Halfball
| Game | Halfball |
|---|---|
| Game Family | Fungo |
| Location | |
| Regions | US |
| Eras | Derivative, Post-1900 |
| Invented | No |
| Tags | |
| Description | Halfball was a game using half of a rubber ball and imaginary baserunning. It seems likely to resemble Half-Rubber, which was reportedly played in the US. South and the Philadelphia area. It is also described as a street game on Wikipedia. Baby Boomer Jack Hammer (actual name!) describes Half Ball as a subspecies of a street game (known there as stickball) as played in Cambridge MA in the late 1950s. The ball used in this game was a hollow pink spiky object known as a "pimple ball," which, when stressed by play, tended to split open along its seam. The players separated the two halves, and the resulting game was called half ball. A half ball had interesting aerodynamic behaviors. The bat used in this game was a broom handle sawed off at about 30 inches. Man-hole covers in the street could serve as bases for actual baserunning. Jack adds: "Besides manhole covers, sometimes we marked outlines of bases with chalk (rarely available) or with pieces of slate roof tiles. Sometimes we used a board for home or second base. First base and third base could be a tree, a utility pole, or the tail light or head light of parked vehicles." (Email of 12/31/2019.) Another subspecies of game , called "Judge," employed imaginary runners. For these games, oncoming traffic was marked by a common shriek -- "Carrr!!!" -- that cleared the motorway of lads. |
| Sources | See also Half-Rubber and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halfball. Accessed December 2019. |
| Source Image | [[Image:|left|thumb]] |
| Comment | We asked Protoball friend Mark Schoenberg about any experience with Stick Ball in 1950s Brooklyn. He recalls that Spaldeens rarely split open, 'though balls known as "Pinkies" sometimes did. A floppy half-Pinkie could be employed in fungo games, but not in a continuation of a stickball game. (Email of 1/1/2020). Edit with form to add a comment |
| Query | Was a pimple ball known to be used regularly in other locations for baserunning-type games? Edit with form to add a query |
| Has Supplemental Text |
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