Oh, maybe they were just local. I grew up in the Philly area and we had those small white air-filled rubber pimple balls and star-studded rubber air-filled pimple balls (both the same size, smaller than a hardball), and we played stick ball with them and an old taped broom stick, and we also used those balls for "roof ball" (throwing the ball up on a slanted roof, and the other guy had to catch it on the way down for an "out"), and wire ball, where you throw that kind of ball up at one of the wires overhead at that place where we played it, and if the other guys caught it, it was an out, but depending on which wire you hit (if any), if they didn't catch it, it was a single, or double, or triple, or home run.
When those little white balls got old we would cut them in half, and use them to play a type of half-ball stick ball sometimes. (It was easy to pitch a "curve ball" with those half balls!)
Hose ball used small (maybe 4-inch or 5-inch sections) of those old, hard, rubber hoses, and an old broomstick (as in stick ball). Some guys could pitch with the hose flipping in end-over-end, and it was usually difficult to hit them that way very good, but if you hit a line drive, and a person caught it in their face, rather than in their hands, it would really hurt!