Handball

Lee Keyte met his future wife on a racquetball court about five years ago. It wasn't love at first serve. Keyte had never played the game when he challenged Jan Anderson to a match. She was an instructor with a deadly kill shot, but Keyte didn't think a woman could beat him. So much for chauvinism. She spotted him 18 points and won, 21-18. "I was humiliated," he said. "She was out of my league." Keyte took up racquetball with vengeance--not romance--in mind.

Reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa — Oscar Tabarez had a lot of words to choose from when it came to describing his country's penalty-shootout win over Ghana in a World Cup quarterfinal Friday. Incredible. Improbable. Impossible. They all fit. The one he finally settled on, though, was "lucky." "I am the coach of the team and I am a professional. But even so I lack the necessary calm to carry out an objective analysis of the game," he said. "We were lucky.

The West, behind eight goals from Renee Brum of Camarillo, routed the East, 24-10, to win the bronze medal Saturday at the U.S. Olympic Festival in Raleigh, N.C. Brum, a veteran of five Festivals, scored five goals in the first half as the West took a commanding 14-4 lead. The gold medal went to the South, which edged the North, 18-17. Penny Stone, a 1984 Olympian and the leading scorer in the U.S. Olympic Festival, had eight goals to lead the South. Stone, of Tallahassee, Fla.

The son of Rambo strides across the grassy field, girded for battle. He wears a T-shirt with the word "famous" all over it. Stainless-steel studs blink from his ears. Two women hawk tortas, chips and bags of pumpkin seeds to more than 100 people filling the bleachers at Bristow Park in Commerce. Ricky Ruiz steps onto the court. He takes off his shirt, revealing a gold crucifix, which he swings around to rest on his back. His father, a muscle-bound, in-your-face character known as Rambo, bulls through the crowd.

Oddly, festive car horns echoed through the city even during the first half of the France-Ireland soccer melodrama Wednesday night. More muted came the sounds later in the evening when France advanced to next year's World Cup, but then this morning came the sound that figures to hover around Europe rather durably: heavy chatter about the startling act of cheating in the 103rd minute that won France passage to South Africa 2010. Mouths on TV, typists on the Internet and people holding actual human conversations combined for quite a blare over Thierry Henry's double handball that set up the goal that rescued France and, more delicately, how it might taint a realized, idealized career.

Larry Warfield of Chatsworth spends much of his time staring at four walls. The kicker here is, he likes it. And it's a safe bet that if any wise guy ever characterizes Warfield as off the wall, he wouldn't view it as an insult. Warfield teamed with Don Chamberlain of San Diego to win the team championship in the division for 35- to 40-year-olds at the U.S. National Indoor Handball Championships two weeks ago in Baltimore.

Where's the wall? Armed with only that question, and only two days to answer it, you set off Friday to expose the dumbest sport in the Olympics. It is called team handball. You know this because earlier this week, you were sitting at your 56th different sporting event when a sideline TV showed a highlight and you shouted, "What is that?" Team handball, you were told, leading to the question that led to the search. Where's the wall? The U.S.

Even in junior high school, handball requires top-notch strategy. Especially when lunch money is on the line. Long before he became the U.S. Handball Assn. Open singles champion, Huntington Beach's John Libby saw the need for an effective game plan when he stepped onto a concrete court. "I always teamed up with the biggest guy on the playground," Libby said. "I hit the shots and he collected the winnings."

Urged on by a friend, and with nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon, basketball player Darlene Branigan walked into the University of California gymnasium six years ago completely unprepared for the Olympic Sports Festival team handball tryout. Like an outfielder without a glove, she lacked the basics. She didn't have any equipment. She didn't know any of the rules. The coaches, however, were impressed with her athletic ability and selected her for the West team.

Natividad (Naty) Alvarado kept having this nightmare: The immigration officer is approaching, requesting papers showing proof of residence. This will be the time Alvarado gets caught. In the dream, Alvarado, recognized as the best handball player in the world, has no papers. He is an illegal alien, about to be sent back to Mexico, which he left in 1976 as a 20-year-old seeking to make his mark on the pro tour. Then, just before he is caught, he awakens and the nightmare is over.

About a year ago, Amanda Perez of East Los Angeles called a friend and asked her to come to an old handball court she was trying to save. When Virginia Sandoval parked her car and beheld the red brick facade of the building, she cried. The Maravilla Handball Court on Mednik Avenue was built with bricks from the nearby former Davidson Brick Yard, where Sandoval's father used to work and where she used to play as a girl. Sandoval, 66, soon joined Perez, 54, in her effort to preserve the court, which was completed in 1923.

World Cup draw Friday, 9 a.m., ESPN2

Oddly, festive car horns echoed through the city even during the first half of the France-Ireland soccer melodrama Wednesday night. More muted came the sounds later in the evening when France advanced to next year's World Cup, but then this morning came the sound that figures to hover around Europe rather durably: heavy chatter about the startling act of cheating in the 103rd minute that won France passage to South Africa 2010. Mouths on TV, typists on the Internet and people holding actual human conversations combined for quite a blare over Thierry Henry's double handball that set up the goal that rescued France and, more delicately, how it might taint a realized, idealized career.

Second-grader Emma Ax brightened Thursday when her teacher said it was time for recess. "Yes!" the 8-year-old whispered. "We can't go out because it smells really bad out there," said her teacher at La Crescenta Elementary, just a few miles from the Station fire. Emma's face fell. "But we're not just going to sit here and look at each other -- we'll have fun." From the look on her face, it seemed Emma didn't believe her. The largest brush fire in Los Angeles County history broke out just as many area schools were about to open for the new school year, forcing administrators to cancel or modify athletic practice and keep children indoors because of poor air quality.

As night bar manager at Barney's Beanery in Pasadena, Eric Gonzalez has an awesome responsibility: He's master controller of nearly 100 televisions. So when the Summer Games began Aug. 8, he was nervous. Should he bump Major League Baseball and other mainstream events off the big screens? Would his hard-core sports patrons complain that synchronized diving, team handball, BMX cycling, trampoline and other Olympic fare were for bars that serve arugula salads? "If customers don't like what you put up there, they will let you know," Gonzalez said in the control booth, where patrons aren't allowed.

In Santa Ana's El Salvador Park, four hulking, tattooed men use gloved hands to smack a blue rubber ball against the wall. Nearby, relatives grill hamburgers and hot dogs as they wonder which players will leave the three-walled court as winners and take home a trophy resting on a nearby table. The tradition of handball and competitions, like this one organized by the Rev. Santos Chavez, a former gang member who heads Street Light Ministries, is quickly fading in Southern California.

I'd always been intrigued by the early evening handball games near the Venice Beach pavilion. But I'm a shy rookie when it comes to learning new sports, so I'd never made the switch from spectator to player. As I watched one recent evening, players swung hands at the ball with the authority of someone holding a sturdy tennis racquet. They danced out of the way as their shots careened off the back and side walls of the concrete courts. They laughed when someone messed up.

A concrete battleground in Pacoima brought them together Saturday for a fast, furious, non-lethal form of urban combat: handball. Most of the combatants sported tattoos, buzz cuts and other street gang regalia; a few had buckshot and knife scars. They represented several generations of gangs spawned in the 2,000-resident Van Nuys Pierce Park housing project, from teen-age "youngsters" to veteranos on parole.

Jose Martin Ortiz has been playing handball on the concrete courts of Saddleback High School in Santa Ana for more than two decades, getting a workout, socializing with friends and enjoying the evening air. "You get conditioning and coordination, you work out your upper body and legs," the 39-year-old said. "It helped me stay off drugs and out of gangs." But Ortiz's days playing handball at the Santa Ana Unified School District campus may be numbered.

Re "In Good Hands on the Court" [May 23]: In reading the article, I was thinking that some might get the wrong impression about handball. It is not a difficult game to learn. With the proper instruction, you can be playing handball in 20 minutes. It is a difficult game to master and you will spend the rest of your life in that quest. That is one of the many things that make the game special. Also, the article failed to mention the fitness benefits that thousands enjoy by playing handball.