Originally known as Off the Stoop when my dad was a kid growing up in the Bronx, it was a baseball like game that could be played without a bat or glove, all you needed was a tennis ball or ‘pinky’. The city street provided everything else. The batter would throw the ball against the point of the stoop (the steps that ran into pretty much every apartment building) and then try to run to first base. The bases and field were whatever happened to be around, so a car or sign poll might be first base, a home run might be anything that hit the building across the street, whatever everybody decided at the start of the game, if a car left during the game the rules changed. There would usually only be two bases. Another advantage to off the point is that it’s about impossible to break a window by bouncing a ball off the point, as opposed to stickball which can easily lead to breaking glass.

One day my dad nailed a two by four to the plywood on the side of the garage and taught us how to play. The apple tree by the pool was first base and the bush by the house was second base. At the time I was too little to play but Bobby and his friends would play a lot, we had floodlights in the back yard so we could play until my parents flashed the floodlights and then it was time to go inside. One of our cats would hide in the bush (second base) and jump out at Billy W. every time he got near, we never knew why.