Park Slope and Sheepshead Bay square off at MCU Park’s fourth annual Stickball Classic
Dating back to the 1920s, stickball is a New York City street game that had its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s when family and friends could show off their baseball talents right on the street where they lived. All you needed to play was a sawed-off broomstick and a “Spaldeen,” the street name for the high bouncing pink rubber ball with the black stamped Spalding trademark.
Two players or two teams could play. For two players, most any public school courtyard would fit the bill for a game of “pitching in,” with a strike zone painted on the schoolyard wall ready-made for traditional arguments about whether the pitch actually hit inside the box for a strike.
For two teams, usually one-way streets were used with the game being played for the length of the block from one sewer cover to the other. Stickball games were either played during summer weekday evenings when it was cool or on the weekends when different blocks challenged each other for bragging rights.