From: J056600@LMSC5.IS.LMSC.LOCKHEED.COM
Newsgroups: rec.sport.baseball
Subject: Re: Old-fashioned hitters (was Best Playes (sic) of All Times)
Date: 23 Dec 92 15:55:23 GMT
Organization: Lockheed Missiles & Space Company, Inc.

In <BzpwL1.7G1@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>:

:In article <1h7l5mINNbs5@meaddata.meaddata.com> dougr@meaddata.com (Doug Ritter
:>> What are they doing the rest of the time?  Probably playing
:>>basketball.  You don't need organization, you don't need a bunch of
:>>neighborhood kids, if you want to go out in the driveway to shoot some
:>>hoops.  You can do it all by yourself.  But if you're a kid in America
:>>today, you're not going to be able to find enough people to go out and
:>>play baseball every day, even if you want to, and even if you have
:>>someplace to play.
>>
>>Whoa, wait a minute!  When I was a kid, 3-on-3 baseball was the rule and
>>*not* the exception!  When we had 9 guys on both sides, it seemed like
>>half the free world was there.
>>

3-on-3 was common for us.  In the mid and late '70s as a kid, we would play
baseball every day all summer--for six, eight, even ten hours a day.

We also played a lot of 4-on-4 and 5-on-5 games, too.  We played with the
usual playground rules:  "pitcher's hand" (if a batted ball gets back into the
pitcher's hands before the batter reaches first, it's an out), "second and
over" (only left and left-center are in fair territory, and pitching from
third base to lefties (so they would hit it to left field).

9-on-9 games were really cool.  Occasionally our 5-on-5 game would be played
next to some other 5-on-5 game, and we'd challenge each other to a game.
Pity the fool who was relegated to right field (this is before most kids
learn the fine art of opposite-field hitting).

>>We even played 2-on-2 sometimes.  It can be done, trust me!

I remember those, too.  You need "ghost runners," pitcher's hand and to
pitch to your own teammate.  The other team would have a shortstop and an
outfielder.

>>
>>Maybe kids today just aren't imaginitive enough.  All we needed was a
>>ball, a bat, a dead-end street and 6 people.
>>
>>No dibs on windows, though.
>>

>I used to play 1 on 1 with my neighbor all the time.  All we needed was
>a bat, a tennis ball and a wall to throw against.  Granted, we spent a lot of
>time chasing hits, but we had fun.

>I would think that the introduction of wiffle ball would make 1 on 1 even
>more popular.  When we played, anything that got by the pitcher was a hit.

I used to play 1-on-1 with my brother, too.  It was also a fast pitch game with
a tennis ball.  We'd draw a chalk box behind the batter which was the
strike zone.  The batter's glove would be home plate.  The neat thing was that
pitches not hit would bounce right back to the pitcher.

The Wiffle Ball would turn every pitcher into Charlie Hough instantly.  The
problem is that you could never swing the bat and score 10 runs per inning
just on walks.  Or do we need 1876-type rules where it takes nine balls to
walk?

We didn't run bases, but we'd (somewhat arbitrarily) define "out, single,
double, triple, and home run" depending on where/how hard/how far the ball
was hit.  Since my brother is four years older than me, he almost always
won--except for the time he let me win on my birthday.  He swears he didn't
let me win, but his fastball was 10 MPH slower than usual...

(sigh)...it makes me wish I was a kid again...


Tim Irvin
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Newsgroups: rec.sport.baseball