A Spalding Hi-Bounce Ball, often called a Spaldeen or a Pensie Pinkie, is a rubber ball, described as a

tennis ball A tennis ball is a small, hollow ball used in games of tennis and real tennis. Tennis balls are fluorescent yellow in Professional sports, professional competitions, but in Amateur sports, recreational play other colors are also used. Tennis bal ...

core without the felt. These balls are commonly used in

street game A street game or street sport is a sport or game that is played on city streets rather than a prepared game field, field. Street games are usually simply play time activities for children in the most convenient venue. Some street games have ris ...

s developed in the mid-20th century, such as

Chinese handball Chinese handball is a form of American handball popular on the streets of New York City, Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. st ...

(a variation on

American handball American handball, known as handball in the United States and sometimes referred to as wallball, is a sport in which players use their hands to hit a small, rubber ball against a wall such that their opponent(s) cannot do the same without the ba ...

), Australian Handball, stoop ball, hit-the-penny (involving trying to make a penny flip on a sidewalk),

butts up Butts Up or Wall Ball is a North American elementary school children's playground game originating in the 1950s or earlier.. It is slightly similar to the game Screen Ball, and began in the 1940s or 1950s as a penalty phase of various city street ...

handball Handball (also known as team handball, European handball, Olympic handball or indoor handball) is a team sport in which two teams of seven players each (six outcourt players and a goalkeeper) pass a ball using their hands with the aim of thr ...

, punchball, boxball,

half-rubber Half-rubber, also known as halfball or halfies, is a bat-and-ball game similar to stick ball or baseball. The game was developed in the American South around the beginning of the 20th century, moving north with the Great Migration in New York Ci ...

, Wireball and

stickball Stickball is a street game similar to baseball, usually formed as a pick-up game played in large cities in the Northeastern United States, especially New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston. The equipment consists of a broom handle and a rubber ...

(

variations of baseball In sports Sport is a physical activity or game, often competitive and organized, that maintains or improves physical ability and skills. Sport may provide enjoyment to participants and entertainment to spectators. The number of part ...

Name

The term arose from a local pronunciation of " Spalding" in

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

, with Spalding being the

sporting goods Sports equipment, also called sporting goods, are the tools, materials, apparel, and gear, which varies in shapes, size, and usage in a particular sport. It includes balls, nets, rackets, protective gears like helmets, goggles, etc. Since the p ...

company that produced the balls. The name has become so common that Spalding now uses it in marketing, and it is now a

registered trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a form of intellectual property that consists of a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination that identifies a product or service from a particular source and distinguishes it from ot ...

. The ball is also known as a "Pensie Pinkie" or "Pennsy Pinky" referring to

Penn Racquet Sports Penn Racquet Sports, Inc. is a subsidiary of Head (company), Head N.V. that manufactures tennis balls and racquetballs. Penn was founded in 1910 as Pennsylvania Rubber Company of America, Inc. in Jeannette, Pennsylvania. Penn was acquired by H ...

, another sporting goods manufacturer brand.

History

The original Spaldeens were tennis balls that had been rejected for slight defects. Instead of throwing them away, Spalding stamped "Spalding High-Bounce Ball" on the rubber rejects and sold them cheaply to wholesalers. They were popular with children from the 1930s through to the 1970s. The balls sold for 15 cents in the 1950s. In

urban area An urban area is a human settlement with a high population density and an infrastructure of built environment. Urban areas originate through urbanization, and researchers categorize them as cities, towns, conurbations or suburbs. In urbani ...

s sparse in grass, Spaldeens became integral to many street games due to their bounciness and light weight. Players of these games at the time said of the spaldeen, if dropped from a person's eye height, it would rebound to half of their total height. Citing the declining popularity of stickball, Spalding took the ball off the market in 1979, but it returned in 1999 to much fanfare. After reintroducing spaldeens in 1999, Spalding sold more than 2 million in the first year. In his memoir, New York Senator

Chuck Schumer Charles Ellis Schumer ( ; born November 23, 1950) is an American politician serving as the Seniority in the United States Senate, senior United States Senate, United States senator from New York (state), New York, a seat he has held since 1999. ...

recalls playing slapball with spaldeens as a child growing up in Brooklyn, and refers to the baseball-inspired game and its bouncy ball as his era's

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

Colors

Rubber handball autographed by Kevin Rudd

Since its return in 1999 Spaldeens have been manufactured in a variety of colors in addition to

pink Pink is a pale tint of red, the color of the Dianthus plumarius, pink flower. It was first used as a color name in the late 17th century. According to surveys in Europe and the United States, pink is the color most often associated with charm, p ...

. Some of them are

black Black is a color that results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without chroma, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness.Eva Heller, ''P ...

blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB color model, RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB color model, RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between Violet (color), violet and cyan on the optical spe ...

green Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by a com ...

, orange,

purple Purple is a color similar in appearance to violet light. In the RYB color model historically used in the arts, purple is a secondary color created by combining red and blue pigments. In the CMYK color model used in modern printing, purple is ...

red Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–750 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a seconda ...

, and

yellow Yellow is the color between green and orange on the spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a dominant wavelength of roughly 575585 nm. It is a primary color in subtractive color systems, used in painting or color printing. In t ...

Notes

{{Reflist

External links

Spaldeen.com
(Spalding's promotional site for the ball) Balls Ball games Street games

Name

History

Colors

See also

Notes

External links