Cliff, If you are who I think you are, I remember facing you in Little League and having a heck of a time hitting your stuff. Lots of spins. Don’t remember Stickball Steve. PLease let us know if you find out anymore info about him “The Pied Piper of Stickball.” It’s a nice image. Sorry to hear that he passed on.
I used to make my skelly caps while I was doing my homework. I had a gooseneck lamp on my desk. I’d break up the crayons, crumble them into the bottle cap, poise it all under the bulb of the lamp (close, but not too close), and in the time it took to figure out a math problem the cap was done – looking good!
In the early days in Sunnyside, Queens, when we were kids, we didn’t have a lot of space to run around in our little courtyard. Our ball games were usually against a brick wall or on concrete pavement. All the boys and girls played together – running bases, stick and boxball, single-double-triple, etc. Of course the girls did the A My Name is Alice thing, and we also played Hit the Ball on the Penny. For all these games, the ball of choice was almost always a Spaldeen. They had a good feel and a good bounce – and, as I recall, a good smell when they were brand new (that didn’t last long, maybe two paces out of the store and that was it…)
I grew up on the lower east side of Manhattan in the late 50’s early 60’s. I am sure we called the game SKELLZIE. Our day would start off with a visit to the A&P on Bleecker and Leroy st. There we would, err……… borrow a cap from a Prell shampoo bottle, (it was plastic and tappered from top to bottom). It held lots of wax and your favorite, lucky penny. We would then go to the public park on Carmine street and play the game. The guy that worked for the parks deptartment, Rocky, was good enough to paint a Skellzie board on the ground for us. As I can remember, Rocky was a great guy always willing to do things for the kids in the neighborhood. I can’t remember the size of the board, although I’m sure what seemed very large back then probably wasn’t so. I don’t think the board could have been much more than 5’X 9′. When we tired of playing the game we would play Buck-Buck, Box Ball, Stoop Ball, and maybe if it was hot enough go for a swim in the Hudson. Things have certainly changed in 40 years, oh well! Any way, looking forward to seeing the final version of the Skellzie board. Keep the faith. Mike
I also have a best friend. I always like the concept of best friend. It is so much fun to know that there is someone who knows you forever and has seen all these personal aspects of your life. My best friend lived with my mother for a short while and actually it was my step father who gave her the extra push she needed to take her big European adventure after high school. We met at 11 and have been friends ever since. We have never lost touch. We have supported each other through all of our major decisions in life. We basically have totally different friends. Of course we do know many of the same people. After high school our lives took on very different flavors. She is still unmarried without children, I am married and with. The things we choose to do. The things we choose to wear. The things we deeply believe in, I am not sure if any of it is the same, although I am sure it intersects. The choices we made in our late teens – it was all different, what we felt was cool – not the same – and now at thirty eight we are still best friends. I know her in a way noone else can know her because we met at 11 and have been there for each other through every stage up until the present.
I never found out if there was a law against playing stickball but if the cops droveby a game, they would confiscate the stick, stick it in a manhole cover hole in order to break it, or throw it in the squad car. They never bothered us if we were playing curbball or punchball. I guess the offense was playing with a stick. The Leader was a cheaper ball, white-gray in color, and without the bounce and resiliancy of a Spaldeen. I never heard of Pennsy Pink in the late Thirties and early Forties.
Stickball, in Huber Heights, Ohio used to be alive and well at Sewerfront (an old church yard with a sewer as a homerun mark. Usually played 5 on 5 with invisible men on base. Hitting the ball across Rittenhouse Drive onto the porches of houses was always a target. We did lose many tape covered balls that way.