NY TIMES
June 10, 2007
Leisure
City Game Still Thrills Suburban Old-Timers
By DIANA MARSZALEK

Hastings-on-Hudson

FOR a few hours every Sunday, Stefan Kanfer, a writer in his 70s, feels like a kid on the streets of Queens again, waiting to crack his stickball bat against the next pitch.

Facing him, ball in hand, is the man they call the Commissioner — Kevin Ettinger, 74, a retired teacher who is the oldest player and a hero among teammates when he throws hard, fast ones.

“When you hit, it feels as if you’re 16 again,” Mr. Kanfer said. “It’s my childhood.”

It’s also a ritual that Mr. Ettinger and Mr. Kanfer have played out hundreds of times since they started their weekly games at the middle and high school complex in Hastings in 1970.

Stickball is a little taste of the past for the men and their teammates, most of whom are in their 60s and 70s. Most of them also grew up in New York City neighborhoods like Hell’s Kitchen, Forest Hills, Washington Heights and Kew Gardens, whiling away countless hours playing the quintessentially urban street game that consumed city children long before high-pressured Little Leagues and other organized sports programs took over the suburbs.

They call their group the Ethical Stickball League, though the entire league consists of just 10 men. They gather informally to play for a couple of hours — usually two games — followed by lunch at a local tavern, Maud’s. The rule on calling off play because of cold weather is simple: If you can see your breath, no games.

The league has lost a couple of members over the years. One, the rules expert, moved to Florida. Another is ill. But two new recruits — a former Farragut student (Editor's note: they couldn't type the eight letters in Alan Fine?) and Mr. Ettinger’s son, Andy, both near 50 — have helped maintain the roster.

“These guys have brought a lot of life,” the elder Mr. Ettinger said.

The players don’t use sewers for bases, like they did in the old days, but the blacktop they play on more closely resembles a city street than the grassy fields of suburbia. The pavement gives players space to spread out, and batters have enough room to hit balls out of the schoolyard into the adjacent neighborhood.

Drawn together by friendly competition, camaraderie and heavy doses of cajoling, the players wear fading team T-shirts with “Aestas Aeterna” (Latin for “eternal summer”) on the front, and their nicknames — the Hitman for a smooth swinger, Captain Hook for a curveball artist — on the back. They even print their own trading cards, complete with fictional stats.

Building on six decades or more of experience, they defer to tradition, generally using mop handles or broomsticks as bats, though commercial stickball bats (which cost $2.50) occasionally come into play. Instead of Spaldeens — the pink rubber balls of their youth — they use tennis balls, and the rules frequently change as circumstances dictate, just like they did growing up.

The only concrete way time has taken its toll, the players said, is that it is harder to keep score, especially with all the kibitzing that goes on.

“We never remember who’s up or how many strikes someone has,” said Jack Dammann, 71, a retired college professor.

Most of the men converge from around Westchester, but there are a few who travel far to make the game. Mr. Dammann comes from Queens, and Steven Becker, 69, a nationally syndicated bridge columnist, travels from Old Greenwich, Conn.

Mr. Becker says the trip is well worth the pleasure of playing. For him, the effort harks back to the glory days of stickball, which was especially popular in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. In those days, city children, lacking expensive equipment and expansive fields, informally divvied up the neighborhood into teams and created a code that worked.

“It was a way of learning how to get along when you grow up,” he said, “and we carry that with us.”

(Rob Bennett took the following pictures. He was a freelance photographer sent by the NY Times.)