How stickball became the signature sport of New York City

"Second base was the manhole, third base was the red car," Kim Ng, childhood stickball player and current commissioner of the AUSL, told me in a recent interview. "We didn't have the facilities like there are now. So, we made do."

Stickball is a sport that has been played in urban areas all over the world, probably since the early 1900s. But the first place that comes to mind when you think of it is New York City.

A place where baseball has such a storied history, where actual equipment for the game can be hard to come by, where there's also just lots of concrete -- and not a ton of grass.

There are various versions of stickball played in the Big Apple, but they mostly all involve a broomstick handle bat and a pink rubber ball known as a Spaldeen.

Some iterations of the game take place on a handball court, where a pitcher tries to fire the ball past a hitter standing in front of a concrete-walled strike-zone. Hits are measured by the distance the ball travels off the bat. If that doesn't pump you up to venture out to your local playground looking for a game, maybe this ultimate hype video will.

There's also another version, where there are regular bases and fielders just like any normal baseball matchup, but the hitter tosses the ball to him or herself. The origins of this game seem to have started in the Bronx. There are legitimate leagues and former pros playing. As Ng told me, "A bit more organized than we were in the 1970s." Here, things can get just a little bit intense.

Then there's the stickball that's likely the most familiar to the majority of people. The one Billy Joel sings about in "Keeping the Faith," the one you see in old black-and-white photographs from Brooklyn. It's the closest style to baseball.

It has a pitcher and fielders and a hitter. It's more of a pickup nature, on whatever street is in your neighborhood, with cars or sewers or someone's shirt used as bases. It's what Ng played all the time growing up in Fresh Meadows, Queens.

"It's pickup stickball," Ng remembered. "It was knocking on doors, saying, 'Hey, who wants to play?'"

It's what Willie Mays stepped out to participate in one afternoon on the streets of Harlem.

Still, no matter the variation that's played, all the versions share a common characteristic: They're about community, and sharing the passion for a ball-and-bat sport in a city that runs on the Yankees and Mets. They're about squeezing the concepts and competitiveness of baseball into tiny square blocks or on outdoor basketball courts or in rundown parking lots under low-hanging bridges because, well, you'll do anything to play.

You love it that much.