Stickball
Sports Games: Stickball
While legions of people occupy their virtual sports time with video games, it’s interesting to look at just how far the simulation of sports has come. For nearly as long as professional sports have been popular, people have found ways to shrink them down in to related, yet entirely different, games and simulations.
So starts a series in which I will look back at what we can call “sports games.” While clearly a redundant title, a sports game, simply put, is a game based off of an organized sport.
Chronologically speaking, the first thing I could think of was stickball. Now, you may be thinking “hold on, that isn’t a simulation, that’s a sport,” but I include it here because while it may be closer to an actual sport than say a sports toy, the game is an adaptation. The important thing is that it embraces the imagination, which is the entire basis of a sports game.
I missed the stickball era, and as a suburban kid, I had little league and grassy fields to play around in. As such I’m even more fascinated with all the ins and outs and the shear inguinity and resilance of the game. I mean check out that photo, there’s that intangible charm that comes from legions of babies playing on cobbled roads. That wagon is no slouch either.