Category Archives: Philadelphia
I am from South Philly and…
In Philly it was called…
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If you are looking for a source to purchase halfballs contact me at sedonamax [at] aol [dot] com I grew up in the Logan section of Philly. We played two ways. Sidearm, with balls and strikes. Underhand, one swing and you were out. If the catcher caught a foul tip you were also out. We play against the wall, 1st story was a single, 2nd was a double, 3rd a triple and if you roofed it, it was a homer. If you caught it off the wall it was an out.
I grew up in West Philly…
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I grew up in West Philly in the 70’s. what we called “Box Ball” was played on a “baseball diamond” (anything would do…never on a real field) played with a tennis ball, pink rubber ball (solid) , or a white rubber ball (hollow). The game was played like baseball except instead of a pitcher the batter would drop the ball and hit the ball with their fist.. aiming at someone they felt couldn’t field or just over someones head… and you would run the bases and score like in baseball.. 3 outs per inning… never heard of what everyone else calls “box ball” anyone else out there that remembers playing such a game and what you may of called it????
In my neighborhood in Philly,…
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In my neighborhood in Philly, we called the game “Killers”, but it appears to be the same game as described by the NY kids as Skullie or Skillies. I have great memories of rigging-up a magnet on a string and fishing bottle caps out of the soda machine at the Flying A station on the corner of 5th and Sommerville. An entire side industry developed around collecting the caps. Not that we didn’t take the game seriously. We eventually painted the squares on the street; it was a dead-end so traffic was limited to occasional trucks going to and from the factory across the street.
I grew-up in Philly (Onley)…
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I grew-up in Philly (Onley) and remember playing both Half-Ball and Wire-Ball as described by Spredhaus. We lived on a street that dead-ended into the railroad tracks, so there was little through traffic except for the trucks going into and out of the factory across the street. We also played a one-bounce pitch version of Punch-Ball. Curb-Ball and Stoop-Ball (or Step-Ball) was common when there were fewer kids around, although we had so many kids getting a Punch-Ball game together was pretty easy
Great Rich! You stole my…
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Great Rich! You stole my thunder on “Hot Peas and Butter”. We called it “Hide the Belt” in South Philly. How about “Chase the White Horse”? Here the person who was “it” would kneel in the street on all fours. Someone would call a category (lets say “cars”) and you had to name a car model as you leap-frogged over the guy in the street. If you couldn’t name one you yelled out “chase the white horse” and the person who was “it” chased everyone else and captured the next victim. Sometimes you would have to go 3-4 rounds (lets say naming cars, baseball players, sodas, etc.) until the chase began!
Loved it! Played 35 yrs…
And of course there were…
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And of course there were all the infamous places to park. In Northeast Philly, that meant Krewstown (does Stan still love Rosalie Winkler?!) and Shady Lane. For my guy and me, it also meant finding any one of several new housing developments in our area. We’d drive into the up-and-coming complex, head for a dead end street, and watch the car windows fog up. Only problem is– it undid my Curl Free!