Five members of the AJC sports staff list the yard sports they played while growing up.
1. Carroll Rogers
For all my time in the yard playing with boys in the neighborhood — cops-n-robbers, Cowboys-n-Indians, kick the can, freeze tag — the game I remember most is “Kill the Man with the Ball,” probably because I was the only girl. You toss up the tennis ball and whoever catches it gets mauled by everybody else. Somehow we ended up laughing, and nobody — not even me — ran home crying to Mama.
2. Chris Vivlamore
One of the benefits of growing up with an acre of backyard was that it provided plenty of room for a Wiffle Ball field. My brother and I built one every summer — complete with bases, a pitcher’s mound and an outfield fence. OK, the fence was just several propped-up long foot-wide boards. But it delineated home runs when perforated plastic ball met the sweet spot of the long yellow plastic bat. One-on-one games, complete with daily stats of home runs and strikeouts recorded in a notebook, passed many a summer day of my youth.
3. D. Orlando Ledbetter
When it was recess time in the fifth grade in Mr. Turner’s class, the fun was about to begin. It was time to play “Kill the Man with the Ball (Chalkboard eraser).” Someone would grab an eraser from the chalkboard and sneak it outside. That would serve as our football. On a gravel field next to George Washington Carver Elementary School in St. Louis, we would throw the ball in the air. Someone would grab it and try to elude the tacklers for a touchdown. If tackled, the runner would throw the ball in the air and the scrum would continue.
4. Steve Hummer
Thank all that is good that no one developed the lot two houses down from my childhood home until well after my childhood had passed. It was an oversized lot, mowed in equal share by the kind people who lived on either side. Big enough to play home run derby with a real baseball. We often invented our own freestyle kind of football and called it “Kill the Man With The Ball.” It was kind of rugby meets Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. There were no fatalities.
5. Tim Ellerbee
When you grow up in Byron, you can do a lot with a couple of acres. Three basketball goals. Hand-built nine-hole putt-putt with flat-sided fence posts as side boards. A bicycle race course with mandatory pit stops on race days. Closed-field baseball with catcher in full gear. Hand-built go-carts that raced down Pine Hill Circle. And yes, we kicked extra points during our football games over a long pole hung between two pines (kicking style inspired by Jan Stenerud). An amazing selection for yard-ball sports. A great upbringing.
