Category Archives: Stickball

On 3rd Street between 2nd…

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On 3rd Street between 2nd and 3rd Ave, in the late 50’s and early 60’s we would play like this: First base was a fire pump, 2nd base was a manhole cover and third was a wheel on a car parked in the street. Had to wait until traffic passed (or we sometimes stopped it ourselves) then hit the ball on a bounce and run like the devil, everything was in bounds as long as it was in the imaginary base lines. Fire escapes on the building sometimes posed a difficult catch, the ball would bounce around and you weren’t sure where it would come down. Also if you broke a window it was a home run or time to RUN HOME..by the way, how many brooms did we all borrow to make the bat??

P.S.114 in Canarsie was…

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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

I grew up in Brooklyn on…

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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 BEST schoolyard in Queens…

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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.

Hey, what about us girls??…

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Hey, what about us girls?? You guys may consider our games wimpy, but we hung out and played on the streets and stoops too! My memories are hazy and I haven’t thought about those days lately, so I can only provide titles and brief descriptions — perhaps it will jog someone else’s memory: I moved away from Brooklyn when I was 7, so I played the following at a tender age: 1. Red Light, Green Light, One Two Three 2. Giant Steps 3. Statues I can’t recall, though, just what these games entailed! Anyone remember? Of course, our basic sidewalk game was Potsy. Although it is generally known as Hopscotch, in Borough Park, Brooklyn it was always Potsy. And it was still Potsy when we moved to Old Bethpage, Long Island (of course, many suburbanites had emigrated to Long Island from Brooklyn…) Girls were into Spalding balls too. We bounced ’em off stoops and against walls, and of course did the classic “A, my name is Alice, and my husband’s name is Andy, we come from Atlanta and we sell anchovies…” You were supposed to go through the whole alphabet, but I don’t think I ever did. And now, a confession: there were times when I could be the annoying kid sister: Sometimes when my older brother played stickball or wiffle ball in the backyard with his friends, if I felt mischievious, I’d skip across their playing field, calling out in a sing-song voice, “Interference! Interference!”

There is still a stickball…

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There is still a stickball league in the Bronx, New York. I have been playing in the New York Emperors Stickball League for 7 years straight. We play stickball in the Bronx at Stickball Blvd. right behind Stevenson High School Track. The games run from April to September on sundays at 10:00am to 12:30pm. I have started a website to promote the league it will be completed by May 1999. The address is www.bronxpages.com/stickball New Teams are Welcome! Stickball Rules!

> I guess I’ll have to play…

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> I guess I’ll have to play a few games to remember again I want to do this too. I live in Westchester NY, but I think I can find a lot of clean, level pavement in the local now-defunct Caldor’s parking lot. Not a bad place to squeeze in some stickball either now that I think of it.

In Manayunk we used to play…

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In Manayunk we used to play wireball. There were 4 high wires we threw a pimple or tennis ball at. The lowest was a single, next a double, then a triple, top was a homer. If you missed the wires and it was caught by your opponents it was a strike, 3 strikes was an out, 3 outs per side of an inning just like baseball. If you hit the wire it didn’t matter if it was caught, you got whatever the hit was. This could be played individually or with teams. The hardest part, aside from hitting the wires which were fairly high, was keeping track of the men on base and the score which could get quite high. We also played the usual games like stickball,halfball,stepball, etc. but I think wireball was kind of unique.

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One of the things that makes those old friendships so powerful is that they touch a part of you that you barely remember you still have. I have a few people who I grew up with and am still close to. It’s really a treasure. Speaking of curveballs, my father in law played stickball with me about 10 years ago. I was 35, he was about 50 Anyway, all he threw were these crappy spinning pitches which I’d swing at and hit down into the grass (this was out in the country). He finally threw me one “fast ball” & I knocked deep. The rest of the day were all spinners. He still talks about those spinners, I still think I could’ve knocked one out.

I grew up in New York on…

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I grew up in New York on the upper West Side, and we played stickball against the Firemen’s Monument at 100th Street and Riverside Drive. We drew a strike box on the side of the monument with chalk, a pitcher’s mound about 50 feet up the street, and a batter’s box on the street. We used a broom handle (usually wrapped with electrical tape on the handle) and pink rubber balls made by the Spaulding Company (which were universally known as Spaldeens). A single was a ball hit past the pitcher’s rubber on the fly, which hit before the doorway of a building about 75 feet up the street; a double had to be hit on the fly between the marker for a single and another building about 150 feet up the street; a triple had to be hit between the end of the marker for a double and the top of the hill; and a home run was a ball hit over the top of the hill on 100th Street. When I went to buy Spaldeens at the candy store, I looked for ones that had a little extra rubber at the seam from the molding process, because I was one of the few guys who could throw a curve ball with a Spaldeen. There was this one guy I played against, who every time I threw curve balls to him and he swung and missed, who would scream at me, “You cheated! You threw a curve ball!” He could never hit a curve ball, and he was a patsy every time he came up to bat against me. I would set him up with pitches low and inside just over the corner of the plate, then strike him out any time I wanted to with a curve ball that started outside, and broke in at his hands. And you could guarantee that he would be yelling that I cheated, because I threw the curve ball he couldn’t hit. The funny thing is that 45 years later I am now a senior scientist at a major corporation, and he is a big-shot Wall Street lawyer pulling in megabucks, and every time I see him (about twice a year), I can still piss him off by reminding him that he could never hit a curve ball. And you can guarantee he will still be complaining that I won because I cheated, throwing him curve balls.