Page 12 - Boca ViewPointe - December '22

Page 12, Viewpointe December 2022
The Greatest (Stickball) Game Ever

By William A. Gralnick borough before the awful Junior High School system was Thus the game began, not at high noon like at the O.K.
adopted. The fence was locked. There’s no keeping a boy Corral but at about 5 p.m. Few, if any kids, would be in
During a lunchtime from a schoolyard. The fence may have been locked, but the yard. He was a flame thrower. I was a junk pitcher –
kibbitz session, the topic it also was cut. The shape of that cut was a giant bee hive. sneaky fast when needed, augmented by a fine curve ball. A
of stickball came up. This Continually patching it became foolish, so the custodian left “spaldeen” could turn someone with strong fingers into the
memory came to mind. it unfixed as a gift, so to speak, to us kids. Clem Labine of the neighborhood. You could put so much
I was hooked from the We used the yard facing us because, with the buildings spin on it that it curved about 16 feet – well, not quite, but
first time I saw it. An 8th grader about the size of an NFL behind us, balls hit over the fence were retrievable. Hit one you get the idea.
guard swung and hit this pink sphere (AKA ball known as a over the fence on the other side of the building, and it ended My foe took the persona of Yankee’s power hitter Mickey
“spaldeen”) in a high arc. It flew over the schoolyard fence, up in the middle of four-lane Coney Island Avenue, shortly Mantle. I was the Dodger’s scrabble ball hitter Pee Wee Reese.
over the street, and landed on the roof of the 5-story apartment to be hit by a passing car and knocked halfway to Coney In the first inning, I didn’t come close to catching up to
house facing “right field.” Transfixed by that feat, it began my Island. Even at only a quarter a pop, that became expensive. his fastball. He looked like a corkscrew trying to hit my curve
obsession with stickball – an obsession so long-lasting that Facing the fence was the red brick wall of the school. ball. And so it went for three or four of the first “regulation”
many years later, I took my boys from Florida back to the Heavy-duty iron grates covered the first-floor windows just seven innings. Why seven? No idea. Then lightning struck.
schoolyard for one last game – and…keep reading. above the batter’s box. Thus there was no chance of getting I hung a curve, and he smacked it.
Stickball was an anybody sport. A broom handle, a piece a “gimme” strike call on a high ball. It hit the grate and 1-0.
of chalk, and a “spaldeen” were needed, making the costs ricocheted away. The grate was an umpire with whom you
next to nothing. That was particularly true when the broom couldn’t argue. The Greatest (Stickball) Game on page 13
handle somehow “just disappeared” from a garage, and the
chalk disappeared from a classroom, The ball cost was the
major expense–a quarter. If you really wanted to go whole
hog, electrical tape was wound around the “bat” handle. As
grandma said, “The whole ball of wax.”
Not familiar with the game? One drew a batter’s box on
the school building wall and a plate beneath it on the ground.
If two played, there was a pitcher and a batter. With three,
add an outfielder. And much like baseball, the game was a
mental duel between batter and pitcher. Stylish Modern Atmosphere Make Reservations happy hour
Most games were won with a Wee Willie Keeler “hit Mon. - Thurs.
‘em where they ain’t” strategy, and others with a mammoth at Bar Only all Day
homer. You immediately knew it was “gone” by the “thwack”
produced by the bat hitting the ball. When hit solidly, the Mon. - Fri. 3 - 6 pm
spaldeen compressed and trampolined off the bat. inside Only
Stickball could be organized with teams, but in my
Flatbush neighborhood, it was mano a mano. It was all about Lunch SpeciaLS
bragging rights. And that’s what it came down to one fateful,
late fall evening in the schoolyard of PS 217. every Day
$
I can see my opponent, but I can’t remember his name. starting at 11
He lived near Prospect Park. We had met over the summer
at a dude ranch in Peekskill and became friends. How? I
went shopping with him one day, and we played football
with the things we bought. I’d be twenty or thirty feet away.
He’d throw a melon to me. Into the wagon, it would go.
Frozen dinners were flying around the frozen foods aisle like
Frisbees. Stuff like that. To paraphrase David Letterman, they
were “stupid boy tricks.” We also played some stickball. We
developed a rivalry—another stupid boy trick.
One evening we walked down the street to the side
entrance of 217, the last 8th-grade graduating school in the

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