Halfball was wholly Philadelphia
http://articles.philly.com/2011-07-08/news/29750706_1_street-games-balls-rowhouse
Posted: July 08, 2011
By B.G. Kelley
Summer summoned Philly kids to play halfball, particularly if you grew up in that period when Ike was in the White House and Elvis was on the jukebox. Halfball was one of those quintessential Philadelphia street games, along with wireball, stepball, and wallball, that was invented by rowhouse kids and played in every neighborhood, from Mayfair to Mount Airy, Roxborough to Rhawnhurst, Fishtown to Germantown. It was a distinctive part of youth culture in the city.
A bumpy rubber "pimple ball" and a broom were all you needed to play halfball. You cut the pimple ball in half and sawed off your mother's broom at the sweep end (although that could result in your father's deducting the cost of a broom from your allowance). Then you designated different spots on a rowhouse to indicate different kinds of hits: The first floor was a single, the second a double, the third a triple, and the roof a homer. (These delineations could also cost you if you broke a neighbor's window.)
At times, when there was no money to buy a pimple ball, it was necessary to harvest halfballs from rooftops and sewers. I often scaled the roof of a building across the street from my East Falls rowhome and procured a couple dozen balls. Or my buddies would hold me from my ankles as I descended headfirst into a sewer to retrieve balls that had rolled in.
I like to think that halfball helped hold the kids in Philly's neighborhoods together. The game was solid and changeless, like block parties and church, and it was particularly ours - the same one day as the next, in one neighborhood as in another.
Then halfball and the other street games lost their allure. The times they were a-changing. The social, political, and cultural fabric split with the upheaval of the '60s. Among the young, normalcy was redefined, and games like halfball came to seem more frivolous.
The final blow to halfball came in the early '80s, when the Eagle Rubber Co. of Ohio stopped manufacturing pimple balls partly because of liability concerns. Cutting the balls in half, the company claimed, released a potentially harmful chemical agent.
More recent years have seen a tepid rebirth of halfball. The Scully Rubber Co. in Baltimore began to make precut halfballs, and older guys who grew up with the street game began playing again around the city.
Still, halfball will never regain its street-game pedestal. It was part of a time when there was too much sameness blowing in the political, social, and cultural winds. And that time is gone.
B.G. Kelley is a Philadelphia writer. He can be reached at [email protected].
http://articles.philly.com/2011-07-08/news/29750706_1_street-games-balls-rowhouse
Posted: July 08, 2011
By B.G. Kelley
Summer summoned Philly kids to play halfball, particularly if you grew up in that period when Ike was in the White House and Elvis was on the jukebox. Halfball was one of those quintessential Philadelphia street games, along with wireball, stepball, and wallball, that was invented by rowhouse kids and played in every neighborhood, from Mayfair to Mount Airy, Roxborough to Rhawnhurst, Fishtown to Germantown. It was a distinctive part of youth culture in the city.
A bumpy rubber "pimple ball" and a broom were all you needed to play halfball. You cut the pimple ball in half and sawed off your mother's broom at the sweep end (although that could result in your father's deducting the cost of a broom from your allowance). Then you designated different spots on a rowhouse to indicate different kinds of hits: The first floor was a single, the second a double, the third a triple, and the roof a homer. (These delineations could also cost you if you broke a neighbor's window.)
At times, when there was no money to buy a pimple ball, it was necessary to harvest halfballs from rooftops and sewers. I often scaled the roof of a building across the street from my East Falls rowhome and procured a couple dozen balls. Or my buddies would hold me from my ankles as I descended headfirst into a sewer to retrieve balls that had rolled in.
I like to think that halfball helped hold the kids in Philly's neighborhoods together. The game was solid and changeless, like block parties and church, and it was particularly ours - the same one day as the next, in one neighborhood as in another.
Then halfball and the other street games lost their allure. The times they were a-changing. The social, political, and cultural fabric split with the upheaval of the '60s. Among the young, normalcy was redefined, and games like halfball came to seem more frivolous.
The final blow to halfball came in the early '80s, when the Eagle Rubber Co. of Ohio stopped manufacturing pimple balls partly because of liability concerns. Cutting the balls in half, the company claimed, released a potentially harmful chemical agent.
More recent years have seen a tepid rebirth of halfball. The Scully Rubber Co. in Baltimore began to make precut halfballs, and older guys who grew up with the street game began playing again around the city.
Still, halfball will never regain its street-game pedestal. It was part of a time when there was too much sameness blowing in the political, social, and cultural winds. And that time is gone.
B.G. Kelley is a Philadelphia writer. He can be reached at [email protected].