I think the ability to negotiate rules to fit the number of players and the area to play in is one of the biggest losses of kids playing together without adults. Those are important life skills to be able to get along with others in the world.
5 Likes
Iām getting a little off topic here but hereās another kids-with-sticks story.
In eighth grade I was out at Big Bend with a bunch of classmates. Near our campsite was an area full of giant cane (bamboo) with a circular clearing in the middle. And in the clearing was a pair of boxers. Lord knows which of us, if any, they belonged to.
So naturally, one guy snaps off about a four-foot length of cane, picks up the boxers with it, and flings it at another guy. Just as naturally, that guy grabs another length and flings the boxers back at him. This (d)evolved quickly into an organized game, eight guys in the circle at a time, each with a stick, underwear starts on the ground in the middle. If the underwear touched your body at all (including hands/limbs), you were out. At the starting whistle you all dart for it and begin the mayhem of throwing it around until thereās only one man left standing. We called it āUnderstickā (underwear + stickā¦ geniuses, we).
I donāt think we ever played again after that trip but we all remember it vividly. The fun part is that years later, while a few of us were reminiscing, a friendās dad chimed in that heād played a similar game growing up in India. Kids all around the world, give āem a stick and a projectile, they come up with the same dumb shit.
2 Likes
We rarely had arguments. We agreed to the dayās rules, and everyone called it fair. We split teams up to make them as even as possible. It wasnāt much fun otherwise. Iād like to think kids today could do that if given the time and motivation, but I donāt know for sure.
They do. Hell, my nine year old and his baseball buddies were playing ācricketā across a few front yards on Memorial Day. Talk about making up the rules of the day!
1 Like
Thatās another one we did! One guy had a cricket bat, but none of us knew the rules except that there was only one ābaseā aside from home, so we played basically baseball with a cricket bat and a tennis ball just running straight to second base and back.
We also had some inventive variants on four square thatād take ages to explain. Talk about making up rules on the flyā¦ man, those were the days.
Four Square was THE game in early junior high. There were different rule sets, the most common was āschool rulesā. I donāt remember now all they entailed, but everyone did at the time.
1 Like
My friends and I played the hell out of Four Square in grade school. Donāt remember the rules exactly, but I do remember how much fucking fun we had.
My first job in high school was working for a swamp cooler maintenance company. When it was slow in the yard, we played ābaseballā with a broom stick for a bat and a ball that was little more than heavily wadded up duct tape. Man, if you got ahold of it, that sumbitch went flying!! Problem was actually making good contact. That tapeball had wicked movement.
2 Likes
I played Four Square every summer day at Patterson Park near my house. Tether ball, box hockey, and ping pong were daily games also. My neighborhood was all boys near the same age, and we played something or other every day and every evening in the summer. Idyllic!
2 Likes
Most of the boys in my immediate neighborhood were close to the same age. Weād challenge a group of kids from a few blocks over to drive-way basketball games, cul-de-sac baseball games, backyard wiffle-ball games or go to the park and play football. Drive-way basketball games with no refs was the sport that would occasionally end with an argument or a fight. In baseball/whiffle-ball we always had a forth foul and youāre out rule but no walks.
I had a friend that lived a few houses down the block who was obsessed with keeping stats. So he had notebooks and scorebooks full of scoring averages or batting averages and such. I remember whiffle-ball batting averages would be around .800. I once held the neighborhood record for interceptions in a game - 21. Probably still own that one.
1 Like
The Astros have a .600 winning % and the 4th best record in the AL.
Nobody in the NL has a .600 winning %.
The Braves .593 is best record in the NL.
The Yankees .590 is the last WC in the AL and would have the 2nd best record in the NL.
1 Like
What do the inter-league records look like? Itās possible that imbalance is the result of AL teams fattening up on the likes of OAK, CWS, DET, and KC. The imbalance may decrease as the season goes on and more inter-league games get played.
Luis Arraez has his BA up to .399.
The AL leads interleague by a record of 135-129. Detroit actually has a winning record in interleague play (11-6) and the White Sox are close to even (5-7). Of Oaklandās 50 losses, 15 of them came at the hands of NL teams.
Little late to the party as Iāve been on leave. But, WTH? You played with the back of the cul-de-sac as the outfield??? We always played with the back as home plate and the road leaving the cul-de-sac as the indefinite outfield. I can only remember one broken window my whole childhood. This is the way we played in VA, KY, OH, CO, WV. I thought it was universal.
Just a little past 8th grade for me, one of my many jobs working my way thru college was at a sign shop. The sign guys used to roll the excess vinyl from die cut letters into balls as they worked. I got into the habit of free throwing them into 30 gallon trash cans when they were around baseball size. Which, naturally, turned into me trying to drop a 12-6 curveball into them from varying distances. Which led to most of the guys trying to do the same when they saw me. One of the guys that worked with us was a Fresno State student too and played on the (very good) Bulldogs baseball team. We was walking by a trash can holding a paint roller extension pole and I said, āhey, Pat, I bet I can drop in this deuce in the can and youāll never touch itā. Which I did! And, he didnāt! And, a game was born. Within 2 days and for the rest of the summer, the entire sign shop would stop for lunch and weād play modified sign shop stickball with rolled up vinyl balls and paint roller extensions. The owner of the company would even come by and laugh at us as we played. We had teams, kept score, had fights and had all kinds of crazy rules for bounces, catches, ricochets and the like that got more inane the longer we played. The thing that stopped it after a couple of months was when the owner discovered the beating that the 30ā drop ceiling tiles were taking from the pop flies. Good times.
3 Likes
Great game!
HP was mobile, depending on the sun on an E/W street
Donāt look now, but the Cincinnati Reds have something special cooking. They have some great looking young talent and this De la Cruz kid looks special. The Twins are gonna look back at that trade with a lot of regret.
2 Likes
He does indeed.
Could be a compliment to your aged wisdom. But I may be over thinking it.