Blue Pants, Santa Claus And Deuce

At the risk of going all Ken Burns gooey, it is safe to say that stickball is more than just a game — it is democracy itself:

Five longtime stickball players from the Bronx joined the likes of New York City greats Joe Torre, Willie Randolph, Rusty Torres, Arturo Lopez and Joe Pepitone when they were inducted this week into the Stickball Hall of Fame.

Before the athletes named above starred on baseball fields in the big leagues, these ballplayers took to the asphalt in their youth for games like “Box Ball,” “Throw it up, one swing” and “pitch it in, one bounce.” With a Spaldeen in hand and a stickball bat (sometimes their mother’s broom handle), many other kids across the city and in the Bronx first learned the concept of baseball from its urbanized counterpart.

Martin “Marty” Rogers, Fr. Frank Skelly, Patrick “Patsy” Viverito, Paul “Pauly” Saryian and the late Felix “Lenny” Santiago are five Bronxites who spent a good part of their youths playing stickball. And this week they were inducted into the Stickball Hall of Fame during its seventh annual ceremony on Friday, July 7 at the Museum of the City of New York. Their names will now be added to a plaque in the museum.

. . .

Rogers and Skelly are two alumni from Immaculate Conception School on 150th Street. Skelly, class of 1960 and now a Catholic priest, played stickball in “the Alley” on Brook Avenue near 149th Street and has served as pastor at St. Cecilia’s Church in El Barrio and at Immaculate Conception. Today he is director of the San Alfonso Retreat House in New Jersey.

Skelly reminisced: “Our firescape was one flight up and offered grandstand seats for all the block activity. But ‘going down’ and being part of it all was always more fun. The teenagers were known as the Alley Boys and wore monikers like Joey Brooklyn, Blue Pants, Santa Claus and Deuce. They seemed to have a God given right to the use of the fields of play. Very little equipment was needed for any of these games of stickball, and so it was an equal playing field where skills was the criterion for success.”

In the early 1960s, Santiago was part of a team called the Young Neptunes, from Forest Avenue and 156th Street. Before his passing, he played in the New York Emperors Stickball League in the Bronx.

[Emph. added so lazy Ken Burns only has to skim the good parts.]

See also: streetplay.com’s Stickball pages . . . stickball events are held throughout the year (that just went on the to-do list).