Stratton Park Message Board

Like many of us, I spent just about everyday after school playing either stickball or softball with Tommy Tush, Marc Seda, Michael Butler, Patrick Pontillo and too many others to name but my most memorable moment was pitching against Jeannie Hessler....We must've been 9 or 10 years old. She hit a pitch I threw back at me so hard that I couldn't even get my glove up it time. It hit me square in the forehead.... The next thing that I remembered is looking up like out of a movie scene to see a circle of kids including Jeannie & her brother TJ standing over me saying : "I think Jeannie killed him".

Then I got up off of the asphalt, started pitching again and struck her brother out (but he wasn't half the player she was)

She hit me so hard that I still remember it 37 or 38 years later. Man could that girl hit ..............

Just one of many 102 park memories............

For stickball, nothing else would work other than a GENUINE Spaulding rubber ball - pronounced spall-deen. I think they used to cost about a quarter. When they came out with the foam version, that was C R A P ola.

I loved it when somebody would hit the ball, kind of clipping it rather than a solid hit, and you would see a flying "egg-ball".

For stickball, nothing else would work other than a GENUINE Spaulding rubber ball - pronounced spall-deen. I think they used to cost about a quarter. When they came out with the foam version, that was C R A P ola.

I loved it when somebody would hit the ball, kind of clipping it rather than a solid hit, and you would see a flying "egg-ball".

Hello Luis and All: Oh yes, those old "egg Balls. To catch one you had to develop a special hand cupping technique so it wouldn't slip out of your hands, and a ground ball "egger" was like a mexican jumping bean. And how about a splitter when the ball cut in half and went in two separate directions. Ball game over y until we went down a got another one. Testing the balls with the gravity test by dropping them from arms length high to get the one with the best bounce. A side note, we used to play stick ball, "automatics" I believe we called it. We would stand at the other end of the ballfield in front of the schoolyard fence and hit the ball towards the parkhouse. Over the fence was a homerun but if you could run through the open gate, without bumping someone over, and get behind the fence without slamming into the parkhouse and catch the ball on a fly it was an out. But the most amazing shot was when my good pal Vinnie hit the ball beyond comprehension. Imagine, the ball flying so high and so far it actually went over the park house, over the skully court and over the baby slides and over the fence to bounce on Guerlain. Hollie Mollie. That ball was going, going gone. The Yankees could use a Vinny now. To find it before it rolled into a sewer, well, that was a whole other story. Love, Peace and Happiness to all. Matt Keenan

Splitters were quite amazing, oh yeah. Also quite amazing was when a ball would get stuck in the fence - a very rare occurrence.

OK then, what was the best kind of stick to hit with? Was a broom handle OK? Or did you have to buy a special one from the store, usually with tape on the handle end. That had to cost about a buck.

Speaking of broom handles, I have a funny story about broom handles and Johnny Pepe, but I'll save that for another day.

One of my fondest memories of 102 is playing on the big kids swings with you sitting on the seat and your friend (hopefully a good friend) stands with a foot on either side of you and between the both of you, you see how how high you could go. We used to try to go as high as the fence that separated the swings and the handball park. My nerves never let me go that high but I did know a girl who did go that high. But unfortunately, she let go and flew right into the fence. She was purple for 2 weeks. Many good memories of 102.