I’m a 25 year old from Jersey and when I was a kid, I remember my dad teaching me a couple of the games he used to play when he was growing up in NE Philly. He showed us one game called “Halfball” where you would cut a tennis ball or raquet ball in half and play stickball with it. Some of the pitches you could toss with the half ball were more interresting than almost anything you could do with a regular baseball. That’s a game that teaches you how to keep an eye on the ball and how to swing properly to make good contact.

Another game was a little simpler. All it required was a (whole) tennis ball and some overhead wires (preferably 3 or 4 running parallel one on top of the other). It played as a type of baseball game. You would allocate bases for each wire (bottom wire was a single, the second wire was a double, etc.) and the “batter” would toss the ball in the air in an attempt to hit one of the wires with the ball. If the “outfielder(s)” caught the ball before it hit the ground, it counted as an out. If the ball hit a wire and then hit the ground without being caught, you were awarded “bases” relative to which wire was hit. You had to get out 3 times before the next person was up. It was a pretty cool game that didn’t take up a lot of room in the street and still had a baseball-type edge to it. I highly suggest giving it a try.