I was born (1953) and raised in the city of Chicago (north side), and growing up, baseball was THE thing: whether watching it, in person at Wrigley Field or on TV on Channel 9 (WGN), or playing it. And we played it more informally than formally. Yeah, I played Little League at Thillens Stadium, but mostly us boys just played any way we could, whenever and wherever we could: whether hitting and throwing the ball around on a park field, or playing “fast pitch”/”line ball” on a schoolyard with a rubber baseball, or playing “running bases” on the sidewalk in front of the house. Besides baseball, there was also 16-inch softball, which we played at school. (No kids—I mean, none, except those weird foreigners—played soccer.)
One of my Jr. High teachers “invented” T-ball. Outside of that, we played lot-ball (empty lots in the hood) as the weather allowed, both baseball and football.
Boomer generation, so we always had enough kids to play. Sometimes girls were drafted to even-up the teams, a number of whom went on to decent high-school athletic careers.
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.
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.
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.