SOUND: Stickball Boulevard

On a side street off White Plains Road in the Bronx—just past the Jimmy Jazz and the Lot Less and the Five Below—you might spot a pile of capsized Lime e-scooters on a street corner. A pink rubber ball might come hurtling toward you, followed by shouts of “Playballplayball!”

You’ve happened upon Stickball Boulevard, a two-block-long side street that, for almost forty years, from Memorial Day to Columbus Day (as those I met call it), transforms into a mecca for one of New York City’s oldest street games.

Stickball Boulevard is not easy to reach by public transit—hence the pile of e-scooters. You have to take the 5/6 train, followed by a long, slow ride on the Bx5 bus. Most players are from the Bronx, but some travel each weekend from as far as Pennsylvania and upstate New York; there’s a livestream on Twitter for those who can’t make it in person. But the thing about Bronx stickball is that “it’s not just a game. It’s a tradition,” as Russell, a longtime player, tells me, pointing out the league’s slogan. It’s one of the few sports that grandparents, parents, and kids can all play together.

Russell is fifty-three and hasn’t yet aged out of the game. “I met my best friends here. I’ve been coming here since I was a little boy, and my son plays with me now. Everyone here is family.” He mentions an over-forty tournament down in Florida that he’s thinking of entering… but it’s clear his heart is here in the Bronx, on Stickball Boulevard.

And indeed, lined up along the sidewalk—which serves as the bleachers—are people of all ages sitting in quad chairs: toddlers on iPads, teen girls in crop tops, moms scooping Arizona ice teas out of coolers. Crocs with Jibbitz charms are scattered across the asphalt. Tweens chase each other down the sidewalk, practicing their swings. In the chairs’ mesh cup holders sit the signature pink Spaldeen or Sky Bounce balls that, along with the stick bats, are the only equipment you need to play this sport. Bats are typically wooden mop or broom handles with grip tape strategically applied, though more formal stickball bats can be purchased for about fifty dollars. But most of the bats I saw were literally sticks, each with a personal touch. Many of the players were on baseball or softball teams as teenagers, but stickball here is a weekend game. All you need to succeed is hand-eye coordination and the ability to catch fastballs bare-handed. People spend the whole day here; cleanup starts around 7 pm.

Stickball Boulevard belies its name: it’s a sleepy street whose cracked, undulating pavement only adds intrigue to the game: How will a ball ricochet off the dips and bumps?

Joviana Mercado, the CFO of the New York Emperors Stickball League (NYESL), handles everything from permits to insurance to cleanup: her family’s team, one of more than sixteen within the league, is the Leland Legends. She tells me that a challenge of this location is that it’s hard to draw in new players and fans, since you can’t see the game happening from the main thoroughfare of White Plains Road. But on the other hand, it’s much easier to get permits to close off a side street.

But even if you can’t see Stickball Boulevard from White Plains Road, if you listen, you might be drawn toward it by the sounds of the game: the pock of the rubber ball as it hits the pavement, the puck as it’s caught for a moment in the cup of a hand after each bounce.

There are the slaps of hands on shoulders and high-fives as players and fans and families greet one another after another week gone by. There’s the swish of the sticks through the air, the smack of the bat making contact with the rubber ball, and the clack as the stick hits the pavement and the clatter as it rolls toward the curb when players fling it aside and take off running.

There are high-pitched whistles calling in plays, there’s the chant of “Let’s go play ball play ball,” and beneath it all the buzzy pump of hip-hop from portable speakers set up under tents. Early autumn leaves rain down in a breeze and scuttle across the street. As one game winds up, a player dances into the huddle shaking a bouquet of maracas, holding them above the players’ heads.

Stickball originated in New York and has been played in city streets around the country since 1750. The rules are based on those of baseball, but bases can be anything from shapes drawn in chalk to manhole covers to T-shirts thrown on the ground; here in the Bronx, they are white painted squares, which might puzzle the casual passerby on a weekday.

There’s also no pitcher: players usually bounce the ball on the pavement and hit it as it bounces up, though some throw it into the air and hit it tennis-style. The weekend I visit is is the Chino Classic, a tournament named in honor of Philip Chino Santana, founder of the NYESL team the Royals, and who died in 2018. I meet Eric, Chino’s son, who tells me, “I grew up in the South Bronx. I used to play for money on street corners. The game used to be very segregated: Blacks on one street, Hispanics on another.” He explains that at a certain point the New York Emperors League was experiencing friction between the teams, and the Chino Classic was the event that ultimately reunited the league. Though Russell tells me things can “definitely get heated,” and I do hear some cursing on the sidelines, the energy of the group is at once relaxed and serious.

There are 150 players in each league, and each league comprises several teams. Each team has seven players. The NYESL teams include, among others, the Royals, the Diamondbacks, the Leland Legands, and the Emperors, some of the oldest names in New York stickball. Joviana’s son Skylar leads the league in 2024 in number of hits. His father, Steve Mercado, Joviana’s husband, was a firefighter who died at age thirty-eight on 9/11. “We try to do our part with the community,” Joviana says, gesturing to the street. “This is their Yankee Stadium, you could say.”

A copy of a poem by Steve hangs nearby on a construction fence. One line, about Steve’s own father, speaks to the intergenerational spirit of stickball: “One Sunday morning I came out to see / This game that he spoke of with such passion and glee / My only regret is I had not joined him before / For our relationship since has become so much more / He’s not only my Dad but my best friend as well / And I’d like to thank stickball for this tale I tell / I’ve vowed that my children will have much more than I / For I will teach them to reach for the sky.”

When I get into my car to drive back to my home in Brooklyn, Google Maps tells me a handy shortcut is down Stickball Boulevard. But I take an alternate route. I know better than to disturb a New York City tradition.