Category Archives: Other Spaldeen games
This is a great discussion…
This is a great discussion because both the Spalding and Pensy Pinky were great in their own ways. There was nothing better than holding a brand new ball of either brand. The Spalding was preferred but the Pensy Pinky was great also. I recently bought a new Spalding at Toys-R-Us. I got a little of that feeling back but then it immediately faded when I saw the large UPC label imprinted directly on the ball. Why did they do that? Why isn’t Pensy Pinky still making its ball? I think the first engineering project we did as kids was getting a ball out of the sewer after it rolled down there. I think the lifecycle of a ball ends with rolling down a sewer. I remember after a large rain, some of the sewers would overflow with water, bringing up a multitude of the lost balls. It was a rare occurance and a picture worth taking.
Hey Big Daddy, I…
Hey Big Daddy, I absolutely remember triangle baseball. I lived in the bed-stuy section of Brooklyn. We used to play on Pulaski St. Between Stuyvesant Ave and Willoughby. It was a one-way street where we played most of our neighborhood games and we played them all. Stickball, chinese handball, fast pitch stickball with automatics, off-the-point, stoopball, boxball, ringalievio, hide-and-seek, kick-the-can, johnny on the pony, skelleys, marbles. All these games were great but I haven’t heard anybody mention – Spinning Tops – a wooden top (shaped like a hot air ballon) with a metal point on the bottom and we would wrap a string around the it then throw the top on the asphalt making it spin. We would play games like crack-the-top. This game was played by two or more players and the object was to shoot your top at the top on the ground in an attempt to crack it.You would choose to see whose top would be layed on the ground. Then taking one turn at a time each player would spin his top attempting to hit the top on the ground. If you didn’t hit it in one shot you could pick up the top in your hand while it was spinning and throw against the top on the ground then you would get another chance.If in your turn, you couldn’t hit the object top then you would have to lay your top down to be the target top. –Making wooden carpet guns–. The easy way to make one was with a piece of 1×4 or anything similar about three feet in length. Then we would attach a thick rubber band to the front with a nail. Toward the back part of the gun on the top edge, we would then attach a clothes pin with one leg cut off using a few rubber bands to hold it in place.This would act as the trigger. We would then cut little squares from a section of linoleoum flooring to use as ammo. We would then pull back the front rubber band holding it in place under the clothes pin. We would insert a piece of ammo between the the two legs of the rubber band and to shoot the ammo we would press down on the leg of the clothes pin thereby releasing the ammo. How about –Scooters–, made out of a wooden box a two by four and a one skate. We would decorate the box with bottle caps, paint and anything we could think of. I live in Florida now and we have a group of about 20 to 30 ex New Yorkers. Every year we have an annual xmas picnic. At the picnic we have a fathers against sons stickball game and we play a serious game of skelleys. Those were the best days of my life and if had it all to do over again, I wouldn’t change one thing from my childhood days growing up on the streets of the big city. By the way if someone knows where I can find some Spalding HI-Bouncers if they still exist please post the info on this site.
We always used Spaldeens…
We always used Spaldeens in the Bronx– One day, Willie’s candy store had Pennyslvania Pinkies for sale — no spaldeens! We bought one to play SLUG with — it was horrible. Later we did the Spaldeen/PP test — droppping them both to the ground at the same time. Spaldeen won — it just had that extra zip to it!
“Lefty groove” sounds like…
The bronx in the 50’s…”lefty…
In the southern part of…
In the southern part of Brownsville,”spaldeens” were the choice over “pennsy Pinkies”. When we could not afford to buy a Spaldeen (at 25 cents), we’d settle for a Pennsy Pinky. There were days we’d lose 5-6 Spaldeens under moving vehicles or to the sewers of the city. There was no more comforting logo than Spalding’s on their light-pink colored ball. It had more consistency to the bounce than the Pennsy Pinkie. It was like comparing Fox’s U-Bet Chocolate syrup to Bosco in Brownsville, Brooklyn.
The pensie pinky, made…
I played box baseball in…
I played box baseball in the Linden Projects (East New York, Brooklyn). We also played boxball. For boxball we used four boxes (2×2) and each player got a box. Then we would tap the ball back and forth between the players until someone couldn’t return the ball into one of the other boxes or couldn’t hit it before it hit the floor twice. There was also another game which used 5 boxes (in a straight row). First you have to make the ball bounce once in the #1 box. Then once in the #1 box and once in the #2 box & so on until you did all 5 boxes.
We played all the Philly…
We played all the Philly street games in Strawberry Mansion(North Philly). Drain pipe climbing was a necessary skill that was developed as a result of “roofing” half balls hit up there or the whole pimples gone there in ledgeball or “ledgies”. The roof contained a renewable resource for halfball as I recall. I now live in Arizona where summer temperatures in the full sun can go over 150 degrees at 6 feet above the ground. Lucky that we’re are next to the Colorado River at the Mexican and Calif. borders- but no street games here in the summer. The winters are ok about 70, no rain and sunny with our visitors playing golf. Too bad for them not to play halfball instead. regards to all- Fred in Yuma