Like egg creams and nickel subway rides, stickball is one of those long-gone cultural touchstones that New York City old-timers often wax nostalgic about. But you know, the game sure looks like a lot of fun.
No coaches. No expensive gear. No adults. All you needed was a car-free side street (not hard to find before the 1950s, when few city residents had cars), a broom handle, and a “spaldeen”—a small pink rubber ball made by the Spalding sporting goods company—and you were good to go. Chalk to outline bases or the strike zone was optional.
This photo, by Arthur Leipzig, was taken in Brooklyn in 1950. Bed-Stuy? Brownsville? East New York? The black and white players as well as the kosher market tell us it was an ethnically mixed neighborhood.
Stickball is still played by kids in some neighborhoods; there’s also an adult league, the New York Emperors Stickball League. To commemorate the game, a Bronx street was given the moniker Stickball Boulevard.
Tags: egg creams, New York Emperors Stickball League, racially mixed Brooklyn neighborhoods, Spaldeen, Stickball Boulevard, Stickball in New York City, street games in New York City
June 29, 2009 at 5:10 pm |
Little Abe Relis here (the wrasslin bellhop). I knowd a guy years ago who was the best stickballer I never seen. Could wacka spaldeen till kingdom come. Knee high Leevi they called him cause he was a little person like me. Only he had what we called hair lips. Haven’t seen the guy since we was tunnel rats in Nam together workin our way up the ho chi min trail. They had a hole unit of us little people crawlin round them tunnels huntin ***** (we werent so PC to the VC back in them days). He went buggy and got what we called sectioned (trown out). A year in I was caught and trown ina monkey cage made to live ona steady diet of moldy rice, cockaroches and the ol bamboo backrub if you catch my drift. But I don’t hold no grudge. Life -like me – is too short.
June 29, 2009 at 6:23 pm |
Thanks so much Abe. It probably wasn’t easy for a little guy like you to play stickball with the big kids in the neighborhood. I give you a lot of credit for stepping up to the plate in life.
July 1, 2009 at 3:38 am |
don’t forget street hockey with a puck of electrical tape
July 1, 2009 at 5:31 am |
What neighborhood was this, you ask? I see some Hebrew writing on the storefront of the “Chicken Market” at the left of the picture, so my guess is Williamsburg. The house number is 426. No guarantee that the building still exists, but it’s an exhaustive procedure to hit all the 426s in Williamsburg and hope for the best.
July 3, 2009 at 9:06 pm |
There were not too many black people in Wburg. People of color were mostly PRs.
ENY, Brownsville might make sense, but I’ve never really been there. Do those neighborhoods have those kind of Italianate tenements which were in vogue around 1880 or so. I thought those nabes were built later.
Bed-Stuy might make more sense.
July 6, 2009 at 5:40 pm |
My guess is Bed-Stuy too, because of the tenements. It was a racially mixed neighborhood way back, though I’m not sure about 1950.
July 6, 2009 at 6:00 pm |
I recall black gangs from the late 50s in Bed-Stuy, so it was at least partially black, if not mostly all black by say 1959.
I also know people born in the 40s (Jews) who were raised in Bed-Stuy.
So, it is not too much of a leap.
July 6, 2009 at 6:12 pm |
Btw, The Black gangs of Bed-Stuy in the late 50s had ecclesiastical names, like the Bishops, the Chaplains
Bit of trivia there.
July 6, 2009 at 6:14 pm |
That’s interesting about the names. I wonder why? “The Chaplains” doesn’t sound very tough.
September 9, 2009 at 5:20 am |
we were still playing in gowanus in the late 80s – nowadays I never see kids playing in the street playing street games I’m not surprised theres so much more traffic coming down these one way streets – probably from all the new hi-rise apt buildings…its a shame.
October 10, 2010 at 7:12 pm |
Does any one, from the Bronx, know what the name of the street was before it was now known as “Stickball Blvd.? The street is east of White Plains Rd, west of Pugsley Ave between Stevenson HS & the PO…..