Category Archives: Spaldeen games

Heck, Spaldeens and other…

Streetplay Discussion Archive Posted on by
Original author: Frank [e-mail]
 

Heck, Spaldeens and other rubber balls were good only for day games. At night, we used to stuff those waxed milk containers (remember, those now obsolete quart cartons with the pull-up spout for pouring?) with newspapers and use them for balls–but ONLY at night! We’d play stickball on the sidewalk, and home play was right next to the lamppost to give the batters some light. We couldn’t use a rubber ball at night because the fielders had difficulty seeing it, causing the batting team to stay up forever. We’d stuff those milk containers with paper and press down on them until they were the size of a softball. The only problem was that the milk carton didn’t last long from the whacking; and every ten minutes, somebody had to go into a garage can for another one, rip off its top, and stuff it again. Creating new balls for the game was an all night affair. By the ninth inning, the whole sidewalk was littered with milk cartons and newspapers. Oh, well, we kept the janitors and sanitation workers busy anyway.

My name is Don Whelan I…

Streetplay Discussion Archive Posted on by
Original author: donald whelan [e-mail]
 

My name is Don Whelan I lived at 1419 New York Ave until 1969 when I was 13 years old. I also attended St. Jeromes up until the sixth grade in 1969. I was younger then Bobby Lacourte and Charlie Ambruso but I use to tag along with them and play sports with them. They nicknamed me Quack because Donald Duck had the same first name as me and that’s the noise he makes. We use to play the following sports in the center court of Vanderveer slap and punch ball, hockey, softball. We also use to play stoop ball, scully, johnny on the pony, ring a leaveo, put a coin on the ground and try and hit the coin with a spalding ball and get points. We use to create All Star Baseball leagues from a board game that had a spinner on it. You would place the baseball players round card on the spinner and spin it, I remember a 1 was a home run. I remember during the summer nights our parents sitting in lawn chairs all over the Vanderveer. I remember making go carts out of baby carriage wheels or roller skate wheels and wooden milk cartons. I remember seeing the biggest water bugs walking thru the basements of Vanderveer. Finally when the neighborhood was going bad I remember the cops walking around with german shepards and driving around in scooters. I am now living in N.J. since 1969. These are great memories and a great website. Don Whelan

I remember alot of these…

Streetplay Discussion Archive Posted on by
Original author: Alan Laxson [e-mail]
 

I remember alot of these games. I grew up in North Philly (3rd & Bristol) near Feltonville. We played boxball, stickball, handball, chink ball, and buck buck. I haven’t see many messages on chink ball.The the way we played it you hit the ball either pimple or pink rubber if they didn’t have a pimple ball, against the wall on one bounce. You could juggle the ball three times, but then you had to hit it. You would try to fake your opponent out by pretending to hit it hard, then hit it softly. If he or she missed it, it was worth one point. First one to 5 won. Thanks, for the memories. Al.

I grew up in Hicksville,…

Streetplay Discussion Archive Posted on by
Original author: Steve Farrell [e-mail]
 

I grew up in Hicksville, out on Long Island. We had a serious stickball league, stats and all, sometimes announcers throughout the sixties and seventies. I can remember both the Spaldings and the Pencie Pinkies, and somewhere in the seventies, the Pencie Pinkies that came out were almost like superballs by comparison. They were more solid, weighed more, and went further, and as someone said, they probably lasted longer. We used to fantasize that our street field was Yankee Stadium. We had an upperdeck of tall maples, a short right field fence, a deep, deep centerfield fence, and three trees out there which we referred to as the monuments. I’m looking for stickballs and stickball bats for my kids and the neighborhood kids to get something going this summer. If anyone knows where I can order them online, contact me at Hopefully, I’ll find them at the store listed above. See ya.

I grew up in the Sunset…

Streetplay Discussion Archive Posted on by
Original author: Peter
 

I grew up in the Sunset Park area during the 50’s too, and we always put “fluke” on the ball as well. I also remenber trying to get the ball out of the sewer on occasion by taking apart a wire hanger and forming a loop on the end to fish out a known good spaldeen. It was like a giant easter egg dipper. Dirty work, you had to be really hard up.

That’s pretty much the way…

Streetplay Discussion Archive Posted on by
Original author: Peter
 

That’s pretty much the way we played stickball. Because there were cars parked in the street the court was narrow, consequently we had two infielders in tandum and the rest played beyond second. Bouncing the ball to hit was ok but the street was cobble stone in the early fifties and the ball may not bounce straight so most guys hit it on the fly. If you caught the ball out of a tree it was an out. Great fun thinking you had it as you watched it make its way down only to loose it at the last second.

I played for hours on the…

Streetplay Discussion Archive Posted on by
Original author: Suarez [e-mail]
 

I played for hours on the corner of 85th St and 21st Ave in Brooklyn, with the rumble of the B train as background music. We had our court on the sidewalk, because there was just too much traffic from 86th Street… there was no way to play a game on the asphalt. We played 13-box, in two versions. If there were a lot of players it was 1-13, for a more leisurely game it was 1-13,13-1 before you could start knocking other players out of the game. In the dark ages before twist off caps, the most prized cap was one with only a slight indentation from a bottle opener. We would rub the caps back and forth, back and forth on the sidewalk to get a smooth silver matte look on the bottom. Pop in a penny over the cork, and melt a candle (“wasting” a crayon that way would have made my mother berserk, “Whaddya think, we get them free from somewhere?”). When the wax was just about firm, if you pulled a piece of paper towel over the cap it put a pattern in the top of the wax. With box ball, tops, yo-yo, skelly, and chinese handball, who needed camp?

I grew up in Flatbush in…

Streetplay Discussion Archive Posted on by
Original author: shep
 

I grew up in Flatbush in the 50’s. For some reason, we did not play stickball, but we did play punchball and slapball. In slapball, the ball is pitched on a bounce to the batter who hits it with an open hand. You could put all kinds of different spin on the ball so that after it bounced it would swerve left, right, stop dead, or shoot ahead. We called this “fluking”. Anyone else remember that word? We used mainly Spaldeen, though I do recall Pensy Pinkies. Many balls were lost in the sewers. I recall kids saying to each other, “Walk me to the corner. I have to get a new Spaldeen.”