Road hockey, sandlot baseball ... kids on the loose

That station is at Day Square and was at first called "Day Square".

Then they changed the name of the station to "Wood Island Park".

Then they leveled the park, but the station kept the name.

Any of the Boston-area guys remember half-ball?

Yup, a pinky or white rubber ball (with the stars) about the size of a tennis ball. They cost 10 cents...somewhere around '64.

After it got punctured, we'd cut in half at the equator and invert it. Then we'd attempt to hit it with our skinny broomstick handle bats. That pitched ball (often side-armed) would take such an erratic path to the plate and curve or dip - almost impossible to follow much less hit. Anyone that could hit it undoubtedly was a hitter on an organized baseball team.

Oh yeah, the manhole cover in the middle of the street was home plate.

Then for us city-kids...there was stoop-ball...where you would bounce the ball off the stoop and ... and...oops ... I forget the rest of the game. Was it to see if you could catch it?

I just had to look it up, but for no other reason but to see its origins and development. Wiki writes this:

"Half-Rubber, also known as half-ball, is a bat-and-ball game similar to stick ball or baseball. The game was developed in the American South around the beginning of the 20th Century, possibly moving north with the Great Migration where it was widely played by the 1950s. It can be played will as few as three players and involves no running of bases.

The sport was typically played on a city street, now played in parks or the beach, using a baseball-sized rubber ball, that's been cut or sawed in half. Legendary origins of this "half-ball"' vary: from kids splitting a ball so that two games could be played at once;to an accident where a pimple-ball broke in half and kids had no money to buy a new one so they played with a half-ball; to an innovation by adults who wanted to reduce the chances of the ball breaking windows on nearby buildings"

We called it "hits-off-the-curb". If the fielder didn't catch it, it was a hit,
a single, double, triple or homer depending on where in the street it hit.

We do have a great neighborhood - kids of all ages. Our yard has woods and a stream in the back. Myself, I have ventured out and across the stream and into the other side of the woods. Next spring I may venture further. We have deer, turkeys, fox, bunnies, etc. that live out there.

Kinda fun. Probably good I didn't grow up here cuz I loved to climb trees - would do it again but I would most likely break something and it would be way too embarrassing to explain how it happened - bad enough I had to explain my broken finger as a result of trying to play basketball and trying to stuff my daughter.

Ah, I remember pinkies. I had one during our year in New York, 1950. Quite a great bounce they had! Don't remember what we or I did with them; I had only one out of school playmate there. I might have taken it to Chicago with me, but what I remember about after school balls there was getting hit in the nose with a somewhat bigger and harder red rubber ball. Biggo nosebleed followed. We played softball too, but pinky must have disappeared.

yeah...that's it!

I also recall the pinky being called a "spauldeen".

http://www.streetplay.com/thegames/haveaball.htm



the pink spaldeen

looks like wham-0 had a big piece of my childhood - hula hoops, skipmates, frisbees, superballs

now I'm having flashbacks to all the wordplay song games we played skipping and jumping and with the superball inside a mother's old stocking

and this!



loved loved this

how about Chinese jump rope? I used to love playing this.

ha ha --- you pulled what I was looking at - I was a pro at that.

Also when my daughter brought home one of these ---



my girls were shocked at how good I was at it.

yeah! the skipball/skipmate

I want to find an old one of those in the original colours.