Skelly Champ of Alabama Ave.

I was the Skelly champ of my block - what you do when you're a lousy athlete. I was pretty good at boxball too. Today's NY Times article on the street games of our youth, so missing from today's streets - brings back memories. I remember "Kick the Can" as being played as a form of baseball on the 4 corners of Riverdale and Alabama Aves in East NY. We also played Triangle (with only 3 bases) and something my dad taught us called "One a Cat" but I can't remember the details. Hit the penny was a big one too and the girls played Hop Scotch.

We played stickball on Newport St which connected Georgia Ave and Alabama Ave just north of New Lots Ave. We called that street Newport Stadium and it seemed so far from end to end when I was a kid, but looked tiny when I drove by in later years. Of course, with the rubble that neighborhood became, it is hard to recognize much.

We spent a summers sitting on stoops playing rummy, hearts and pinochle. I had one deck of each in each of my back pockets. And of course, the Mantle/Mays/Duke arguments.

The schoolyard at PS 190 was always humming in the mid-to-late 50's -- all day and all evening. Packed on Friday nights with kids from all over the neighborhood. There were big money games on Saturdays and Sundays - the school yard was almost a block long. There were also lots of what we called "holes" - areas between the wings of the school and there could be as many as 6 games going on at once. But then the gangs began to come and the schoolyard became deserted by the early 60's. And, of course, the portables ruined what was a great schoolyard in the mid-late 60's.