Seniors keep stickball alive, feeling like kids again, a thousand miles from home
By Matt Sczesny
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WELLINGTON, Florida (WPTV) — A group of seniors in Wellington is keeping a classic New York street game alive, swinging rubber balls and reliving childhood memories on a South Florida parking lot turned ballfield.
A closed-off parking lot at Wellington’s Village Park might as well be a side street in Brooklyn, Queens or any other place where the players of the Palm Beach Senior Stickball League grew up.
“It means more than most people would ever understand. This is our life as a kid,” Barry Davis of the Palm Beach Senior Stickball League said.
Now in its 24th year, the league features players with various skills. They get together once a week for 9-inning games that usually take about an hour to play.
Bouncing a rubber ball to a hitter with a lean stickball bat, the hitters are limited to three swings, and hits are determined by automatic boundaries, and caught balls are outs.
“Sunnyside Queens, I was probably 10,” said John Huston about when he started playing.
At Friday’s game, the Legends defeated the Outkasts in the championship game.
“I enjoy it, makes me smile, it makes me laugh, I really, really enjoy it,” Huston, who plays for the Legends, said.
Many of the players come from neighborhoods across New York City and stopped playing after their teenage years, only to take it up now in South Florida.
“I can remember playing in Brownsville. We had a small schoolyard right behind my apartment building,” said Artie Kret.
The league plays both a summer and winter schedule in Wellington.
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