcourts in Mesoamerica." In Collecciones latinoamerianas, edited by Dorus Kop Jansen and Edward K. de Bock, 125–150. Leiden: Tetl, 2003.

Uriarte, María Teresa. "Práctica y símbolos del juego de pelota. Mariposas, sapos, jaguars y estrellas." In Arqueología mexicana 8, No. 44 (2000): 28–35.

Whittington, E. Michael, ed. The Sport of Life and Death: The Mesoamerican Ballgame. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2001.

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

About the writer

Joanne Pillsbury

To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.

Newsweek cover
  • Newsweek magazine delivered to your door
  • Newsweek Voices: Diverse audio opinions
  • Enjoy ad-free browsing on Newsweek.com
  • Comment on articles
  • Newsweek app updates on-the-go
Newsweek cover
  • Newsweek Voices: Diverse audio opinions
  • Enjoy ad-free browsing on Newsweek.com
  • Comment on articles
  • Newsweek app updates on-the-go