New Yorkers in Exile

[BullNBear52]

Reliving Glory Days of Stickball
By MICHAEL BROZINSKY
August 26, 2014 8:56 amAugust 26, 2014 12:25 pm

Dear Diary:

Last winter I went into a hardware store in Plainview, N.Y., and saw, much to my surprise, a box of Spalding “ High Bounce” balls. I bought one for $2.50, remembering that when I left my old Bensonhurst neighborhood in 1960, the price was but a quarter.

My plan of action was to visit my old schoolyard of P.S. 205 when the weather warmed up. There used to be seven stickball strike zones chalked onto the walls there. I planned to ask someone to take pictures of my 71-year-old self recreating his youth by pitching the Spalding into one of the strike zones. Much to my dismay, when I returned in June there were no chalk strike zones to be found. Undaunted, I showed one of the kids playing what we once called Chinese handball or “king-queen” how to take a video with my phone. (The kids now called this game watermelon.)

As I pitched the Spalding onto the now blank wall, I wondered why the kid whom I had chosen as my videographer held my phone at strange angles. I reached my now-imaginary strike zones on two of five pitches and, satisfied with that, took my phone, said thank you and left.

As I exited the schoolyard and walked down 68th Street, I looked at the history I thought had just been recorded. All I saw was sky and ground! You can’t go home again!

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/reliving-glory-days-of-stickball/?ref=nyregion