Street Baseball - A Girl's View

There’s something about the coming of spring that gives me goose bumps. The sights, sounds and smells of spring make me want to hug myself and everything else I see. Having just passed a birthday that most would consider a “milestone,” I became nostalgic. As children we would wait out the winter months watching cartoons, playing board games, and participating in any of the “indoor” activities, hanging on that chance that any day the winter’s shell would crack and we would be set free to play outside once again.

By the first “official” day of spring the kids on my block had already performed the ritual of the season…we had chosen sides. This rite of passage resembled the present day draft of professional athletes, only it occurred the first day of the season, sometimes hours or minutes before the first pitch. Preschoolers, sequestered to the house as the autumn winds swirled while we finished up the street football season, suddenly emerged in the spring with shiny new plastic bats and mitts, ready to join the squad. Veterans, finishing up the last months of third, fourth and fifth grade, stood arrogantly front and center, each hoping to achieve the ultimate honor and sign of superior talent…to be chosen first.  Players in the midst of middle school, representing the twilight of their local street careers served as player/managers, each choosing from the field of varying talent, until the last kid trotted excitedly to join the team. Then the season commenced with the first crack of the bat and didn’t stop until the new school year signaled the unofficial end of street baseball.

Our game was known as “automatics.” We rarely (never) had enough players to pitch, catch, cover three bases and field the ball, so we improvised. The batter would “self-pitch,” a complicated process involving tossing the ball in the air, gripping the bat and batting the ball. The preschool set either battered to ball off the street, had it softly pitched to them, or used a makeshift “tee” until they mastered the skill. The members of the other team fielded to ball in “zones.” If the ball fell in the nearest zone from home plate without being caught it was a single, a little farther, a double, and so on. There was no running. If the ball was caught, the batter was out. If it landed on certain lawns, whose patrons were not huge fans of street baseball, it was an automatic out. If that “non-fan” came out and confiscated the ball, the game was over, unless we had a reserve ball. The storm drain was diligently protected, or one of the smaller, skinnier kids would be called upon for retrieval duty. If we needed a reserve ball, one of the veterans, or a player/manager would bicycle quickly to Suburban Sports in Bar Harbor to buy a new one. The best player’s mother, who had visions of street baseball scholarship offers in her head, usually financed this.

The rules of our game were ever evolving, sometimes changing in the middle of the contest. The veterans would yell and scream. The player/managers would debate the issue, usually with words. An occasional punch was thrown, more than a few tears were shed, and the pre-school rookies took it all in, knowing that someday their turn would come to participate in the politics of sports on our block. Parents rarely interfered, reserving their influence for times requiring outside investigation (broken windows, equipment confiscation by angry neighbors, lasting injury requiring icepacks or a car ride up the block to Doc Schmeiser’s for a stitch) or as timekeeper when the summer sun finally set. Otherwise we were on our own to entertain ourselves, work out our conflicts, and cement our bonds that would carry us through to adulthood.

We sometimes would travel to the next block to play that street’s team, having to leave our youngest members behind unless there was a responsible older sibling on the team or in the stands. On occasion we would ride out bikes the mile to our school to play on a real field. This treacherous journey was only for the most seasoned veterans, as it required crossing some heavily trafficked roads. It’s perplexing how our parents would allow this activity when we rode our bikes to school but not when we wanted to go to the school for the fun of it. Looking back, I’m sure the uncertainty of the emotional outcomes, paired with the fact that riding to school with all of our bats, balls, and mitts would require us to ride most of the way with no hands for the handlebars played into that decision.

I was a particularly ardent street sport participant. Although my street sport career was shorter than some of my peers, I was one of the more coveted players, being able to competently bat a ball, catch a fly, and in the fall, go long and grab that “Hail Mary” pass. My career, however, was cut short by nature…I’m a girl.

In the years of my street sports experience, I was somewhat of an oddity. Most other girls on my block did not share my passion for team sports, electing instead to play with Barbie, play school, play musical instruments and play board games year round. I also shared in the delight of sending Barbie to the prom, being the teacher who got to write on the chalkboard and pound out imaginary tunes on the piano. In the summer we all would share in the after dark, high-level activity of playing Ring-a-leveo (a team version of hide and seek). I, however, was the only girl permitted to play the teams sports with the boys.

I’m sure that my fortune of having an older brother helped prepare me for this. I inadvertently but eagerly helped along his career by pitching, then chasing his batted balls as we played outside before supper. He forged my entry into the world of street sports by bringing me along in case an extra player was needed. We learned the art of catching fly balls with our dad, who would throw them high in the sky, still in his shirt and tie from the LIRR. When my brother’s little league teams took the field though, I could only watch from the sidelines, with my mitt and my hat, since there was no organized baseball for girls.

Shopping recently for sneakers, I strolled the aisles of Model’s. What a glorious place to get springtime into your head. There was something wonderfully different here. Down an aisle, there was a wall of pink. I ventured down and caught my breath. There was an entire aisle filled with pink baseball gloves, pink bats, pink batting helmets and gloves, pink lacrosse sticks and helmets. There were pink Yankee shirts. There was a Barbie bat and ball set. There was an aisle just for girls. Unlike the sporting goods stores of my childhood, this is a place that not only tolerated girls but also seemed to embrace and encourage them.

I drove home with a smile. I felt like a suffragette who helped win the right to play for all the little girls today. I remembered back to when I watched longingly from the sidelines and thought, “We’ve come a long way.”