I think one of the things I miss most about being a kid was Ghetto Games. For those of you who didn't grow up poor. A ghetto game was something you could pay with little money. Footballs and baseballs are not that cheap but could usually be stolen from a school or a youth center, if you were slick enough. For the more God fearing kids some would just save up their allowance and trust me at $2-$5.00 a week that could be a long wait. Or that could be your one gift it was Christmas. So on a block with 10 kids at least one would have a football or a basketball. Now you never really needed anything other than a ball to play a game in the ghetto in the 80's. Except maybe a spray paint can.
See basketball is supposed to be played with a hoop. But sometimes the hoops would be stolen from the parks. Enter the spray paint can. You get a spray-paint can, which any body could get for cheap, you find any flat surface where you could draw a small box slightly larger that the ball at roughly hoop height. Than if you want to be fancy you lay out a half court in front of the wall but more often we used things like sewer caps and light poles as our markers for out of bounds. So it's entirely possible that you could get checked into a brick wall a light pole or an oncoming car, depending on how close the score is.
With stickball if you could find an empty lot to play with a wall you didn't need a catcher, because the wall became the catcher. See you paint a box on the wall that was roughly the size of a torso to create a "batters box. If you pitched the ball and the batter did not swing but you got it in the box it was counted a strike, and the ball would usually bounce back. So paint was actually pretty helpful in setting up some of the rules.
But the game I played the most was Street Football. The super bowl has nothing compared to the intensity of a simple game of street football. People would actually come out to see us play and would root for different players. There was no such things as teams cause we were all from the same block so 2 guys would choose up teams. And it would usually be 6 to 10 kids playing and each game was just as important and different as the next or last. Now we usually played 2-hand touch but that does not mean it was a gentle game. In fact I have a dent in my head named after Street football.
See what happened was it was a 3 on 3 game and we were down by 2 TDs and time was running out. (meaning the sun would be going down soon) And I'm not a fast guy but I used to have pretty good hands. So John (the QB) was going for a Hail Mary and I was running as fast as I could go trying to catch that damn football. I see it. Hell, I can fucking taste it, because I know I can make this catch. I just have to jump up and we'll be one more TD closer to a tie and if we tie at least we can't get bitched out. Because we all know bragging rights are the most important thing when you are growing up.
So I'm running, I'm seeing the ball, I'm running, I'm running, I jump... and than I wake up with my cousins and friends standing over me saying "is he dead?" "I don't know but who's going to tell his aunt?" "John can tell her, Eric's his cousin." "If he's dead can I have his kicks?"
"You're not taking my sneakers." I say as I start to become aware of my surroundings. Now as near as I can piece together after I jumped I went head first into light pole. And knocked my self the fuck out. The cool thing is I had just performed such an incredible stunt in the fact that I had stood back up and was willing to play some more, I didn't want to be called a bitch. But John and Randy wouldn't let me. Since my aunt was a nurse they made me go tell her what had happened while they hid. All in all it was a great game, even with the bleeding from the ear.
See basketball is supposed to be played with a hoop. But sometimes the hoops would be stolen from the parks. Enter the spray paint can. You get a spray-paint can, which any body could get for cheap, you find any flat surface where you could draw a small box slightly larger that the ball at roughly hoop height. Than if you want to be fancy you lay out a half court in front of the wall but more often we used things like sewer caps and light poles as our markers for out of bounds. So it's entirely possible that you could get checked into a brick wall a light pole or an oncoming car, depending on how close the score is.
With stickball if you could find an empty lot to play with a wall you didn't need a catcher, because the wall became the catcher. See you paint a box on the wall that was roughly the size of a torso to create a "batters box. If you pitched the ball and the batter did not swing but you got it in the box it was counted a strike, and the ball would usually bounce back. So paint was actually pretty helpful in setting up some of the rules.
But the game I played the most was Street Football. The super bowl has nothing compared to the intensity of a simple game of street football. People would actually come out to see us play and would root for different players. There was no such things as teams cause we were all from the same block so 2 guys would choose up teams. And it would usually be 6 to 10 kids playing and each game was just as important and different as the next or last. Now we usually played 2-hand touch but that does not mean it was a gentle game. In fact I have a dent in my head named after Street football.
See what happened was it was a 3 on 3 game and we were down by 2 TDs and time was running out. (meaning the sun would be going down soon) And I'm not a fast guy but I used to have pretty good hands. So John (the QB) was going for a Hail Mary and I was running as fast as I could go trying to catch that damn football. I see it. Hell, I can fucking taste it, because I know I can make this catch. I just have to jump up and we'll be one more TD closer to a tie and if we tie at least we can't get bitched out. Because we all know bragging rights are the most important thing when you are growing up.
So I'm running, I'm seeing the ball, I'm running, I'm running, I jump... and than I wake up with my cousins and friends standing over me saying "is he dead?" "I don't know but who's going to tell his aunt?" "John can tell her, Eric's his cousin." "If he's dead can I have his kicks?"
"You're not taking my sneakers." I say as I start to become aware of my surroundings. Now as near as I can piece together after I jumped I went head first into light pole. And knocked my self the fuck out. The cool thing is I had just performed such an incredible stunt in the fact that I had stood back up and was willing to play some more, I didn't want to be called a bitch. But John and Randy wouldn't let me. Since my aunt was a nurse they made me go tell her what had happened while they hid. All in all it was a great game, even with the bleeding from the ear.
