Dubble Bubble Gum

Lucky Strike Green had returned from the war, as had Dubble Bubble Gum Pink and Spaldeen - but ten cents now instead of a nickel. But there were not many new cars yet, so there was still plenty of room for games of the street.

Marbles had its short season. In autumn and winter, we played roller hockey and football association. punch and stickball began in March and went through early fall, but Ball was down year. The only thing that keeps us from playing fall ball was too much snow on the ground.

We followed the usual rules: an infielder, an outfielder, round nine games, if the ball hit the pavement you hit from, was taken before it bounced, or outside the lines fault, you were absent. A bounce is a single, pairs, etc. If you hit the wall in the building across the street on the fly and did not catch the ball before it hit the ground, it was a stroke of circuit. base runners advanced a base on imaginary one, two on a double.

Instead of a stairway, however, we knocked off the S-shaped ridge, which had three feet above the sidewalk on the side wall of 88th Street 575 West End Ave. They were perfect for knocking - white seven inches high S-curves that extends from the side walls between the windows on the ground floor. If you click on the sweet spot on the convex side of the ridge, the ball drawn on a clothesline too high to catch before it hit 585 on the other side of the 88th. Hit above the listening area and you either blown up or hit the ball above the third floor of 585 and was easy to catch because it bounced. Press the concave part of the S and the ball went to the infield. Like 575 is ideal for hitting, 585 is perfect for the field. It had battlements at the third floor that bounces the ball off so flukey outfielders could not predict.

Matt - high, large hands, good jumper, turned back to 585 ready to jump or turn, walk back and take the rebound. It was our best outfielder, but he had a weak arm and could not hit.

The two hardest guys were out Bluebook and Esau. Blue Book hit with a movement of submarines, and could then fall into the simple unless Nate was in the infield. Nate has been a soccer goalie in Switzerland and had the fastest hands on the block.

Esau was more difficult for our pitcher and hit straight down so close to the wall, it sometimes skinned his knuckles. Spaldeens balls were very lively. Bounce on a sidewalk and it would climb to the third floor. When Esau reached the low point of the cornice that exploded off spaldeen is twenty bounced two inches before the curb. Nate had read in the middle of the street to keep it to one.

Neither Esau nor the rest of us had any idea that people all over the southern part of Korea have protested against the government and striking Trust established by the United States and that we had declared martial law and fired on the demonstrators.

When Blue Book and Esau were in the same team, they would sometimes load the bases with singles the first time they arose, then either go or keep singling circuit riders until they were fifteen goes the front and won by the slaughter rule. If Esau had been larger and a better fielder, he could be number one in the Blue Book Stoop Ball Hall of Fame. As it was, he did on his typing.

(Originally published at AuthorsDen and reprinted with permission of the author, Herbert Lobsenz).