Stickball is an urban form of baseball. The game developed in New York City immigrant communities in the
late 1800s and flourished as a local sport until the end
of the immigrant era in the 1920s. It was a small
though continuing part of the assimilation process,
and many young men from Eastern European nations
took pride in playing their own street variety of American baseball.
The game was ideally suited to urban life. It required only two pieces of equipment: a bat made from
a cut-off broom or mop handle and a ball—ideally a
high-bouncing spaldeen, a pink, rubber ball manufactured by the Spalding sporting goods company and
sold in local candy and five-and-dime stores. The playing field was a city street, with a “sewer” (actually a
man-hole cover) serving as home plate and virtually
anything else—other sewers, lamp posts, chairs, or
boxes serving as the bases. Pitches were delivered on a
single bounce (as in cricket), with only one strike per
out. Pitching expertise was based on a combination of
speed and curving, or putting spin on the ball to make
it jump or move left or right as it crossed the plate. Balls
hit over rooftops were also outs, to discourage losing
balls, which were expensive.
A batter’s reputation was based on the number of
sewers he could reach, with two considered good and
three legendary. Claims that some batters could reach
four sewers seem to be more myth than fact.
The game began to decline in the 1920s, but has enjoyed a recent revival, particularly in retirement communities in Florida and southern California, where
older men who played the game as young men are
again playing and are encouraging local youths to play
as well.
While this form of stickball has drawn the most attention, other forms of “baseball” stickball are also
played in U.S. cities. The most popular is played in schoolyards or empty lots, and as with traditional
stickball requires only a stick and a rubber ball. There
is no home plate, but instead a rectangular batter’s box
drawn in paint or chalk on the building wall. There are
no bases and instead hits are marked by distance—
past the “pitcher’s mound” on the fly a single, to the
schoolyard fence a double, hit the fence a triple, over
the fence a home run. Related to this version of stickball is stoopball, in which the “hitter” bounces the ball
off the edge of a stoop or stairs on the front of a house.
The fielder must then catch the ball before it hits the
ground for an out. Again, there are no bases or base
running, and the distance reached marks the number
of bases.
—DAVID LEVINSON