South Philly Review

Good times didn't necessarily equal high-priced toys during Joe"Bag-A-Donuts" Sbaraglia's younger years. Money was scarce, so some crumpled newspaper and a little imagination were the only things he needed to have fun.

"We were poor, but we didn't know it because all of our friends and relatives were poor," Sbaraglia, who was raised on the 1100 block of Mifflin Street, recalled."So to play the game, we couldn't afford a $12.95 football, so we made our own out of paper."

Relying on simplicity and ingenuity, Sbaraglia and his buds used broom handles and bottle caps as equipment, spending countless hours playing outdoors - that is, until their mothers beckoned them to return home.

Though he hasn't hit a"half ball" in 45 years, Sbaraglia, now 67, got the opportunity to relive his youth when he starred in a documentary filmed last week that highlighted Philadelphia's most famous street games and their proper execution.

Partly recorded in Port Richmond, the film titled"Philly Street Games" captures a few seniors playing favorites like half ball - known as pimple ball or stickball by some - and jump rope. Introducing a new generation to the pastimes, youths from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Philadelphia also were filmed taking a crack at the games.

The documentary's organizers plan to shoot the entire film in five weeks at various locations in the city, including South Philly.

While today's adolescents may prefer spending their free time instant messaging or listening to music on iPods, Sbaraglia, of the 1800 block of South Watts Street, would like them to be aware of a simpler time.

"In today's environment, what would the kids do without electricity?" posed the senior, who wrote five books documenting his experiences growing up in the area.

THE DOCUMENTARY WAS produced by George Holmes, who was raised on the border of Kensington and Port Richmond. He has written two books and produced three documentaries, including"Tun Tavern," which is a tribute to this historically significant meeting place in the city's Colonial history. Holmes said he strives to"find these little gems of Philadelphia that everyone seems to have forgotten about."

Unscripted, Holmes' newest venture, which developed through chats with a friend about the games they once played, begins with a group of kids engaged with video games around a television. The power goes out and the old-timers then lure the children outside to show them what they did for fun.

Holmes, 54, is no stranger to these popular games of the 1950s, '60s and '70s.

"Freedom," a more intense version of hide-and-seek, was his favorite. Sbaraglia preferred"Dead Box," also known as"Bones." A rectangle was sketched on the ground with chalk with a skull and crossbones drawn and boxed in its center. Numbers were drawn in boxes along the rectangle's perimeter. The final number, 13, flanked the skull and crossbones.

Players would attempt to flick"beeries," or bottle caps, into the boxes. If your beery landed on the skull and crossbones or if an opponent bumped you into this box three times, you had to restart. The first to consecutively land their beeries into all 13 boxes and finally into the skull box won.

STEP ASIDE, PHILLIES. Stickball was Philadelphia's favorite pastime back in the day. Using broom handles or similar objects, offensive players would attempt to hit a half ball into designated sections, giving them a single, double, triple or home run. If defense caught the ball, the player was out.

"I want to take everything back to the way things were," Holmes said of his documentary,"where kids would sit around and make up the rules of a game and execute the game and where parents didn't try to live in the eyes of their children."

Since the games varied by neighborhood, Holmes jokingly added he received satisfaction witnessing the arguments over the "correct" rules.

"Not only was it a part of kids' lives, it was a part of the neighborhood," he said of the games."You knew the name of the game by the neighborhood you came from."