This image from the Streetplay photo library captures the spirit of Sandlot Baseball even better than pictures of kids in uniforms playing on a baseball diamond. What prompted me to share this photo was an email from a friend quoting this article in Sunday's New York Times Magazine (free registration is required if you want to view this article).
And so, I quote:
The baseball clinic last summer resembled, by design, the casual off-hours scrimmaging of Lee and his pals, combined with favorite drills and exercises from their own childhood sports clinics and Little League. Hooked into the pure fun of the game -- throwing and catching a ball, swinging a bat and loping across a green field yelling ''Mine, mine, mine'' -- they pulled the younger players in after them.
What the little kids did care about was not striking out. So no one ever struck out. The rule was, You swing until you hit something. You could fly out; you could get tagged out. But there is no humiliation in flying out or getting tagged out. At the end of one game, I heard a boy yelling all the way up the hill as he ran to meet his dad, ''I hit a home run!'' Had he? I thought. It didn't ring a bell. Then I realized, He had. He had swung at so many pitches I had lost interest and was reading my book, but he finally connected with the ball. I watched him join his dad and head for the car, with the trace of a swagger.
I Googled my way to this article, where, by chance, I found the following:
The contrast between today’s suffocated, cocooned pre-teens and children of that long gone day is enormous. Today’s kids are micromanaged by parents, by schools, by youth coaches, scout leaders, tutors. The children of that earlier time were allowed an unbelievable amount of personal freedom including freedom of association (choosing friends and making enemies), freedom to play without adult supervision, freedom to be alone, and freedom to entertain oneself turning any everyday object into a toy.
You know, no matter how many times I write and talk about those disappearing things like recess and unsupervised play, it's still hard for me to accept how much things have changed for kids. And even harder to believe that stories like these, about adults letting kids play their own way to their own personal truths, have become so poignant and so rare.
I just can't stop thinking about Subbuteo. Subbuteo. Subbuteo. With these cool accurate miniature punching baglike players that you flick, that's correct, flick. Into the ball and/or into the opposing accurately-rendered, punching-baglike players. I mean, it's so cool. It kinda concentrates all your athleticism into your finger tip. And, boy, can you get good at it! And I don't mean just physically. But just like a real soccer player, you can get strategic, if you know what I mean, because, unlike the games it mirrors, we each get our own turn, unhindered. As if we were playing some sort of billiards. Billiards, you say? Indeed.
Do you have a Subbuteo set? Is there at least one Subbuteo-bound person on your Ch(anuka)/(ristmus) list? If not, it's not too late for a gift certificate from perhaps Subbuteo World.
The origins of Subbuteo? According to the Worthing Fivestar Table football league: "In the 1920s a Liverpudlian called William Keeling invented a game aimed at young boys called 'New Footy'. This consisted of flat, cut out cardboard figures which were mounted in hemispherical bases. The aim of the game was to use these players to flick a plastic ball into a goal. The game rolled along for many years, without any serious competitors - until shortly after World War 2.
"Subbuteo Table Soccer game was launched in 1947 by Peter Adolph to compete with New Footy - it was an instant success. In 1947 materials of all kinds were were in short supply and the original 'Assembly' set consisted of two cardboard teams, one celluloid ball and metal framed goals with paper netting. You will, no doubt, have realised that a playing pitch was not included. The instructions, however, advised the recipient of this early subbuteo game to '.....mark your pitch (chalk provided) on an ex-army blanket'..... and thousands did just that.
"But why Subbuteo? Hardly a name that was easy on the tongue, or relevant to football. Originally, the intention was to call the game 'The Hobby' but this could not get registered. However, the Latin for the bird of that name is Falco Subbuteo ..... hence 'Subbuteo'."
And hence, indeed, Subbuteo. Imagine going back to those days of paper netting and cardboard teams. Imagine your very own Subbuteo set - with milk bottle top bases. It is Junkyard Soccer at its finest. At your very fingertips.
The Rolled up Blueprint / Pantyhose / Sock / Water bottle Junkyard Golf Club
During the now infamous "Leaping Lizards Family Fun Fest," someone created the golf club depicted above. To date, it is the most elaborate and successful Junkyard Golf club ever manufactured. The near horizontal water bottle is close to perfectly positioned. It is strong enough to deliver a significant motivational force. And hitting a golf ball of any manufacture (paper or plastic) results in such a soul satisfying sound (something like "plock," I believe), that one almost doesn't care where one's ball goes. It is clearly a foreshadowing of golf-like clubs and miniature-golf-obstacle-like apparatus yet to be built. A guantlet, as it were, thrown in the conceptual face of future Junkyard Golf inventors and players. From its vantage point, the destiny of Junkyard Golf is vivid. "Fore," I say. "Fore, indeed!"
Insofar as it is a ring made out of a plastic grocery sack, we're calling it the Sack Circle. Invented by field researcher Elyon, my son the doctor, DeKoven, the grocery store plastic Sack Ring brings a new source of games for junkyard sporting. Granted, ring-based sports are a bit, shall we say, obscure. Yet, for the Quoits fanatics amongst us, the Sack Circle is a veritable boon.
We anticipate that the Sack Circle will find equal if not more enthusiastic welcome by those who enjoy the occasional Ring Toss, at home or at county fairs or in the local, traditional, 18th century English pub. Not to mention Ultimate Scooter owners, hoping someday to experience a game of Ultimate Ring Toss.
Elyon and I, in exploring yet further implications of the entire Sack Circle phenomenon-to-be, fell into something like a chasm of joy upon discovering how easy it was to pass the Sack Circle from hand to hand, no matter who's hand we were passing to. It reminded me a bit of the Victorian child's holiday game of Hunt the Ring, don't you know. But what made us laugh so hard was imagining what it'd be like playing this in a crowd - you know, people milling around, shaking hands, passing the ring. The very stuff of another totally pointless game!
I received a message from YellowArrow, about which I wrote previously. I was stirred to quote:
This is a shout out for YellowArrow archers everywhere to have your message heard and your images seen at Art Basel Miami Beach!
As the crème-de-la-crème of the art world descends on Miami Beach for the Art Basel festival, the YellowArrow will be greeting this global art elite at every corner as the public art project that sweeps the show. Projections will roam the city's streets showcasing all the arrows placed by people around the world, stickers will be placed smartly on every beckoning surface, big lightbox versions of the YellowArrow will be installed throughout the city. And we are going to do a video installation on a large public wall on Saturday, Dec. 4 in the Design District, highlighting arrows placed by people in Miami and around the world leading up to the Art Baselfestival.
We are reaching out to people throughout the world, inviting everyone to place arrows that can be seen in this video by everybody in Miami. All images and texts uploaded before Dec. 1 will be included in the show. The video will also be showcased on the web during the festival as well as become a DVD that can be shown locally wherever there is interest.
I tried the video. It made the whole event - the act and the art - wonderfully clear. I found it reassuring to learn that the YellowArrow project is still very much in play.
And, for the bloggers amongst us, he also writes:
We've just added a new element to the site that I'm hoping you will be interested in experimenting with -- we now have RSS feeds that allow you to subscribe to the most recent arrows placed in a certain city, by a certain person, or any combination of the two in a newsreader or to integrate into a website (eg, add a feed of your arrows to your blog, or add a feed of all the arrows in Boston to a site about public art in Boston).
"The Waterball is easy to use, just blow it up , open up the zipper, the rider enters inside, close the zipper and re-inflate the "WATERBALL again to full capacity. And your off water walking !"
See, there's this other, not often discussed, and not necessarily environmentally-correct form of junk collection, called "buying."
You read about the Waterball, Danceball, Bimboball, and you can barely restrain yourself from envisioning a game of giant, floating, human controlled marbles, for example, in which each player is Waterball encased. Played in the ocean, maybe, in, of course, 15 minute intervals so players can unzip and breathe.
It's not your fault, you know. The lust for playworthy junk is a financially debilitating response common to all Junkmasters.
The only solution I can think of is to: 1) acknowledge the futility of resistance, 2) form a Junkmasters Cooperative, 3) collect dues, 4) go ahead and order that giant inflatable banana.
Bryan Alexander is my friend. I met him on Howard Rheingold's virtual community Brainstorms. Well. as a matter of fact, I never met him. Not physically. But spiritually we are brothers in play and in the joy of thinking about play. It is one more example of the strength of community that can be built via cyberspace. All of which should cast some light on why today's Blog is about him and his Infocult weblog.
Bryan and I share a minority perspective about games. We think of them not only as entertainments but also as an expression of culture and as a vehicle for learning. I am especially fascinated by games of the flesh, as it were, and what is conveyed thereby. How, for example, old a game like tag is, and how variations get developed and disseminated, and what kinds of relationships those variations describe, and what people learn by enacting those relationships. I call this the "Dramaturgy" of games. Bryan is fascinated by virtual playthings. Puzzle-adventures like "Treasure Box" and "Quest for the Rest" - interactive works of art and play that reflect the reality of fantasy, expressing, for all the fun of it, the unique vision of the artists. Bryan's website and work constantly reflects how the newest and funnest of technologies can be put to the service of students. As I hope to impact physical education and recreation - bringing it back to play - Bryan hopes to affect college education. And though our success may have not yet been actually noticed, we are managing to increase the possibility for things to be more fun, in many slight, but profound ways.
The following is an idea from the folks at the Halfbakery, "a communal database of original, fictitious inventions, edited by its users. It was created by people who like to speculate, both as a form of satire and as a form of creative expression." So, this should give you some idea about what to expect - creativity combined with unfettered wackiness and irreverence.
Someone called "ldischler" came up with this half-baked idea: "Stringball resembles soccer, except the ball is one meter in diameter, and is very heavy, being solid string. One end is tied to a peg, and as the game progresses, the stringball unwinds. As it slowly shrinks, the game goes faster and faster until no more ball."
And here are the first three contributions from a virtual plethora of playful personae:
Perhaps there could be an additional player for each team whose job it is to 'peg down' the string. One player per side; the new peg can only be added between the ball itself and the last peg to be placed. Obviously, either "pegger" would be vulnerable to body-checking when not in the act of pegging the string. Suddenly, this game begins to sound like Quidditch. Trout, Nov 08 2004
Count me in, I wanna play too.....do we have to kick the ball, or could we have a hockey-style stick with a razor blade on it? When the string is cut, you are penalized, the string is restaked at that point and play begins anew. I think shin guards might be a good idea too..... normzone, Nov 08 2004
"...and certain lengths of the string could be elastic for added boingy." "If the string breaks while in play the team having had possession at the time of the break loses points or" an eye.... Cubical_View, Nov 09 2004
Enough said. Add large balls of string, yarn, and rubber bands to your Junkmasters' toolkit. And then read the entire halfbaked sports collection.
Homemade percussion tells you, for example, how to make musical instruments from, for example, a colander, and other miscellaneous household bowls, or perhaps water jugs. Seriously. Instruments, made out of those water-fountain-size water bottles, that you can make music with. Really. Real music. As evidenced by Water Ritual 6" (see this for more.)
It's only after you've had all the fun of inventing a junkyard sport that you're ready for the fun of playing it. Really ready. Because it's your game, don't you know. And I think it's the same thing with homemade instruments. You make them. And what you play on them is somehow in some way uniquely and entirely yours. So you want to make them better. Same thing with a junkyard sport. The more fun it proves to be, the more time and care people take in creating it again. After a while, it all tends to get very, well, exotic. Like the Ceramic/fishskin Hibachi drum, for example, and the group Boomwhacker.
Homemade percussion is but a section of the Rhythmweb. Stu explains: "From the Mid-East to Australia, and from South Africa to Europe to New Orleans to Brazil to Papua, New Guinea, musicians are connecting. Truly, rhythm is a universal language, love of music a universal love...Our mission is to further the use of rhythm, music, and percussion & related arts as a healing tool." The result: a resonantly rich resource.
Julian Dibbell's "primary source of income is the sale of imaginary goods." He is also a deep thinker and widely-read cyberculture pundit.
In this article from his weblog, he shares some thoughtworthy insights about the evolution of the play-money connection:
"I began my involvement with Ultima Online as a player, and I took up this enterprise wondering if it might not lead me to an El Dorado I have looked for all my adult life: a place where work is play.
"It didn't, of course. Not exactly. It took work to make Play Money, and the work was hard, and more to the point, the work did not fit any definition of play handed down to us by tradition. It was not simply a diversion from the path of life; it was the path itself, for a time, and just as fraught with existential care as that path ever is.
"The funny thing is, though, that more and more nowadays this curious confusion of entertainment and existence is the definition of play. The games we choose for our amusement are becoming so complex, so involving, that the line between gameplay and career, between gameworld and society, begins to blur. In the course of this project, I met many players of UO who were just as much laborers in the UO economy, even if they wouldn't have said so themselves. I also encountered ethical dilemmas, questions of economic justice even, that would never have troubled me as they did if the economy in question were merely a game.
"What this says about the culture we are building, and about the strange promise of the technologies that increasingly shape that culture, I'm not quite certain. But you can rest assured that if the book Play Money ever gets written, these will be its central questions."
This image from the Streetplay photo library captures the spirit of Sandlot Baseball even better than pictures of kids in uniforms playing on a baseball diamond. What prompted me to share this photo was an email from a friend quoting this article in Sunday's New York Times Magazine (free registration is required if you want to view this article).
I just can't stop thinking about Subbuteo. Subbuteo. Subbuteo. With these cool accurate miniature punching baglike players that you flick, that's correct, flick. Into the ball and/or into the opposing accurately-rendered, punching-baglike players. I mean, it's so cool. It kinda concentrates all your athleticism into your finger tip. And, boy, can you get good at it! And I don't mean just physically. But just like a real soccer player, you can get strategic, if you know what I mean, because, unlike the games it mirrors, we each get our own turn, unhindered. As if we were playing some sort of billiards. Billiards, you say? Indeed.
Bryan Alexander
Julian Dibbell