Keeping Stickball Alive

Impoverished and lower-middle-class kids living in cramped apartments in northeast cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Boston made the streets their playground. They played a quintessential game … stickball.

Stickball developed in the late 18th century from such English games as old cat, rounders, and town ball. Stickball also has historical ties to a game known as stoolball, which was played in southern England and colonial Boston.

Photo courtesy African American Registry

A “Spaldeen” is made from a rejected tennis ball core (photo courtesy Toy Tales)

Especially in New York City, the modern game is played on the street, where fixtures such as fire hydrants or parked cars serve as bases. Those fixtures also provide targets off of which to carom the ball, generally the high-bounce pink Spalding ball, known as the Spaldeen. Manhole covers serve as home plate, and the length of hits is measured in terms of sewers. Kids who could hit the ball two or three “sewers” down the block became neighborhood legends.

The bat is a broomstick or mop handle. Players often wrap adhesive or electrical tape around one end of the stick for a better grip.

On the street, the ball is generally pitched on one bounce to the batter. A variant is fungo, where the batter tosses the ball into the air and hits it on the way down or the bounce.

In back alleys and side streets — more confined spaces — singles, doubles, and triples were determined by where the ball landed. Belting a Spaldeen on a building roof was either a home run or an out, depending on preset verbal rules.

Willie Mays playing stickball (photo courtesy Sports History Weekly)

In the 1950s, Willie Mays, the New York Giants superstar, used to play stickball on the streets of Harlem with the neighborhood kids. Mays said the ritual helped him to hit curveballs. How so? Experienced stickball pitchers could make the ball curve after the bounce, and the rough surface of the asphalt also produced some unexpected twists to the pitches. When Mays made contact, he whacked the ball so hard that it went for three or four sewers — three or four city blocks!

Not everyone was a stickball fan. For some residents, shattered windows and traffic interruptions went too far. Building superintendents and police often confiscated balls and broken sticks, dropping the brooms down sewer holes, ending the game.

Italian, Puerto Rican, Irish, African American, and Jewish neighborhoods had their teams. Usually, they risked street fights if they wandered onto each other’s turf. That said, there was a free pass when a stickball match was scheduled. But as soon as the game ended, the visiting team had minutes to clear out or the gathering would turn violent.

As time passed and city car traffic increased, stickball found a home in school yards and open lots. We also played this version of stickball on weekends in the parking lot of a closed bank.

Photo courtesy Streetplay.com

In my hometown of Hackensack, New Jersey (a New York City suburb), we played a variant of stickball on our high school handball courts. When a court was not in use, which was most of the time, we either drew a strike zone with chalk or used adhesive tape to form a strike zone against the wall. It was one-on-one stickball.

If you hit a ground ball and the pitcher fielded it cleanly, you were out. If he bobbled it, it was a single. If the grounder went past him, it was a single. We had various markers. If you hit the ball on the fly beyond the marker, it was a double, triple, or home run. We had a three-foot-high fence at the end of the asphalt (which encompassed handball and basketball courts). A fly ball over that fence was a home run.

I would pretend to be a certain Major League team and bat left-handed or right-handed (I’m a natural right-handed hitter), depending on which big leaguer in the lineup I was impersonating. I couldn’t hit very well from the left side, but it was fun to try. I had pretty good control as a pitcher and threw a pretty good fastball, which served me well enough, even though I didn’t have a good breaking ball in my arsenal.

Stickball had pretty much died out on the streets of New York by the 1980s. As Sports History Weekly noted, “The 1980s ushered in video games and cable TV, resulting in youngsters spending more of their leisure time indoors. Overprotective parents also turned sports into organized and sanitized activities, controlling everything from playdates to transportation.”

Photo courtesy City Lore

But the game is still alive on Stickball Boulevard in the South Bronx. In 1985, Newman Avenue was officially renamed after the street game that had been part of New York City’s social fabric for generations.

The New York Emperors Stickball League (NYESL), founded in 1985 by Frank Sanchez and Frank Calderon, keeps the tradition alive. Over the years, the NYESL has grown from two teams to upwards of sixteen teams in league season play, which starts in early April and continues each Sunday through August.

“The Mecca of stickball is in the South Bronx”, says Jennifer Lippold, former President of the NYESL. “It’s where you go for bragging rights.” Hall of Fame pitcher CC Sabathia is one of several baseball stars who have shown up on a Sunday at Stickball Boulevard to help raise interest in the game.

There are also stickball leagues in California and Florida. However, I haven’t encountered one here in Martinez, CA, the birthplace of Joe DiMaggio, an hour north of San Francisco, where I currently live.

So … I am tempted to find a nice broom handle, wind my electrical tape around one end, order some Spaldeen balls, and find someone to play stickball with. What’s keeping me from that? I’m 72 years old and don’t know if my arm will hold up pitching to that strike zone on the wall of some local schoolyard.

But maybe I can pass on the tradition to my grandkids.