Kids' ball games

[Wilson Gray]

As is typically the case, when I was a kid, we played various ball
games. By coincidence, I learned all of the athletic games that I've
ever played in St. Louis.

The first game that I learned was called "soccerball." This was
definitely not the same game as soccer. All of us boys simply got
together en masse and kicked a soccer ball from one end of the playing
field - a vacant lot across the alley from the school - to the other
and back again till we got too tired to continue. No rules, no scoring,
no losers or winners.

Other games were named with their standard names and played
more-or-less according to the standard rules, with a single exception.

Even though the rules of play were the standard ones, *all* black kids
called playground baseball - both the game and the ball itself -
"leagueball" [lIgbOwl]. Since there were no exceptions, my guess is
that this usage had become traditional long before my family left
Texas. Only the professional game, as played by the Cardinals and the
Browns - the latter team lives on as the Baltimore Orioles - was called
"baseball."

OTOH, white kids called the playground game "hardball."

-Wilson Gray