Old time play. What passtimes from your childhood will never be again?

[brewens]

205. Every kid riding his bike to school with his baseball "mitt" on his handlebars.

Maybe all 70's kids didn't do that but I'm from a baseball town. Every recess we sprinted to the diamonds we had in corners of the school yard to play all spring. When the bell rang we sprinted back, taking the game up as we left it the next recess.

Any Saturday during the spring, we'd be on the phone getting games lined up. We could ride to the school and more likely than not, someone beat us to the best diamond. Not to worry. Most likely they would be playing "workup" and we'd be just enough to make it six on six or better and get a game going!

I was mainly a football player but tall and fast for a big guy. I couldn't hit worth a shit but was such a good outfielder that my freshman coach had to start me in center field even though I batted ninth. Even though I couldn't hit, I was really pretty good at weaseling walks and beating out chincy ground balls. In a double header, I stole four bases against our arch rival and other than a couple fat guys, I was easily the biggest kid in school. You learned to play baseball somehow in my town if you could, whatever you could do. If you actually started for our American Legion team, you were at the very least a college prospect, and every year the major leagues drafted someone off that team. One year I saw seven no hitters pitched by our guys and all four regular starting pitchers threw one. Those guys were just awesome!

One year we hosted the American Legion World Series. One highlight of that was seeing Kurt Russell who had already been in a few movies playing shortstop for one of the teams. He was a good player and really cool about hanging out and signing autographs though I never bothered to get one.