Images of ballplayers were made in ancient Mexico for millennia. The game, played with a large rubber ball, was fast paced and had many layers of meaning. Depictions of both game and players appear in the ceramic sculptures of Jalisco, a state on the west coast of Mexico, where such works were produced in the centuries around the turn of the first millennium when their makers flourished. This impressive seated player, in the Ameca-Etzatlan style of Jalisco, holds the large ball reverentially high, in a manner of presentation. His short "pants," a typical player costume, protect the lower body as the ball was propelled with the hips low to the ground. In remote areas of Mexico a game was played in this manner well into the twentieth century.

The ceramic sculpture of Jalisco was used as funerary offerings in the tombs of members of important families. It is conjectured that depictions of ballplayers were meant to accompany the burial of a man who had been a skilled player.

Further Reading

Covarrubias, Miguel. Indian Art of Mexico and Central America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957.

Earley, Caitlin C. “The Mesoamerican Ballgame.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/mball/hd_mball.htm (June 2017)

Filloy Nadal, Laura. “Rubber and Rubber Balls in Mesoamerica,” In: The Sport of life and Death: The Mesoamerican Ballgame, pp. 20-31, edited by E. Michael Whittington, London: Thames & Hudson, 2001.

Leyenaar, Ted J. J. Ulama: The Perpetuation in Mexico of the pre-Spanish ball game Ullamaliztli. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978.

Miller, Mary E. “The Ballgame,” Record of the Art Museum Princeton University, Vol. 48, no. 2, (1989): 22-31.

Nicholson, Henry B. "Major Sculpture in Pre-Hispanic Central Mexico." In Handbook of Middle American Indians, edited by Gordon F. Eckholm and Ignacio Bernal, Part I: 92–134. 10. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971.

Scarborough, Vincent L., and David R. Wilcox (Eds.). The Mesoamerican Ballgame. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991.

Uriarte, María Teresa. “Unity in Duality: The Practice and Symbols of the Mesoamerican Ballgame,” In: The Sport of life and Death: The Mesoamerican Ballgame, pp. 40–49, edited by E. Michael Whittington, London: Thames & Hudson, 2001.