Not Exactly John…………… Posted on September 3, 2025 at 10:21:29 PM by Stu Neiman
Based on the aggressiveness of some of my responses I can understand why it seems that I don’t care for the “traditional” Jai-Alai fan - but it is really not the case.
I am passionate about a handful of subjects. I wound-up spending all but 4 years of my adult working life managing in Jai-Alai, by accident. Prior to M.C. / Battle Court I was as much as a traditionalist as anyone here. I’ve posted for years, often in defense of Jai-Alai operators because people would comment, pretty aggressively at times, and in many cases they were working with partial info BUT the rest of the info was either confidential because the Jai-Alai companies were either private entities (meaning they had every right not to disclose) or public entities with “forward looking statement restrictions.”
On a personal level I’ve engaged with “Jai-Alai” people my whole life and, believe it or not, when I worked the counter at North Miami, Howie, Joey, Billy & others would constantly tell me I was too nice. It changed over the years. By history people have said some pretty awful things about players, owners, managers, marketing, etc. So over the years I’ve gotten more “direct,” and occasionally ugly in my responses. But it’s the comments that I find annoying - not the people. Forums like this are important, and in truth I appreciate the opportunity to rant (thank you Tiger).
But as I’ve said / written repeatedly - M.C. / Battle Court is completely detached from any of the old models of business and play. And I get that people herein don’t always get it - neither did I.
Put more succinctly, it’s not the people it’s the comments. And a thoughtful but otherwise negative comment is fine and often begets one in-kind. But like including Barba in this conversation has some comedic value but is otherwise unfair to one of our players - hence the response :-).
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