Category Archives: Stickball

I grew up in South Philly,…

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

I grew up in South Philly, in the 70s/early 80s … I STILL HAVE A PIMPLE BALL !!! I kept it knowing that one day, people all over would be looking for one — wish we could still buy em. I remember learning ‘Chink’ on the corners. We simply called it ‘Chink’ and it was the most simple, fun, yet competitive games ANYWHERE !! We played it on the corner, and we played to 11, or 21 if you played doubles and allowed ‘slams’ – meaning the ball could go PAST the curb and into the street, provided there wasn’t a parked car in front of that curb. My memories from the neighborhood also included: – Halfball (of course) – Handball – Running the Bases – ‘Atlantic City’ — which was a variation of Chink AND Running the Bases – very fun game – Jailbreak (surprised I haven’t seen this mentioned elsewhere – you had teams of people and you had to ‘free’ the person in ‘jail’ — which was someone’s front step – you would grab the railing, yell ‘jailbreak’ and all your teammates could leave jail. If you got caught by the other team, you were ‘dragged’ into jail. We usually had a member from each team ‘guarding’ the jail area!) – Wireball – Stepball – Fastball (a variation of stickball/halfball where you pitched a tennis ball into a ‘strike box’ painted on a wall and played with out and runs rules similar to halfball) – Wall/Suicide (simply throwing the ball against the wall, and having someone catch it – if you missed it you had to run to the wall and touch it and yell ‘Wall/Suicide’ before someone picked up your missed ball and BEANED it at your ass! – Dodge ball (played with the big red ball!) – Street football (we actually had an entire street block spray painted with yard line markers, logos, out of bounds markers, end zones, etc!) I’m sure there were plenty of others but this is all I can think of right now !!!

I played stickball since…

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

I played stickball since I was about 7 yrs old. That was in 1942. I played in Manhatten on 17th street between 8th and 9th ave. We diddn’t use the sewers for bases, being tough to slide over when necessary. 1st and 3rd base were on the sidewalk anyway. We used buildings for for foul lines. You could take as many pitches as you liked, but only got 1 swing. We always played games on Sunday as there were hardly any cars parked on the street in those days. We always played teams from different Neighborhoods and always for money. During the week we just had guys get up and hit, if you caught a fly you got up till someone replaced you. We also had a playground on the street, called Kelly Playground. We played ” against the wall” where you bounced the ball off the handball court and the batter swung after 1 bounce.We play with 3 players, a pitcher ,a batter and 1 outfielder. There was a tenement house wall above the handball court so you didn’t lose the ball. if you hit the wall and bounced between the wall and short line it was a single, between the short and long line a double, between the long line and the asphalt a triple. Anything on the asphalt was a homer.The 2 defensemen could field the ball and you were out if it was caught. 1 out per player, then you rotated to the bat. usually 10 runs was a winner. There was 1 more variation. Fast pitch. you stood against the parkhouse wall, that was the backstop. The pitcher fired the ball like a baseball pitcher, we had a box drawn on the wall to determine the strike zone. 2 fielders beside the pitcher, and as many bounes the ball made detrmined the amount of bases you got.

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.

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.

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 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.”

From: Marvin Lerman. My…

Streetplay Discussion Archive Posted on by
Original author: Marvin H. Lerman [e-mail]
 

From: Marvin Lerman. My memories of stickball go back to Flatbush, Brooklyn from the 40’s to mid 50’s. The playing fields were on East 4th St., East 5th St, both narrow and one way and on the wider two way Ditmas Ave. We used a spalline and improvised bats: broom handle, sawed off handle of an old, or not so old rake, hoe or shovel and once a thichish wooden rod that one of us found in a clothes closet, it was the best but he got into much trouble at home. The rules of play were as follows: …………. I had just completed E 4and 5 Street and was about to go on to Ditmas Ave. stickball which was much different but seem to run out of space and lost all of E 4th and E5th. Can someone please help. Reminiscing about my boys of summer was comforting,making me feel warmer and less gloomy while sitting out the Massachuttes Blizzard of 2003. Learned of the streetgames websight in William Safire’s On Language collumn in the NT Times 2/16/03 mag. section. Can’t find on the screen much of my earlier stuff. HELP!!! I East 4th St.: Home plate was painted on the road next to a friend’s house, as was a line designating the pitcher’s rubber. 2-3 players on each side. The ball was pitched on one bounce hard and with possible spin. 3 strikes, 4balls. No ump to call the balls and strikes, but we usually managed to agree. Singles were based on whether a ground ball hit within the curbs was cleanly fielded. 2,3 or 4 base hits depended on how far we’d hit the ball on the fly, under, over or through the branches of trees that overhung the road and where it would land, near a parked car or other designated landmark. A batted ball that hit on the fly a parked car or a house was an out. We’d often start on summer mornings, break for lunch and resume until suppertime. Sewers never came in to play. East 5th Street: Same rules as E 4th, except that there were 4-5 players per side, we ran ’em out, there were no automatic designated extra base hits and there were hardly any trees within 150 feet. Those games were usually played in in the early summer evenings.