Posted on 05/19/2010 9:17:40 AM PDT by JoeProBono
Bobby Valentine remembers the days when he would ride around his neighborhood on his bike and round up the guys for a sandlot baseball game.
Or two games.
Or three.
"I was the ringmaster," said Valentine, an ESPN analyst and former major league manager who grew up in Stamford, Conn. "All the kids in the neighborhood kept their gloves on my handlebars, so I'd just ride down by their houses hollering that it was time to play. Usually, I didn't even knock on doors. I just hollered. We'd play until dinner was on the table."
No coaches. No uniforms. And no umpires.
No crowds. No parents. And no pressure.
It was where kids learned how to run pickoff plays with their next-door neighbors. Where they learned to field ground balls on infields littered with rocks and debris. And where they discovered the high school kid from two blocks over really did have a mean curve ball.
It was where baseball instincts were honed, not by instruction but by trial and error.
And repetition.
Yet while it's easy to find a pickup basketball game almost anywhere in the country these days, informal baseball games have become a rarity.
Baseball is suffering because of it, according to University of Virginia baseball coach Brian O'Connor.
"If there isn't a scheduled practice or game, kids aren't playing baseball," O'Connor said. "They are playing PlayStation and Xbox. Heck, they aren't even playing catch with their dads. That's got to change."
These days, kids are paraded to T-ball fields at the age of 4, thrust into AAU play as early as 8. Some say they are overinstructed, at times by adults who weren't very good themselves and can't lend a lot of basic know-how.
"How often do you hear that this player or that player is getting personal hitting instruction from some so-called expert who's charging $60 to $80 for an hour-long lesson?" O'Connor asked. "You want to become a better hitter? Go shake a crab-apple tree and spend your summer hitting every crab apple that falls out of it with a broomstick."
Compared with yesteryear, today's youth baseball environment is almost test-tube in nature.
I pitched in Little League, and my buddies and I played 12” and 16” ball in our yards or vacant lots. My parents owned a vacant lot next door to us on the corner of Grove Ave & Fillmore in Oak Park. That was our ball field, as well as for other things. I hated it when they sold the lot and the new owners built a home on it.
But, we moved to Southern Wisconsin in ‘55, and I soon found buddies there to play ball with. My family built a new home o two lots, so the side lot again became a place to play ball. It was then that I got into Little League.
Soccer? Never played it. Never wanted to. As you say, all those ‘foreigners’ might play it, but not us kids. Baseball & football. And not touch football, either. We played for keeps.
Why does the Springsteen song “Glory Days” pop into my head all-of-a-sudden?
The problem now is that there’s way too much traffic on city streets and if you break something, you don’t just get yelled at by your parents, apologize, and pay for it. Now you’re probably headed for community service.
Yep, _every_ grade school's yard used to have strike zones painted on them - don't see that anymore. Probably a liability thing.
ping
I could believe that I stayed thin through childhood and teens due to playing ball in 90 degree 90% humidity Lousiana weather throughout most of my youth.
I didn’t know it was hot until I was about 17.
“...Informal, unplanned games organized and played by children ...”
My kids have an overbearing teacher on recess duty most days, who tries to referee every freakin’ game they play. (She also wants all the kids to face the same way while on the swings. I digress ...)
So they invented some new games ;-)with very flexible rules.
“...Informal, unplanned games organized and played by children ...”
My kids have an overbearing teacher on recess duty most days, who tries to referee every freakin’ game they play. (She also wants all the kids to face the same way while on the swings. I digress ...)
So they invented some new games ;-)with very flexible rules.
Creative acts of rebellion are always the best (and the most satisfying), especially when those against whom they are directed cannot perceive their true meaning.
500! Now there’s a memory I haven’t thought of for some time!
I grew up right near where Charles Henrickson grew up and I remember a game called Line Ball but I could not tell you the rules of it. I remember we used to play it in the alleys, which were about 12 feet wide and lined with flat-roofed garages. I think if you hit the ball onto a garage roof, you were out. You also had to somehow shinny up the drain pipe to get the ball off the roof.
And it's not hard to see why: you only needed a ball plus two well-defined goals to get a game going--the simplicity made it extremely popular everywhere it was introduced, mostly by British sailors exporting around the world in the late 19th Century.
I used to play a lot of soccer during PE class in high school and you better be in good running shape, especially since there's no break in the action (I played mostly defender positions because I didn't want to be essentially jogging non-stop during the game).
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