Robservations: Grab a cup and have a ball
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And while that statement is still just as true today as it has been throughout the history of baseball, some of the more fond memories of my youth have apparently become just that — memories.
As a youngster, I can remember “The Ballparks” being our regular stop for fun on a summer night. Maybe your team had a game, maybe it didn’t. But you still found yourselves out at the Civic Center complex two or three times a week, cheering on your friends’ teams and having the kind of free fun that seems so hard to come by as you get older.
Now, though, I see less and less of that kind of fun.
For instance, whatever happened to cupball?
You remember cupball, don’t you? No equipment, no scoreboard, no nothing. Just a group of kids, doing their part to keep the ballparks clean by picking up other people’s discarded soda cups and using them for a modified game of baseball.
Looking back, I realize it wasn’t the most sanitary sport in the world. Heaven only knows where some of those cups had been. But back then, nobody worried about it. You just took one cup, wadded it up, placed it into another cup and repeated the process until you had a decent-sized ball. Four more cups, stomped flat, and there are your bases.
Now the older, more veteran players used to take things one step further with their homemade equipment, tearing the bottom out of another cup and cutting a hole for their thumb — a ready-made batting glove.
For hours on end you could watch these games go on, with fully-stocked rosters, or “ghost-men” if there weren’t quite enough people willing to play.
Nowadays, you still see games of whiffleball on vacant fields, but to me it’s just not quite the same as a good, old-fashioned cupball matchup.
It’s kind of sad, when you think about it, and it makes me wonder what happened to the grand old game. But now, I think I’ve got it.
The parks are just too clean these days! No one can get any good cups, thanks to all the environmentally conscious fans who make sure there isn’t any litter on the ground!
Now of course I’m not promoting litter in this column. That would be just downright silly. But couldn’t some of you moms and dads out there just “accidentally” drop a few cups from time to time, to help keep the tradition of cupball alive?
If you can’t then couldn’t the ballparks re-institute the old “return all foul balls to the concession stand for a free coke” rule?
As a matter of fact, whatever happened to that policy? When did it go out of style?
Back in the good old days, you’d see kids killing each other to get to a foul ball, each of them anticipating the sweet, sweet taste of the free small soda they’d receive if they were the lucky one to come away with the prize.
But at some point in the past, someone decided foul balls were no longer worth a free coke, and the tradition died.
At roughly the same point in the past, those traditional cupball games began drawing less and less participation, and eventually they died, as well — their once famous fields falling victim to bleacher expansion and picnic tables.
Coincidence?
I think not.