Play with the kid next door.

Don't have any idea what you're talking about FastballDad...

I gotta' go now...I have to get to Uber Kool Sports before they close. I gotta' buy a whole team's worth of kool and funky rally caps for my kid's team. Do you want one too FastballDad?

I am all over FB Dad

I'm getting the picture now...

We had the kid next door when we had neighborhoods but , sad to say, today there are no more neighborhoods

Fbd, How is it like that on the web? Are you saying some people are being nice to other people because said people have all the nice toys? Surely not! Or am I on the wrong track?
TR, isn't it funny how nobody knows who their neighbors are anymore?

quote:

Originally posted by TRhit:
We had the kid next door when we had neighborhoods but , sad to say, today there are no more neighborhoods

It is sad really...with the passing of Fred Rogers it has been a real struggle to keep the whole neighborhood thing going. It's a shame that neighborhoods lost one of their strongest advocates.

Fastball...I grew up at 18th and Desplaines (just East of Halsted Street)...went to Providence of God grammar school at 18th and Union.

Lived at 1814 South Desplaines...house is still there.

Sonny Novak lived in a house next to the empty lot between out houses.

His mom always bought him new baseballs and he always played right field. He took his balls in with him when he had to go in for supper. Then, we had to use the "taped up"....brown tape or white taped balls. I don't remember electrical tape on balls because they were too slick and people didn't like black baseballs. We played baseball outside from 8 a.m., til 9:00 p.m., or so, and then we played Hide and Go Seek or Buck, Buck how many fingers up or This is my old man's last step.

Those were the days. No gangs, no guns, just kids outside playing so they would get tired and would fall asleep instantly when mom/dad called them to come inside.

When I was 10, I remember taking the streetcar to Morrie Mages sports store on 63rd and Halsted, Chicago, in the Englewood neighborhood, and buying a Carl Furillo glove and a Vic Wertz bat (he hit the ball that Willie Mays made that spectacular catch for the Giants in the World Series)...all total a bit more than $10.00. My mom spent 75 cents for a new baseball.

Oh, those were the days!

I'm learning...

Been:

Having not been raised in Chicago I enjoyed your glimpse into your past and your neighborhood.

When I first moved here to the Chicago area nearly 25 years ago I had a difficult time imagining anyone that I worked with growing up in the neighborhoods in Chicago and not turning out to be a gangb*nger or worse. Most of the guys grew up in the city much like how you described and they all turned out to be decent.

Having spent five months trying to find a job on the south side of Chicago during the recession of the early eighties I came to know these south side neighborhoods as being tough and crime ridden.

Obviously they were not always that way.

And I might add that I have a tremendous amount of respect for those kids who are the product of those neighborhoods nowadays who have their head screwed on straight.

Lived at 55th & Western until '77.

Gotwood-
I wore a sweater to school today and my students called me Mr. Rogers! Any hope we can bring back the series? It has to pay better than teaching, right?

jarthur:

Lots of ballfields there at Gage Park.

I get into that neighborhood alot...I have a customer at 53rd and Western Blvd. Just south of the city's salt dome.

nc42dad:

Being called Mr. Rogers is alot better than other things they might have called you! And wearing the sweater today was very sensible...did it have a big, orange Chicago Bear's C sewn on?

And that may be true about the pay, but you'd have to put up with this guy...

He looks like our Principal. No problem. I'll start practicing singing tonight when I tuck the boys in!

He looks like your principal? Really?

I gotta get out more often...the world isn't quite as I have imagined it.

I hope your boys enjoy your singing...try something soothing from the Bubbleland Opera.

Beenthere

In my time those baseballs were more like a buck each. Seemed like a ton of money then.....we used the balls until they got lost in the weeds. By then they were almost black from grass stains.

I propose that from now on we call Iback "Sonny"

Me and the gang from west Rogers Park would buy the major league rubber balls from the corner drug store and play fast pitch against a wall in an empty lot. We spray painted the strike zone on the wall. We broke a lot of windows at the Texaco station at Morse and western. I taught myself to throw a wicked curve ball during these games.

Beenthere

Why didnt you go to the Morrie Mages on LaSalle st just north of downtown?

There you go again Sully.

Sully,

Wasn't there in 1954.

quote:

Originally posted by sulltiger24:
Me and the gang from west Rogers Park would buy the major league rubber balls from the corner drug store and play fast pitch against a wall in an empty lot. We spray painted the strike zone on the wall. We broke a lot of windows at the Texaco station at Morse and western. I taught myself to throw a wicked curve ball during these games.

Those were the days weren't they Sully? I used to do the same thing at the grade school on the Northwest side (Audubon). We had painted boxes on the backstop and on the brick of the school building, the fieldhouse was a homerun.
My favorite besides "fastpitch" with the rubber ball was 16" Clincher softball. We had "painted" bases on the asphalt and me being the "idiot" that I am, still slid headfirst into second. (talk about road rash)
THOSE WERE THE DAYS!!!! WE WERE NEVER BORED!!!!!!!

Yes we were always busy doing something outside whether it was 95 degrees in the summer or below zero in the winter. Wasnt it great having your mom or dad buy you a brand new rock hard 16 inch clincher in the red box ? The guys from my neighborhood would play " lineball" with it in our alley . Basically hitting fungos with it for singles, doubles, triples and homers. I once broke the finger of my friend who was in the field standing the closest to me when he tried to catch one of my line drives. Also played hockey on the frozen pond at Indian Boundary Park all winter.
I fell in the water once when the pond wasnt completely frozen in a few spots. Man was that cold!!
What was a video game ?!

Oh yeah, I remember "lineball"...I suffered a few sprained fingers myself over the years. The grade school used to freeze the playground in the Winter for all of us to enjoy skating and playing hockey. Could you imagine them doing it now with all the lawsuits and such? You really begin to show your age when you talk about "the good old days"!! lol

Against the wall/fast pitch at Hearst School at 47th and Lavergne. Great fights,great friends and a rock for first basebase. During the 68 riots, the Dads sat on the front porch with the M1 they "found from W11". No riots at 4608 S. Lavergne. I miss those men especially my Dad.

Growing up in Wilmette, we played fast pitch or wallball every day as well. A long homerun usually landed on the roof of Regina High school. We also played line ball with a 12 or 16 inch softballs all the time from morning til night. Had some great football games in the winter months with a ton of friends and neighbors turning out.

I still remember riding our bikes to the gas station for the 10cent cokes in the small bottles. Those were the days my friends.

I grew up in a poor neighborhood. We had an open field a few blocks removed we called "Lunker Lake" and so, all of the kids would meet there at 10:00 a.m. We'd play until noon, grab a cherry coke and some fries and then play 1:00 till 3:00 when most of us had to go deliver papers. Then, league games 3 nights a week. Those were the days. Do you all remember what it was like when the season ended and you kinda felt that loneliness or lost feeling in your gut? We'd go to "Lunker Lake" and the numbers would just fall off. I HATED THAT TIME OF YEAR.

Anyone play kick the can ?

We played with the old oil cans from the gas station .

We also played lineball with the major league rubber ball. We would whack the ball a good 200- 300 feet . To this day i dont know how we kept the ball in play down our long narrow alley .

And don't forget, a full season of baseball consisted of 16 games, start to finish, all played at the school field. "Travel" meant the team in the next town over, and that only happened if you made the "Tournament Team". Don't get me started, or I'll be talking about "real" TV shows and my dad's Olds Vista Cruiser.

Delivering newspapers...drinking soda pop that you bought at the gas station...

That reminds me of my older brothers who worked together on an early morning paper route in tiny Tillamook, OR.

Every morning, before sun up, they would stop at the Shell station at Third and Main. The station was closed at that time of the morning and outside, next to the garage doors, there was a pop machine that looked like a chest style freezer...you lifted the lid up to reveal several rows of soda pop bottles sitting frigidly in cold water up to their necks.

Parallel steel bars clamped loosely near the cap of the bottle prevented you from lifting them out.
After putting your coins into the slot you would then make your selection and snake your choice along the steel bars to the end. It was there that a release mechanism would open after you paid your money.

Who wants to drink cold, cold soda pop early on a clammy, drizzly, dreary morning? My brothers did. Nearly every morning they would stop by that pop machine, not with coins in their hands , but with a church key and a straw. They would open their desired bottle and drink it down with their straw.

They never confessed to me to ever have being caught by the cop...there was only one cop who patrolled at that time in the morning.

They saved the bottle caps...we had quite a collection...neat graphics and lined inside with cork...cork that retained the sweet aroma of the soda pop. I liked sniffing the Dad's Root Beer caps the most...if you couldn't afford to buy a bottle of soda pop at least you could sniff the cap! Talk about cheap thrills!



And sultiger...kick the can? Of course! My favorite...I was fast, sneaky, stealthy, and successful!

Those were the days. Some ways so much better than what our kids are doing.

Maybe material for another thread, but are our kids better ball players than we were even though they didn't play games like fast pitch against the wall, or .500 or bounce or fly or spending hours hitting rocks fungo style with a broom stick like we did?

The average kid may not be as good today, but I think the serious ballplayer today is better than they were when we were all growing up. All the good teachers and coaches of the game they work with make the difference.

Yup...I agree.

BeenthereIL.....jarthur.....

Lived at 46th and Western Ave. until I was eighteen, then moved to 39th and Cailifornia. Went to Kelly HIgh School. We won the city public league championship in '66. Did basically the same things, from morning until night!

We would play "running bases" on those narrow side streets with parked cars. Sometimes we would play whiffle ball on that same street. If you hit a car, automatic out!

Played hard ball on Western Boulevard, the strip of land between Western Blvd. and Western Avenue. I was a lefthanded hitter and everyone else hit righty, so natuarlly they always made rightfield an automatic out. Talk about learning to hit and place the ball to the opposite field (I always told my son to learn how to do this at his young age).

Would hang-out at McKinley Park, Archer Ave. and Western Blvd., where my dad knew the field house director. He played ball with him in Ohio just before my dad went to play in the minors. They had some really great teams back then with ex-minor leaguers. One team, the Peequads (sp), was one of the top teams to beat along with the Dodgers. Good times that I wish our sons could have witnessed. The real passion for the game.

My son, a few years ago, when he was about 14, (he's now 19) invented a game called tennyball which all the baseball boys played in our back garden which was on a steep slope! Sort of a cross between baseball and whiffleball played with tennis balls and a toy plastic bat from Toys R Us. They would buy cases of tennis balls from Costco and hit them all over the garden and in the woods. Played day in and day out, winter and summer for at least 3 years. they only stopped because they couldn't find the plastic bats any more. What fun they had, kept them all out of trouble. I would feed them popcorn and gatorade to keep them going. We all miss those days!

Oh for the good old days, Boomer.

Sully,
Definately played "kick the can"......How about "ledge"?.. Or "4 square"?.. Boy we used our imaginations to keep us busy!

Baseball 14

Thanx for reminding me . Almost forgot about our legendary 4 square games. We had the perfect concrete yard divided into 4 equal spots. You wouldnt believe how long some of us younger kids had to wait in line to try to get in the game against the older kids . Basically, we lived in the alley all summer.

GREAT TOPIC!!!! I have been reading all day but haven't been able to respond. I also grew up in Rogers Park, but I think it was East? Morse & Lakewood-6921. I played "fastpitch" thousands of times at several area locals and played 16" where the Jehovah's witness church is now.
I often tell players that I am the last generation in-between the old & new era (I just turned 30, yikes!) Nintendo came out when I already loved baseball thoroughly and I don't know what would have happened otherwise. In fairness to today’s players they have far less general space and even less park/school space to play games than we did. They also have immediate access to COOL things like MP3’s. Sony Wii, INTERNET. School lots that once could fit hundreds of kids now contain mobile classrooms to adhere to overcrowding. We are increasingly becoming a society that lives inside (internet, TV, video games) and schedules social interaction for our children (play dates, classes, lessons) to help them gain the interactions that were once gained on the play lot. Good or bad is not for me to decide, just deal with.
I would like to hear from some of today’s players. Do you guys go hang out and play ball? Do you play ball on the Wii? Where do you go to hang out with friends? Park? School? Someone’s home?

Keep working hard,
Justin Stringer
Do It Right Baseball
Lane Tech Baseball
www.doitrightbaseball.com
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