OT: Name Your Best Neighborhood Game

Capture the Harbaugh.

Capture the flag or street hockey.

Tackle football, also wiffle ball in summer.

Growing up in Virginia, we played a version of baseball. Whiffle ball bat and a tennis ball.

We played in the big park across the street from my house at like 1 in the morning. Hide in the bushes and scare the shit out of the guy trying to tag you.

Used to play capture the flag after sundown and the whole neighborhood was cool with it so we literally could go through everyone's yards and in all the streets. It was quite epic. Also playing touch football and pretending to be Desmond Howard and Amani Toomer,among others was pretty fun too.

Or my all time favorite although not politically correct, smear the queer!

street hockey where everybody had their old sticks and the blades got worn down by the pavement and started to look more like knives.  kind of like 'wayne's world', when a car came down the street and we all yelled 'car!'

500 was the other game we played.  one guy would hit the ball out to us and if you caught it on the fly it was something like 100 pts, grounder was 50, etc.  kind of like full-contact outfield play.  the first guy to 500 then got to be the batter.   it was helped along by all of us doing our best imitation of the tv announcers back then, 'george kell and larry osterman.  it's bright, sun-shinny day here at tiger stadium'.   only slightly less wonderful than ernie harwell. 

Road hockey. Plain and simple.

"Doctor" with the girl next door.

Whiffle ball. Pitchers hand out always created serious controversy.

I grew up in a small community in the UP. There were about 8 kids who were all roughly my age who lived in my neighborhood. Our parents pretty much gave us the run of the neighborhood  and we played every kind of game you can imagine. We used to play what we simply called "Guns." "Guns" usually happened at night and was basically hide and go seek in teh dark while you pretended to shoot people with toy guns. I spent an entire summer or two convinced I was going to grow up and be John Rambo. Hell we'd use the daylight hours to plan our strategies and scout terrain. Fun times. 

We played a lot of baseball/basketball/football, manhunt, and ding dong ditch.. Also I have a forest behind my house that we turned into a "bmx track." Had be careful or a hanging branch would knock you off of your bike on one of the turns.

Lower the hoop and have a dunk contest.  

Ghost in the grave yard and sardines. We also played a lot of tackle football. We would also pretend to be Desmond Howard and see who could make the best diving catches.

We had lazer tag capture the flag. SO LEGIT.

3 games:

Man hunt -  Basically tag in NYC streets, climbing scaffolds, jumping roof to roof, running in the middle of the street.  In retrospect, not sure how i didn't die, but i did have to get stitches on my head once...explains a lot.

Skelsies - a new york past time for kids. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skully_%28game%29  Not sure if y'all played this in the midwest, but milk caps, boxes and you could be a legend with the flick of a finger.

 

Personal favorite:

Stick ball - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/nyregion/theyre-still-swinging-for-th…

 

 

I grew up with a group of guys I'm still in contact with today. We played all the classics....

The Game (not what your thinking) hide and seek at night using a whole neighborhood block.

Whiffle Ball, one of us had the perfect back yard set up for it. The fences were perfect distances.

Goal line stance, we'd play this right after Christmas. Go out and collect people's Christmas trees from the side of the road. We would pile them up in a line. One kid had the ball on one side of the trees and the defense was on the other side. Ball carrier would run and jump over the trees and try to make it over while the defense would try to keep him in trees. Trees simulated the collision of OL and DL. Lots of fun, but you needed layers of clothes otherwise the trees roughed you up a bit!

Football

Rock wars. Neighbors and I would throw small landscaping rocks at each other simulating warfare. Became very dangerous after some time but built character.

My best friend and I got into this game, no idea how we came up with it, but basically one of us would shoot a basketball from the sidewalk (about the distance of an NBA 3) and if it was made you got a point and then the other guy would 'start' until a miss.  At that point wherever the ball stopped, that's where the next guy shot from until 7 points were made.  We had some epic makes and long grueling games.  Always a challenge at either his place or mine with both having different obstacles.

Was good times.

Kick the Can, Spud, or the politically incorrect Smear the Queer.

throwing a tennis ball off the curb--scoring based on baseball hits depending on where the ball landed--if caught, too short or too wide=out.  Lots of bored pickle.  Competitive wiffle ball where the highlight was hitting a runner flush on the calf--a painful out.

It's not a neighborhood game per se, but I loved 2 on 2 lounge soccer my Freshman year in Bursley.  What a great way to blow off steam.

Bb gun wars at a river not far from my neighborhood. we would stick bottle rockets in the end of our bb guns and light them to fire off as "missles." Good times. 

Graveyard Tag

Football, hockey in the winter on a backyard ice rink, red rover.

Wallball, all day every day.

Lots of make-believe military-ish stuff, some German Spotlight and other variants of "tag/hide-and-seek" games, pick-up sports of any kind. I preferred roller hockey because I sucked at everything else.  

Specifically, racing these: