Last week, we had another of Mike Chamernik’s “Question of the Week” series, the response was great, and Mike is back again with his next question.
Question of the Week
by Mike Chamernik
Softball season is officially finished here in Chicago. While we have the traditional slow-pitch variety, Chicago also has 16-inch softball — using a larger, padded ball, and played without gloves.
I play both, but I find 16-inch more fun. Growing up, I thought 16-inch softball was everywhere, but apparently it’s unique to the Chicago area (though if Wikipedia is to be believed, the game is slowly spreading across the Midwest).
What sports and games are unique to your city, state, or region? When did you learn it wasn’t common elsewhere? How do outsiders react when they learn about your sport?
I went to Boston once, and I made it a point to go candlepin bowling, which can pretty much only be found in New England and the nearby Maritime provinces. When I go to Baltimore someday, I need to go duckpin bowling.
Also, the card game Euchre is a very big Midwest thing. My old day job had a competitive Euchre club that would play at lunch, and then recap the game for like an hour afterward.
Thanks, Mike. Fun question — I’m not sure New York has any “unique” sports (maybe stickball back way before I was born), but I was extremely pleased when two Curling Clubs (decidedly a unique sport, though not unique to New York) opened in the past decade-plus near me. And I went to college in upstate New York, and definitely played Euchre there, which I haven’t ever played anywhere else before or since. I don’t think I’m missing anything that’s truly a “New York” sport, but if anyone feels differently, please say so.
One sport that’s relatively new, but not unique to my area and which I’d love to play sometime, is Pickleball.
Can’t wait to hear the readers’ responses! OK guys…fire away!
This is an interesting question–I played pickleball in high school 20+ years ago, and assumed that it was something my gym teacher made up to keep us occupied during the winter. (We also played paddleball, which is essentially pickleball plus squash.) My gym teacher was known for being an eccentric who sometimes made up sports, so pickleball being one of his inventions seemed probable. A couple decades later, and it’s every retiree’s favorite activity!
I had a gym teacher once who would sometimes make up sports/games. Usually it was out of necessity, because we didn’t always have the greatest of equipment. Case in point, we had been playing floor hockey, but most of the sticks got broken. He took them and cut them down to a shorter length, cleaned up the cuts so there were no sharp edges, and we then played “scooter hockey” using a bunch of caster-wheeled seats he had found in a storage closet.
And here I thought I invented scooter hockey! ;-)
As a PE teacher for three decades, I had to learn to create with what was available. It was the greatest job in the world and I miss those kids so much.
re: the QOTW…I don’t know any games/sports unique to my little corner of the world (SE Texas).
Pickleball is everywhere. It’s the fastest growing sport. And as a competitive tennis player, I hate it.
It’s noisier than I thought
I spent a summer in New York City when I was 13 and got hooked on stickball and tried to get my friends back home to join in, but it didn’t take. I’m not aware of any specific sports you would only find around Pittsburgh though.
That’s a good answer. I’ve seen stickball in NYC pop culture stuff, but never actually live
I guess can be a healthy debate about what qualifies as a ‘sport’ and what is a ‘game’ … but in Philly (and probably elsewhere too) the ever-versatile pimpleball was used for any number contests – fast pitch, wireball, and of course halfball. There’s no telling how many littered sewers and rooftops in my neighborhood.
Just watched a few videos on Philadelphia halfball — fascinating!!
It is amazing what you can do with a tennis ball and any of the following:
– Stick
– Wire
– Street light
– Wall (including a game called suicide [oh so PC, right])
– Step
Played them all growing up.
Tennis balls are cheap and can be found at the local supermarket/corner store (not just a sporting goods store), and they can be hit or thrown really hard and not break bones or windows (usually). All time versatile toy.
We had a special rule for stepball. If you hit a window on a house, it was automatically the end of the inning.
No one wanted to be the kid that broke a window.
An older 16-inch softball may seem “padded” but it’s plenty firm when brand new.
Oh I know. The first inning is rough… by the fifth it’s a little better
I attended and worked at a summer camp on Lake Erie east of Ashtabula, OH as a kid – 1988-2003. We had a ton of specific games, and Toppleball was one I thought could catch on in the Real World. Briefly, players in a circle about 40 feet in diameter throw a playground ball to try and knock a whiffle ball off a tee in the middle of a circle, while a batter with a paddle defends the whiffle ball. If the batter can knock the playground ball back past the players in the circle, the batter runs in and out of the circle, scoring runs. Very fast, lots of fun.
I grew up in the Maryland suburbs of DC. When I was a kid there were two sports I thought were more or less confined to the region: lacrosse and duckpin bowling.
I learned when I got to college that lacrosse was more widely popular from upstate New York along the mid-Atlantic region to North Carolina, and has gradually spread across the country. Even in the past decade, I was still (pleasantly) surprised to see kids in Southern Cal with lacrosse sticks.
On the other hand, duckpin bowling has all but disappeared. It was a lot of fun to find a duckpin alley – in my college town, no less – during Paul’s last Purp Walk.
Growing up in Iowa, we played 16″ softball in high school gym class. Except we called it “kitten ball” for some reason.
We also had this game called “Killer Q-Tip”. It’s basically floor hockey but instead of sticks, we had a 3-4′ stick with a big foam end on it, so it looked like Q-Tip. And instead of a puck, it was a nerf-style ball. You can see a pic of it at link.
I wanna play q-tip
It was a good time. But, as you would expect from a bunch of teenage boys, it rapid devolved into pure violence.
Odd…in Chicago “kitten ball” was 12-inch softball with gloves.
growing up in Port Huron Michigan, Canada was a minute away. I thought hockey was larger then life and bigger then any other sport. I moved to Arkansas in my 20s and realized majority of people weren’t even watching winter olympics.
Chardee MacDennis, anyone? ; )
Funny you should mention that. About two or three years before that first episode came out, a group of us would play what we called “blood darts.” (Plastic tip, not steel tip like they did in Always Sunny.) Four two-man teams playing cricket. The idea was to close out 20-15 and bulls, points didn’t matter. So if you’re partner was shooting 20s, you had to make a V-shape with your hands, covering the area left and right of the target leaving only the area of 20s exposed. Once 20s were closed you moved on to 19, and so on. An errant dart would break the skin about half the time and, since we were all drinking, the blood ran freely. We finally stopped after a couple of games when one guy got hit directly on the cuticle and the dart stuck in his finger. His hand looked like a crime scene. Good times.
I don’t think broomball is *common* outside of Minnesota, though in the DC and Baltimore areas we have a few leagues and tournament teams. I know the Syracuse area has some too. Half our league seems to be Miami Univ. alums though we’re starting to see some Wolverines as well.
In college (University of Washington late 1980’s), our fraternity played broomball as a friday/saturday social event. I don’t know how/where we got it from.
I played it at Penn State in occasion REDACTED years ago.
My alumni chapter used to play Pitt in bromball after Caps games. I did twice and even scored on Cap Centre 2.0 ice.
There were occasional pick up games at the Caps practice facility too. I got my older son on the ice at age 7 or so. Now, he is in the league.
There was even pickup broomball during the winter at District Wharf. The pandemic killed that along with the last broomball nights at the rink near Univ of Maryland
Living in Washington State, pickleball was invented on Bainbridge Island. I knew it is was big, but still feels nice to live near the spot of invention for the fastest growing sport in the US.
Growing up on Lawn Guyland in the late 60’s / early 70’s, stoopball was the game of choice for the elementary school kids when you weren’t playing Little League
When I visited Prague, CZ I noticed that kids everywhere carried around a different type of street hockey or floor hockey stick. It has a blade with holes in it, and they used a hollow ball also with holes. Their version of the sport is called Floorball. Wikipedia says the sport was also played in Michigan in the 1960s.
In grade 8, my friends and I invented “Sockey”. Six players on each side including a goalie and kicking a tennis ball trying to score on a hockey net.
It used to be curling. I remember once I was at a conference in Chicago (Baltimore?) and ran into some other Canadians and we were talking about curling (we all curled) and there was not a single non-Canadian who knew what we were talking about. This was pre-smart phones so we couldn’t just pull up a clip, instead we were describing granite stones and teflon shoes and brooms trying to convince them that we weren’t just pulling their legs with a made up sport.
Yeah curling didn’t become a phenomenon in the US until the 2010 winter Olympics
My gym teacher was a big fan of introducing us to sports that American kids typically have no exposure to, so we played things like badminton and team handball in PE in addition to basketball and running.
Badminton is so much fun. I’m curious as to why that hasn’t caught on like Pickleball has
American kids don’t have exposure to badminton? News to me. When I grew up in rural Ohio in the 1960s everyone had a badminton set, we played it all the time.
We’d play it in gym class and my HS had a badminton team. But it just didn’t have the cachet that tennis did
I went to high school in Maryland, and I bet you’ll never guess what the state sport of Maryland is if you don’t know it….
Lacrosse?
I grew up in Maryland but I had to look it up. I had a vague recollection that jousting is the state sport. How cool is that? Also cool is that Maryland was the first state to adopt an official state sport.
Anyone else play “wallball” or “running bases” outside of North Jersey?
Wallball involves any number of individual players throwing a ball (usually a tennis or racquetball) against the side of a building. If the ball comes to you, and you field the ball cleanly, great; throw it against the wall again. If you commit a “fielding error,” you have to get to the wall before another player is able to recover the misplayed ball and hit the wall with a thrown ball. Usually, the punishment for losing the race to the wall is to stand up against the wall, “firing squad” style and let one of the other players take their best shot at your back.
“Running bases” is just one giant rundown (or “pickle”). Two basemen throw the ball back and forth, while the rest of the players make daring runs between the two bases. Last runner standing wins. And “pegging” is most certainly allowed!
My friends and I played both of these games! (Suburban Chicago) however they were not super popular.
Absolutely!
What you call wallball, we called ‘suicide’…same basic game, different name. We also played a variant that went by a name that would not fly today.
‘Run The Bases’ : the fake throw to draw runners off the ‘bag’ was permitted – if a runner made a break for it and the ball was not released, said runner got pegged.
Detroit has (or had, unsure if it’s still there) a petanque court downtown. Petanque is similar to bocce but is played on dirt or gravel, not grass. Also the player must throw their ball while standing in a circle. It’s a French game which explains how it ended up here. Detroit also has feather bowling. It’s played by throwing (or rolling I suppose) a knobby ball towards a feather. You really have to see it to believe it.
Paul wrote about Detroit feather bowling way back in 2009 and I still want to play
Ohio guy here – Cornhole was originally a local thing. It’s obviously ballooned into a much bigger game than that now. Before cornhole, we played bean bags. Slightly smaller and lighter bags than cornhole, and the boards were square and sat more upright at a 45 degree angle. You made it or you didn’t. No extra points for landing on the board because they would slide right off.
And in my part of Ohio, we play almost exclusively “Bid Euchre”, where all six cards are dealt to 4 players. You bid on how many tricks you and your partner can get. Minimum bid is 3, starts with the player left of the dealer. Each player after can outbid the previous bid. Winning bidder gets to choose the suit. I play both versions and feel like “Bid” is more challenging and fun.
link
While growing up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, we occasionally played Hooverball (link) in gym class. A curious combination of volleyball and tennis played with a medicine ball, it was developed by President Herbert Hoover’s personal physician to help keep him fit while in office. Playing volleyball with a heavy medicine ball is pretty brutal for fifth- and sixth-graders, and the only reason I can think of that we played it is because Iowans still have a deep reverence for Hoover, a native son of nearby West Branch, Iowa.
Hooverball sounds like a good workout
Good stuff everyone!
Also in Chicago, many people who grew up here a generation or two ago played “Fast Pitch.” Pitcher throws a rubber ball at a strike zone painted on a brick wall. Batter tries to hit it. No base runner; bases are determined by how far the ball is hit. The rubber ball has seems on it (more like ridges) so the pitcher can throw curves and sliders, too. I play every so often!
Drive by almost any school yard in my old neighborhood …and those adjacent …you’re almost sure to find a faded strike zone there.
I don’t think we have many unique games in Toronto, but maybe some unique names:
Soccer baseball (kickball)
Red-A (ball game based on throwing a tennis ball against a wall)
Utah (basketball game where the goal is to jump, catch, and shoot the ball before touching the ground; you get more points for fewer bounces before your attempt)
The other day I learned Ontario has a table top game called Crokinole. Have you played?
I’m in Northern Ontario and though I haven’t played it in quite a while, both my parents and my one aunt have a Crokinole board. Both old ones with wooden board and pieces.
There were/are box lacrosse leagues on and off in town since at least my childhood; league I was in played in a hockey arena during the summer. Played a couple years as a youth and still have a patch from the late 70’s from it. Pickleball seems to have grown quite a bit where I am; recently the pickleball league acquired the use of an old gymnasium in a converted school to play the game in the winter. Still playing Slo-pitch in a non competitive league (5&5 league – 5 girls and 5 guys fielding, 10th player is in the field as a rover, with guy/girl alternating when hitting, unlimited arc when pitching – pitching is in a lob style). Both the local bowling alleys left have 10 pin and 5 pin bowling lanes.
5 pin bowling! Never heard of it, but just googled it and it looks fun. I like all the bowling variations
Just remembered another game we played in PE: Rounders basketball.
It is kickball on a basketball court. The pitcher is at center court and the kicker can kick the ball anywhere in the key. Once kicked, the kicker has to run and push down a cone in each corner of the court. The defense must make a basket at each end before all 4 cones are knocked over.
Every kick ends in a home run or an out and it gets super competitive!
Not really a sport but in Minnesota, kids play “Duck, Duck, Grey Duck” which I heard is called “Duck, Duck, Goose” everywhere else. Also, FUNNY, my kids always thought their grade school Phy Ed teacher invented pickleball.