Stickball has always been a way for New York City kids to play a style of baseball in the concrete jungle streets when a field was not so easily accessible.
In 2017, two best friends from Plainedge took it a step further and organized a whole league around stickball and based it on a turf baseball field.
Evan Hirschbaum and Johnnie LaRossa grew up with the game of stickball, but they wanted it to be something bigger than just something that could be played amongst childhood pals. The “One Bounce Stickball League” started as a 6-team league that summer with a 12-game schedule and playoffs.
The rules are similar to that of baseball. A ball caught in the air is an out as well as beating a runner to the base with the ball. You can also peg the runner with the tennis ball used as the object of play. A game consists of 6 innings— each inning lasting 2 outs.
A pitched ball must be lobbed and bounced once before reaching the batter. A team can hold 8 players on their roster, but are only allowed to play 5 at a time.
Recently, Hirschbaum and LaRossa have organized fall tournaments to be played here on the Island. On Sunday, they finished up their 2nd annual November Classic tournament.
“We had another solid turnout that included 18 teams from all over Long Island, New Jersey, the Bronx, and even L.A.,” said Hirschbaum. “We had the Massapequa Coast Little League team that played in this past year’s Little League World Series form their own team, which was pretty cool.”
The prospect of a 15U division has come about now that the interest from the young Massapequa team has emerged.
Every tournament hosted has a cash prize for the winning team. This past weekend was a $4,000 prize. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t cooperate and they had to wash out the end of the tournament.
Eventually, the OBSL wants to host a 64-team March Madness tournament, just like the NCAA basketball tournament. They would also like to return to having a weekly league like they had back in 2017.
“We were very happy with some of the the new connections we made with the younger teams that are very excited to join our future tournaments and are going to bring us more teams to participate,” said Hirschbaum. “Overall we feel this past weekend’s tournament was extremely productive.”
Hirschbaum and LaRossa reach out to local businesses to advertise in their tournaments and help generate revenue to pay the umpires, scorekeepers and social media crew that all help make the tournaments run.
If you’re interested in joining in on the fun, there will be a tournament held December 16-18 with a $200 entry fee and of course, the major cash prize. You can register your team by directly messaging their Instagram account: @obsl_. There you can see highlights and past champions as well.
Stickball is on the rise here on Long Island. It’s a fun weekend event for a group of friends looking to do something on a weekend or join a competitive league in the future. It’s very exciting to see what is in store for the OBSL.
Get connected with Evan and Johnnie and get your bounce on!
