Kids, Baby Boomers and Unstructured Play
by Ali Cahill
In an un-air-conditioned office at the top of the PSA building on 33rd and Powelton Streets, Ron Bishop, culture and communications professor, sits comfortably in a desk chair, legs crossed, remembering his childhood and the many pick-up games of baseball and hockey he used to play. Bishop's recent book, When Play Was Play, analyzes the importance of pick-up games for children, especially today, when kids have less and less time to be kids. His own memories, and those of the subjects he interviewed for the book, leave a nostalgic smile on his face that seems to make him forget the heat outside.
ASK: Your book is a textual analysis of sports and pick-up games, which is an interesting combination of two opposite topics – like combining the poets and the jocks in high school. Did you enjoy analyzing sports?
Ron Bishop: Yeah. I've always been a sports fan, since I was a kid. And I loved playing all kinds of different sports. Baseball mainly is my favorite. But I realized at an early age that my ability level and my desire to play in the Major Leagues just didn't mesh, although I still have the fantasy that the Mets, who are playing so badly, will call me up and ask me to pitch. But we played a lot of different kinds of games in and around my house in Maplewood, New Jersey where I grew up. We made up rules, we created equipment. But they were just very, very resonant experiences, stuff that we didn't know we were learning at the time, about solving problems and just hanging out, which is something I think we don't value very much today, since everything we do has to have a purpose, and every task we undertake eventually has to be a line on a resume somewhere, unfortunately…I just felt that with everything happening today, where folks are really over-scheduled, especially kids, that maybe the time was right to take a look at the social significance of these games. And I was going in wondering if kids actually still had time to play.
ASK: How about analyzing your childhood – that's a very English-major thing to do – did you enjoy analyzing it and what was the process like?
RB: I did actually, and a few colleagues were not really concerned about the format the book takes, I guess, because each of the chapters, as you realize by now, begins with a personal story which is the bridge to analysis of the different areas of pick-up games. And it was really cathartic and nice to go back to those stories…it gave me a chance to really consider how valuable those experiences were: playing hockey in front of my house, and even breaking the windows in my garage with a baseball. And what they sort of indirectly taught me, even as I was breaking the windows in the garage playing baseball in the backyard. I would break them and my dad would make me earn the money to go fix them…One of the works in the book that really helped me focus the message was Eric Eisenberg's work on "jamming," impromptu gatherings on the basketball court, which he likens, these pick-up games, to a jazz group getting together and sort of riffing [on a tune or] making up tunes…I think one of the most important things I see, at least in my little part of the world, is that that kind of thrown-together experience doesn't happen for kids anymore. They don't get to just go down to the park and hang out and see who's there and play a pick-up game. In my neighborhood in Delaware, which is a wonderful neighborhood with lots of wonderful families, I'm struck constantly by how little I see the kids out playing. There are little ones that run around on their tricycles, but the slightly older kids of 10, 12, 14, that age, junior high-age, there's not much going on because they're all off in organized activities, rather than just being given the time to make stuff up on their own, just hang out or even do nothing... [Writing the book] forced me to go back and make contact with all the folks who are mentioned – the Taylor brothers, and Chris Young and Joe Cool and all those guys and see what they were up to. And it turns out I wasn't the only one who was feeling this way about those experiences, as evidenced by the number of folks who sent me their stories.
ASK: What is (or was) the allure of the pick-up game?
RB: I think it's freedom…[Today,] we have very, very full, rich lives, and so, especially with some of the blurry boundaries in different parts of those lives, work leading into home life, taking care of older parents, there's no time to just crash and feel [free from responsibility]. And I think that's why one of the reasons that the folks who shared these stories with me seemed to really enjoy it, because it gave them the sense of going back to that time where all that after school meant was shooting baskets with friends or just—as I mention in the one chapter—hanging out on the front porch on my house. It was sort of the social center for our little clique of friends. And we would some days do absolutely nothing but have soda, hang out, and then go our separate ways. But it was just that chance to almost regroup – maybe that's the word for it. We don't get the chance to mentally regroup anymore. And that's to me a big part of what those experiences can teach us now…[S]ociety kind of preaches that we're supposed to be "on" and thinking and doing and accomplishing and achieving all the time; no matter what we choose to do, no matter how mundane the activity or operation is, we're supposed to be taking something from it. [The pick-up games]…were just playing, [although important in their own way]. There's a lot of authors' work that I touch on in the one early chapter that will attest that cognitive development, problem-solving skills, better inter-personal skills [are learned through such things as pick-up games.] [A] lot of scholars have come along lately and have been saying, "We have to give kids a chance to do this, otherwise they don't enhance those skills; they don't learn how to think on their feet, they don't learn how to do a lot of things."
ASK: Do you think the pick-up game will ever be lost completely?
RB: No, and that's one of the things that was a real joy in writing the book. [G]oing into writing the book, I was concerned…that kids never played, so I was really thrilled in my interviews with Christopher and the other kids to learn that they still play. They still make up games, they still have a lot of fun. The problem or the issue is finding time to fit it in around all the other stuff that they're up to. But they still manage to find time periodically to play…My favorite game [that they play] was "tenockey," a mixture of tennis and hockey. The goal is either in front of the porch or in front of the house, and they use tennis rackets instead of sticks to play—ingenious, fun and goofy…[I]t really warmed my heart to know that, at least in that little hamlet of America, they were still out making up games. And again, not necessarily learning anything from it, but just having fun. I was thrilled to hear that.
ASK: What do you think will happen to children of this coming generation whose only interactions are on Facebook and Xbox Live? Does this still count as play? Do you think the idea of the "pick-up game" will evolve to fit today's media?
RB: Well, I'm sort of a late-comer to Facebook and MySpace, but I have noticed that there's a lot of what could count for similar activity on Facebook. I mean, the quizzes that everybody takes: the five Michael Jackson songs, and those things. In a way, those are play. I think communication scholars especially are really guilty of saying that the next great development or next great technology means the doom of interaction or communication or intelligence or whatever. And it never happens because we sort of adapt the technology to our personalities, to what we want, our goals and ambitions. And I'm not saying it's the same in the sense of "let's grab the ball and go shoot some hoops," but in some ways it sort of is. I do worry that we do tend to use technologies to sort of insulate ourselves, and create these custom worlds where we're not reaching out to engage ideas that we might find distasteful or challenging or anything. We have what we want, and that's it. So that does sort of worry me a little. But human beings adapt and are very intelligent, and we'll eventually reach out, but I just worry that, as with the pick-up games, to maybe push the metaphor too far, they don't come out of their rooms to go out and find other kids on the street, that's my only worry.
ASK: What kinds of urban games, other than stickball, did you play as a child, or learn about in your research for the book?
RB: From my wife, I learned about kick the can, which has to do with throwing a can; it's almost like hopscotch. [Your editor, who grew up in South Philly], actually turned me onto buck-buck, which is also a dated reference. The first person grabs a telephone pole, and then they form a chain of people off of the pole, and then people run to try to jump on people's backs and break the chain. A lot of these games were not the most pro-social in the world. There was a lot of one-upmanship and competition and anger and fighting and over-masculinity…Most of the games were spins on baseball or softball, football, or trying to figure out how to play a game of baseball with just four people, a hitter and three outfielders, and assigning points, and the first person to catch so many points got to bat. My friend Nick, who's also in the book, made up floor hockey in the hallway, which drove his mother crazy. [B]rooms and a ball of socks [were used as the equipment], and if you turned the "puck" over 10 times, then you got to go play on offense. The majority of what I found were takes on existing sports adapted to fit space and equipment and the stuff you had to play with...Just the sheer range of ingenuity that was expressed in those stories was pretty amazing. On our street, the big [game] was baseball. You have to envision our street, which was kind of flat and long. We would make the telephone pole first base, a mitt out in the middle of the street for second base, and the curb numbers [on the sidewalk] were third base, and home plate. And we'd have people stationed under the one street lamp, and that was center field…[I]t was tons of fun, but it was mostly just adapting existing games to fit what we had [in space, equipment, and people] at the time; the number of people we had was of course the biggest determining factor.
ASK: There was no one game you played when you were little that you were the champion of?
RB: I scored a lot of goals in hockey: 378, which shows you how accurate our scoring system was.
ASK: What do you think was the greatest moment in sports history?
RB: All-time?
ASK: All-time.
RB: Well, let's see. I guess I should preface this: I'm a big Mets fan. So there's actually two [moments]. One was when the Mets won the World Series in 1969 when I was eight, and I remember it very distinctly because, first of all, the games were on in the daytime, which is very rare these days, and my fourth grade teacher allowed us to watch one of the day-time games in class, on a gigantic old television monitor that they used to use. [It was] game 3 or 4 of the '69 series, and I was hooked on baseball and the Mets from that point on. Then in '86, they won the series again, and it was the famous [game where] Bill Buckner of the Red Sox let the ball go through his legs in the 9th inning of game 6, and I was at Bridget Foy's on South Street, following the game and hanging on every pitch, and I just remember leaping with joy when the Mets got the last out and won the World Series. Unfortunately, they haven't won one since. Those would probably be one and two, and then the Rams winning the Super Bowl in 2000 is up there as well…But again, a lot of [the big moments] are tied to friends and family and what we were doing at the time. When Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run to break Babe Ruth's record in the non-steroid era, I was sitting there with my mom and we were watching the game; it was April, '74, and I was 13. And I just remember giving her a big hug and shouting at the TV screen and thinking, "Oh man, this is great!" So that would have to rank up there as a pretty high memory.
ASK: Anything else you want to add or talk about?
RB: One of the things that came out of the review process was a lot of people said a lot of nice things about the book, and I'm very grateful for that. I had one reviewer who sent back a really nice note which…said, "This could be the Bible of the rediscovery of the play movement," and I remember sitting there thinking to myself, "That's not really what I want to accomplish." I don't want it to turn into motivational posters or anything like that. I just want parents to maybe pick up the book and say, "You know what, maybe it's okay for me to let my kid just go out and shoot hoops for three hours after dinner and not worry about them." I know that my mom and dad kept their eyes on us; it's not like we were out there completely unfettered or unobserved, but they just kind of let us do it. And there were skinned knees, and I actually knocked one of my brother's front teeth out playing baseball once, so there were mishaps. But they were our mishaps…I've noticed a lot of adults, Boomers like myself, who have started kickball leagues. There's one in Philadelphia, the World Kickball Federation, where it's a bunch of folks my age getting together to play kickball, which is great, but it's almost like that's something you should be teaching your kids. It's their game, share it with them, let them go out and play. The kids stand on the sidelines, and that's not the point. When they say to you, "Can I go hang out with my friends?" and go out and play, instead of saying, "Oh, you might get kidnapped," just say, "Yeah, go ahead, have fun." And don't worry about it as much as you can. Just let them go out and play and see what kinds of adventures they can get into, and that would be that.
