I grew up in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. I also remember playing “hit the stick”. We also played with the icecream stick, standing on opposite ends of 2 cement squares, and trying to hit the stick with a “spalding” ball. I think the winner would be the first one to score 10 or maybe 20 points.
P.S.114 in Canarsie was the place to go for a game of stickball, handball, football, basketball, skulley, Johnny on the Pony, Marbles, Knock Hockey, Punchball, Pitching nickels against the wall or the line, ringalevio, war, slapball and softball just to name a few. There was even some weird guy from Czeckloslavokia who used to hit a soccer[?] ball off his head, {what a strange boring game} but we could never get the ball from him. Glory Days! Mousey
Here’s how we played in Rochdale Village in Queens circa late 1960’s: We also used bottle caps weighed down with melted crayons. I remember Mom getting pissed when some dripped inside her newly cleaned oven. After awhile, some guys used the plastic caps that came on the “new” plastic milk containers. We quickly outlawed the larger jar caps, especially the Motts Apple Sauce caps. Our box was a prepainted “boxball” court (there’s another great game)that was approx. 6’x6′. Each numbered box, done up in chalk, was about 6″x6″. “Running out of town” was prohibited! If I remember correctly, after running 1 – 13 and then 13 – 1, you had to go around the “Skelly” before you became a Killer. You had to hit a guy three times to get him out. Obviously, you would try to line up that third hit so that you could blast him out of the playground – just to rub it in a little.
Out on LI, just off Hempstead Turnpike in W. Hempstead, there was a long red brick supermarket wall, and concrete paving all the way to the street. This became known as “The Office.” Games of ‘Chinese’ Handball went on all day long in the late 50s and early 60s. Chinese handball was played in a ‘court’ usually two pavers square and was distinguished by one rule: You had to bounce the ball once before it hit the wall. “The Office” was well equipped: Across the street was “Three Finger Jack” McGinn’s candy store, and there was a staircase next to the handball wall where you could climb down and have more ‘private’ conversation, or hide if your mom came looking for you and your cigarette-smoking hooligan friends.
Ever play Hit the Stick We would take a stick from an ice cream bar and put it on a crack between two cement pads on the sidewalk. Standing at the end of the cement pads each player(2 players)on opposite sides, would try to hit the stick with a spauldeen. Bounceing it back and forth.. I don’t remember how the game was won.. Anyone??
I grew up in Brooklyn on a dead end street and I was a stickball fanatic. We pitched against a chalk drawn strike zone and hit down onto the freight train tracks. Up over the other side was a homerun. It was a pretty good shot–maybe 250 to 300 feet. I remember one time my friend Ralph and I were playing against “the big kids”—guys 2 or 3 years older than us. But we were getting to the point in life where those years didn’t mean so much anymore– physically we were catching up. We may have been 15 or 16. Anyway, we were holding our own–striking them out and scoring runs against them. They were getting annoyed. One of our opponents had an even older brother. He was probably in his early twenties. Ralph and I had actually never even seen this guy before that day–or since. Well, these older guys are getting more and more embarrassed that the former “little kids” are beating them, so they decide to let the older brother pitch. He starts warming up and man oh man did he have a fast ball. I literally could not see the ball as it exploded out of his hand. I am trying to time this guy while he is warming up and I realize he is just too fast for me to hit him. If you have ever been hit in the face with a spaldeen thrown with all of someone’s might, you can imagine my reluctance to get into the batter’s box. Right then and there I knew two things. Ra;lph and I are going to lose the game because we can’t hit this guy. And the only thing I can do is swing at the first pitch as hard as I can. I stepped into the batter’s box and got into an exaggerated stance with the bat held far back and high. Every muscle was coiled. As soon as the pitcher started his windup on his very first pitch I started my swing. I did not even look at the ball, I just swung with every ounce of enegy that I had. And I connected. On the sweet part of the bat. Dead center on the ball. I never saw a ball go so far so high so fast. I creamed it. I obliterated it. It was a pea in the sky. I will honestly never forget that shot. Everyone just stood there speechless. That was the only pitch they let him throw. He was immediately yanked from the game. If one of the “little kids” could do that to the first pitch, the “big kids” reasoned the pitcher must really stink. Thus saved from the unhittable older brother by what was really a lucky eyes closed shot, we won the game.
The girls in my neighborhood…the lower East Side of Manhattan played a game where we put down a penny on the sidewalk. They stood apart from each other, usually using two square cement blocks of sidewalk. One girl would stand on the right of the penny and the other on the left. And you bounced the ball hoping to hit the penny with the ball to get a score. If the penny flipped over, you got a higher score. Don’t remember anymore of the particulars. Does anyone else remember this game.
Hit and Roll (Real name is unknown) This is a game all of the neighborhood kids used to play during the 60’s, in the street in San Jose, California. One person was the batter. He had a regular wooden bat and a tennis ball. The batter had to throw the ball up into the air and hit the ball himself. The rest of the players were out into the street, and yards. If the player hitting the ball hit a pop up and someone caught the ball, then the person who caught the ball got to be the batter. If the ball was not caught, then from where the ball was picked up, that person then walked straight out from that spot to the middle of the street. The batter then had to lay the bat down crosswise in the middle of the street. The player with the ball then would have to roll the ball and try and hit the bat., if this was achieved then the only way the batter could keep his postion as batter was for him to catch the ball in the air when it hit the bat and popped up. If he did not catch the ball, then the person who rolled the ball would get to be the batter until someone else caught a pop up or rolled the ball and the ball was caught after it hit the bat. We had as many as 20 or more people in the street playing, and everyone would scramble to get the chance to catch or roll the ball. Never used any mitts. Didn’t need any. Always used a tennis ball. Janet Eeds
The BEST schoolyard in Queens in the late ’60s – early ’70s was PS 108 by the entrance to the Aqueduct racetrack. It was relatively square, fenced all around and had poured cement “boxes” roughly 5′ x 5′. These boxes served as softball basepaths, football yardlines, stickball pitchers’ mounds, handball court short lines, and distance markers for stickball and automatics. Connected to the large square area, there was a perfect sized handball court and wall, and the “little schoolyard” – a blacktopped area surrounded by 3 walls and a fence, perfect for roller hockey. Any afternoon in the summer there could be a softball game (sometimes two), a basketball game, 3 stickball games and a handball game going on at once. Summer nights was Ringoleario and just hanging out. In the fall and winter, it was touch football and basketball. Everyone met at the schoolyard. Just show up and you’ll get in some kind of game. We’ll never forget it.