Whiffle Ball

[Kyyle23]

hmmmm, we played a different version of ghost in the graveyard. The ghost went out and hid, everyone counted, and then went looking for him. If you saw him, then you shouted "GHOST!" and ran back to the gool before the ghost tagged you. If you were tagged, you were it for the next round.

[FlaSoxxJim]

hmmmm, we played a different version of ghost in the graveyard. The ghost went out and hid, everyone counted, and then went looking for him. If you saw him, then you shouted "GHOST!" and ran back to the gool before the ghost tagged you. If you were tagged, you were it for the next round.

 

No, that's exactly how we played it as well. I'm running the Ghost/Kick the can variants into one for simplicity. If we were playing Ghost it was one hider and averybody else was a seeker. If we were playing Kick the can, then it was one seeker and everybody else hid.

 

Either way, the booger-eater down the block got screwed.

[Middle Buffalo]

"Olly Olly Oxen Free!!!!!!"

 

 

Again, no sense whatsoever. Did we yell that when everyone got back safe?

We also said this, but I can't remember why. "Olly olly oxen, free free free!" I guess it was a way to tell people who couldn't be found in hide n' seek that the seeker was giving up, and we'd be starting again.

 

Also, home base was gool, but we pronounced it "glue."

 

We also used to play ding dong ditch, and to make it harder, we would line up seven or eight people at doors and all ring at the same time. Then we'd all run the same direction, so the last person would be running past all 8 of the houses that had been DDD'd. We had a guy chase us for several blocks with a broom. The combination of fear and laughter was exhilirating. And you can bet that guy became our favorite target from then on.

[YASNY]

I think the expression was supposed to be "All-eee All-eee All in free" ... but it got corrupted to Ocean free and Oxen free where I grew up because kids just said things like that when they weren't sure what to say.

[FlaSoxxJim]

We also said this, but I can't remember why. "Olly olly oxen, free free free!" I guess it was a way to tell people who couldn't be found in hide n' seek that the seeker was giving up, and we'd be starting again.

 

Also, home base was gool, but we pronounced it "glue."

 

We also used to play ding dong ditch, and to make it harder, we would line up seven or eight people at doors and all ring at the same time. Then we'd all run the same direction, so the last person would be running past all 8 of the houses that had been DDD'd. We had a guy chase us for several blocks with a broom. The combination of fear and laughter was exhilirating. And you can bet that guy became our favorite target from then on.

 

Damn, we had pockets of kids who called it "glue" too! Mostly those kids from Leavitt and Bell who were sometimes deemed cool enough to play with the unquestionably cool kids from Hamilton and Hoyne.

 

 

And I love that multiple-DDD variant. That's great.

[Kyyle23]

This thread turned into something great. Just wanted to say that, lots of nostalgia for me

[lostfan]

I think the expression was supposed to be "All-eee All-eee All in free" ... but it got corrupted to Ocean free and Oxen free where I grew up because kids just said things like that when they weren't sure what to say.

Did you guys ever play football in the street or a yard, and when you kick off (or throw off) you yell "warning, no false in, no no takes!" or something like that? Or was it just my neighborhood?

[lostfan]

By the way, I completely forgot we called home base "gool" or "glue." I remember that now.

[Middle Buffalo]

I think the expression was supposed to be "All-eee All-eee All in free" ... but it got corrupted to Ocean free and Oxen free where I grew up because kids just said things like that when they weren't sure what to say.

From wikipedia,olly olly oxen free is a phrase used in children's games, which is generally used to indicate that people who are hiding (in a game of hide and seek, for example) can safely come out into the open.

 

Origin

The exact origin of the phrase is unknown, but etymologists suspect it is the childish corruption of the phrase "All Ye, All Ye All Come Free!" shouted by the British and American forces to the natives as they liberated France in World War II

 

Use

The phrase can also be used to coordinate hidden players in the game "kick the can", where a group of children hide within a given radius and a "seeker" is left to guard a can filled with rocks. The seeker has to try to find the "hiders" without allowing them to sneak in and kick the can. In many areas the phrase used is "Ally Ally In Come Free" which is a way to tell all hidden that is time to start the game of trying to get in to the can without being caught.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olly_olly_oxen_free

 

It's nice to think of the British and American forces taking the time out to play kick the can during WWII.

[southsideirish71]

We played fast pitch Whiffle ball.

 

Whiffle ball required a large garbage can that was flat on one side ( like the toters that we use today ). The purpose of this was to provide a strikezone. Becoming a master of nicking the handle up and in which was unhittable was the hallmark of a Cy Whiffleball ace. The ball was the one that had holes all over, no using the one that was solid on one side and had holes on the other. The skinny yellow whiffle ball bat was the only approved version. The big fat bat was like using steroids. Right field, just like our beloved whitesox, was out unless you were left handed. The base paths were probably what 20 feet away. You could circle the bases in short order. Throwing and hitting the garbage can was considered the same as throwing to the catcher. If it hit, before you touched home you were out.

 

Traditional Fast pitch with a rubber ball.

 

Fast pitch at the local school. The best ball to use was the good old fashioned pinky. You would stay say 45 feet away, strikezone was painted on the wall. Seemed that all schools had that mark on their wall somewhere. The ball didnt break that much, but everyone was Nolan Ryan with this setup. Aluminum bats were allowed. If the ball hit the street on a fly it was a homer, Then it was based on distance for different base allocations. No one ran.

 

Anyone play "Running bases". If nothing else teaches you how to execute a rundown.

 

 

Edited July 11, 2008 by southsideirish71

[Chisoxfn]

Did you guys ever play football in the street or a yard, and when you kick off (or throw off) you yell "warning, no false in, no no takes!" or something like that? Or was it just my neighborhood?

We always yelled "Warning".

[Chisoxfn]

We used to play "over the line" with whiffle ball as well, which was always great.

 

Anyone play the game "Butts Up". That was a classic.

[shipps]

Anyone play the game "Butts Up". That was a classic.

You really continue to put yourself out there,dont you?

[Kyyle23]

We played butts up in gym until it got banned because the soccer players made one kid cry because they got him so bad.

[lostfan]

We always yelled "Warning".

I think the rest was just added on by the kids in my neighborhood. I don't remember what "no false in" meant, but "no no takes" meant you had to return the ball and couldn't demand a do-over for a better throw.

[Middle Buffalo]

We played fast pitch Whiffle ball.

 

Whiffle ball required a large garbage can that was flat on one side ( like the toters that we use today ). The purpose of this was to provide a strikezone. Becoming a master of nicking the handle up and in which was unhittable was the hallmark of a Cy Whiffleball ace. The ball was the one that had holes all over, no using the one that was solid on one side and had holes on the other. The skinny yellow whiffle ball bat was the only approved version. The big fat bat was like using steroids. Right field, just like our beloved whitesox, was out unless you were left handed. The base paths were probably what 20 feet away. You could circle the bases in short order. Throwing and hitting the garbage can was considered the same as throwing to the catcher. If it hit, before you touched home you were out.

http://www.wiffle.com/about_rules.htm A few of my friends from college set up a whiffle ball field on a vacant lot that one of them owned. It's downstate - Olney, Illinois. Every year, they have a tournament. I used to have a link to their home page bookmarked, but I lost it. Here's a story. http://www.14wfie.com/Global/story.asp?S=6...mp;nav=3w6obkLh Basically, Jimi's gramps owned a parcel of land with plans of opening a business on it. He never did, and grandma used to refer to it as the "White Elephant." My friends asked if they could use it for whiffle, and they went about developing the land. It's pretty cool. Left field has the field house as the homerun wall/scoreboard, and the rest of the outfield has one of those orange plastic construction fences. You pitch to a cutout (similar to the garbage can) strike zone. They have one small set of bleachers. Like the poster earlier, we would play all day, then barbecue, drink, and hit the bars all weekend. I'll try to get a link to their site next week. Pics are always better.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Did you guys ever play football in the street or a yard, and when you kick off (or throw off) you yell "warning, no false in, no no takes!" or something like that? Or was it just my neighborhood?

 

We didn't yell that on kickoffs, but we had all sorts of other crazy street football conventions. You did have to yell "On-side" if you were attempting to throw/kick and onside kick.

 

We played Nerf touch football, in the street, and the goals were either lamp-post to lamp-post or sewer to sewer depending on the parked car situation up and down the street. We also played no-pads/helmet tackle football on the grass at the park on Saturdays unless we were playing lob league" baseball.

 

One blitz per four downs and one run per set, unless there was a blitz, and then you could run. When blitzing, you had to yell "BLITZ!!"

 

In touch football, it had to be two-hand-touch, with "no pittty-pat", i.e., one hand and then the other.

 

3 completes was a first down. A touchdown was 7 points, there was no extra point.

 

As soon as play ended on the third down the yelling began. Offense would try to yell "NO PUNT CHECK" before the defense would yell "FOURTH DOWN, PUNT CHECK!" If punt check won, then you had to tell the other team if you were going for it or if you were punting. If there was no punt check, then you could opt for the ever-popular "Pass-punt-receiver", or "PPR", or (inexplicably) "PPS". On a PPS, the quarterback could throw a bomb and if a receiver caught it, it was counted as a complete pass, but if he didn't, then it was counted as a punt and the opposing team would have to scramble to pick or up and play it.

 

Dang, now I think I need to round up the kids on the block and play. I call official QB!.

[Middle Buffalo]

I think the rest was just added on by the kids in my neighborhood. I don't remember what "no false in" meant, but "no no takes" meant you had to return the ball and couldn't demand a do-over for a better throw.

Kickoffs were preceded with "Warning - Kickoff!"

 

 

We always settled the worst of disputes in football with a DGO - down goes over.

[lostfan]

When we played baseball the kids called the catcher "backcatcher." Never understood why.

[FlaSoxxJim]

We played fast pitch Whiffle ball.

 

Whiffle ball required a large garbage can that was flat on one side ( like the toters that we use today ). The purpose of this was to provide a strikezone. Becoming a master of nicking the handle up and in which was unhittable was the hallmark of a Cy Whiffleball ace. The ball was the one that had holes all over, no using the one that was solid on one side and had holes on the other. The skinny yellow whiffle ball bat was the only approved version. The big fat bat was like using steroids. Right field, just like our beloved whitesox, was out unless you were left handed. The base paths were probably what 20 feet away. You could circle the bases in short order. Throwing and hitting the garbage can was considered the same as throwing to the catcher. If it hit, before you touched home you were out.

 

Traditional Fast pitch with a rubber ball.

 

Fast pitch at the local school. The best ball to use was the good old fashioned pinky. You would stay say 45 feet away, strikezone was painted on the wall. Seemed that all schools had that mark on their wall somewhere. The ball didnt break that much, but everyone was Nolan Ryan with this setup. Aluminum bats were allowed. If the ball hit the street on a fly it was a homer, Then it was based on distance for different base allocations. No one ran.

 

Anyone play "Running bases". If nothing else teaches you how to execute a rundown.

 

We played Whiffle and fast pitch almost exactly like you described, except we used the official Whiffle with the holes on one side only. I was thinking we used a blue or black handball or raquetball ball for fast pitch, but maybe we used a pinky too. We had to play fast pitch at the school yard over at one of "the publics" because a strike zone painted on the wall at one of "the Catholics" woulkd have been scrubbed off in a day. Sometimes we played using the steps of one of our houses (all Chicago bungalows) as the backstop, and the 2nd and 3rd steps were strikes. That was a pain because the ball would richochet all over the place when it hit the corners of the steps.

 

Playing Whiffle in the street, we played at an intersection, and the four sewers were the bases and plate for our diamond. In whiffle and in "lob league" we also played right field out unless we had enough players. That was probably the nuttiest of all tese universal kid rules. Shoulda been a foul ball at worst, but if you creamed the ball but to the wrong field it was an out?!? It never made sense to me as a kid either, but that's how we played.

 

[FlaSoxxJim]

Kickoffs were preceded with "Warning - Kickoff!"

 

 

We always settled the worst of disputes in football with a DGO - down goes over.

 

DGO!!!

 

 

[Brian]

Pitcher's hand out!

[FlaSoxxJim]

Pitcher's hand out!

 

Yep, but tie goes to the runner. And don't bobble it.

[southsider2k5]

 

We had a kid on the block who either got stuck being It and we'd all pretend to hide but would really just leave and let him keep looking, or if he was a hider, we'd all pretend to be hiding or seeking but would just take off and let him keep hiding to think he had a really sweet spot. To the kid's credit, he would hole up and hide for a good hour or so before popping his head out.

 

"Guys. . . hey, Guys. . . ?"

 

Wow, were we a-holes or what?

 

 

Come on fess up... you were the "kid" weren't you.

[dasox24]

Anyone play "Running bases". If nothing else teaches you how to execute a rundown.

If you're talking about what we called "pickle," then yes. That game was awesome. I dominated...

 

How about Smear the Queer? We used to play that a bit, but I never realized how politically incorrect that name is. haha

 

Seriously though, I love what this thread has turned into. Brings back a lot of great memories. I'm only 20 but I played all these games (ghosts in the graveyard, kick the can, etc.), but I feel like kids even a few years younger than me did not. Truthfully, I feel really fortunate to have those experiences b/c I don't think kids play these games anymore. Or maybe I just don't know it b/c I live in an older neighborhood now and there are about zero kids.