Looking back, I wish there had been more stick ball. And gangs of 11-year-old kids defending their turf. And little newsie caps.

    I grew up on Eau Claire’s west side. When we first moved into our neighborhood, there were some older houses here and there, sprinkled around new construction. We moved into a brand new home. The place wasn’t swarming with kids, but there was enough of us to play a tiny games of baseball. Or, there would have been enough of us to play tiny games of baseball if we hadn’t lived on a hill.

    Our street was angled into a gentle slope, so any group sports to be played in the street couldn’t involve spheres, not unless you wanted to spend half your time chasing your balls down to the stop sign. And none of us did.

    We played occasional baseball games in backyards and there was always someone shooting hoops in their driveway (the hoops being bolted to the roof above the garage door). But there was far more TV-watching going on than base-running.

    So, no stickball. Of course, “stickball” had long since given way to “aluminum bat purchased at Shopko ball” by the time I was a kid in my ball-smacking prime. But I don’t think an old timey kid sport would have given me what I wish we’d had – some sort of neighborhood bonding, some sort of identity. Nope, by the time I was old enough to run around streets and alleys in a neighborhood gang, nobody wanted to. But I’m not sure that kind of thing really ever happened outside of big city neighborhoods in Boston and New York. In the movies. From the eighties.

    So, I didn’t grow up in The Sandlot. I grew up watching The Sandlot. And that’s OK, I guess. I just kind of wish everyone had been more connected – all the kids and all the families. We never had block parties or cook-outs. I do remember my family visiting another family’s house on a regular basis, but this was the neighborhood’s oldest family, and I assume they came from a time when neighbors actually hung out with each other. Once they left, that kind of stuff was gone.