Gives A Whole New Meaning To "Taking One For The Team"

The end of the academic year is approaching and those of us who can still see straight are assessing how we and our kids have done in school.

Today it was Robey's turn to drag me through the mud teach me something I hadn't known.  His class has been talking about Mayan civilization and he had one evening to create a three minute presentation on Chichen Itza, an ancient Mayan city honored in 2007 as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.

Photo from Mysterious Places.

Robey and I learned lots of cool stuff about Chichen Itza, but one of the most interesting pieces of Mayan history, especially in these days of multimillionaire athletes (and by the way, does Dale Earnhardt count as an athlete?  I can accept racing as a sport by default since there doesn't seem to be any better niche for it, but does driving qualify one as an athlete?  If so, I'm way more athletic than I ever thought) is the game played on a ball court nearly as large as TWO football fields:

"It is not hard to imagine a Mayan King sitting here presiding over the games. Legends say that the the [losing] captain would present his head to the [winning] captain, who then decapitates him. While this may seem a strange reward, the Mayans believed this to be the ultimate honor. The ... captain getting a direct ticket to heaven instead of going through the 13 steps that the Mayans believed they had to go through in order to reach heaven."

Quotation from Mysterious Places.  Emphasis mine.

Now, I've heard of sacrifice bunts, and sacrifice flies, but if you sacrificed your players wouldn't you have a real challenge organizing a team for next season?  The concept gives a whole new meaning to the term "rebuilding year".

Read more about our academic year.

Wonder if the Mayans ever threw games to guarantee their ascent to heaven?

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Comments

[Robyn]

Hey...I climbed that bad boy! Of course, that was like 20 years ago--couldn't do it today. Going up isn't nearly so bad as going down--they need an elevator!! ;)