Stickball

Stickball is a bat and ball game inspired by baseball which was very popular in large cities, and especially New York, NY, in the years following World War II. It is a game designed by and played by kids with home-made equipment that compensates for the lack of proper implements: the bat is typically a sawed-up broomstick, the ball is a cheap rubber ball (the preferred one being manufactured by Spalding and known in the local Brooklyn accent as a "Spaldeen"), and the field is a relatively quiet street or parking lot, with creative ground rules made to account for the particular configurations of the space.

Willie Mays built his legend in part by playing stickball games with local kids when he was a member of the New York Giants. Joe Pepitone and Frank Tepedino were both outstanding stickball players as youth, before getting to play more organized forms of baseball.

The game has largely disappeared as a spontaneous form of kids' play in the 21st century, given that unsupervised kids' play in general is pretty much extinct in big cities. However, a form of organized stickball is still played.

Further Reading

• Bill Ladson: "Yankees, MLB hold stickball tournament in Bronx", mlb.com, September 16, 2018. [1]