Play surged back and forth along this alley as the three-man teams battled it out. Ollamaliztli was an odd-looking game—the players could hit the ball only with their hips, elbows, and knees. They had heavy leather pads strapped over each of these areas, but otherwise wore only a loincloth and a few decorative feathers—most of which lay strewn about the court by now. Aside from having to be careful not to touch the ball with a hand or foot—which resulted in the loss of one point—they had to watch out that the heavy rubber ball didn’t hit them in a vital spot. And the wildly bouncing ball wasn’t easy to evade. Just five minutes into the game, one of the Jaguar players was knocked out when the ball crashed into his temple. As his unconscious form was carried back to the bench for team doctors to revive him with a stimulant patch, one of the Tenochtitlán team’s three replacement players took his place, leaving only two more spares to draw from.