Youse Guys Wanna Go Play Stickball?

Not as much sandlot baseball is being played these days:

Sandlot baseball, a slice of American life enjoyed for decades by boys from coast to coast, appears on the verge of extinction.

Many men over 40 remember those summer days when they headed to the park or vacant lot and played ball all day - or until Mom sent word that it was time for dinner.

Nowadays, most neighborhood ball fields sit empty on summer afternoons, the idea of unsupervised play having gone the way of the rotary-dial phones kids once used to round up the fellas for a game. The reasons for the sandlot's demise, baseball coaches and sociologists say, go back to the changing family structure, video games, parents' fear of crime, and the proliferation of organized and so-called "select" teams for more-talented kids.

One of the rules I live by is to be skeptical of any article that features the word "nowadays," as it is almost always a signal that there is some seriously sentimental bullshit ahead.

And there is some of that here. The cliché holding that there once was a time not too long ago when every kid played ball from sunup to sundown is pretty overplayed. Yeah, I suppose it happened, but in my experience (and my father's and even his father's) it wasn't quite so intense. Sure, pickup ballgames were played, but forts were built too. Water balloons were thrown. Piano lessons were endured. Kids went to the movies when it was hot and bummed around aimlessly just as much as kids today do, albeit in different ways. I'd be shocked if even your average baseball freak played more than a partial game most summer afternoons, simply because most kids don't tend to have that kind of attention span. The few who did turned into George Brett or Carlton Fisk or someone like that, and they were playing organized ball themselves even then.

But even if things ain't quite like they used to be (and probably never were), there probably is less sandlot ball being played today. Writers tend to get more articles greenlighted when they chalk such trends up to just how crazy modern life has become -- citing video games and overscheduled kids is a must -- but my guess is that the biggest thing at work here is the fact that people just aren't having as many kids as they used to. At least white middle class people aren't, and they are the only people who ever seem to matter to the authors of stories like these.

Baseball takes a lot of people to play properly. In my old neighborhood you could place a call to the Hogarths, the Freiheits, and the Byrnes, and that would give you like twelve kids. That was strange even for the 70s, but it's pretty much unheard of now. It's just easier to play basketball as you can do it with two people or even by yourself if you have to.

I'm a pretty big proponent of unstructured play, but part of me wonders what would've happened to me if I had the kinds of parents who obsessed about sports and put me in some hyped-up baseball program at a young age as opposed to letting me simply play with the Hogarths, Freiheits, and Byrnes. Maybe my swing wouldn't have sucked as bad as it did. Maybe I would have had better fielding instincts. Then again, maybe I would have topped out physically in exactly the same way I did and ended up as a bitter and disappointed kid as opposed to adopting the "oh well, let's try something new" attitude I took when I realized that a baseball career wasn't to be.

The point is, we can't know, and it's probably a good idea not to dwell too much on the wouldas, shouldas, and used to bes of life. Kids are doing different things today, sure, but their kids will be doing something else too, and on and on through history it will go, with each generation lamenting that the next doesn't spend its time properly.

(link via Pete Toms)