If You Build A Stoop, They Will Come: Wisconsin’s Stoopball League Of America

Each year, people from across the country descend on southern Wisconsin for a tournament dedicated to stoopball, the largely extinct form of street baseball that was popular in major cities after World War II.

Grantland, 2013

Along County Road X, just outside the farming village of Clinton, Wisconsin, stands a large white house with a wraparound porch that, for one day each year, is also a home run fence. Two of its pillars are foul poles, shaded yellow; chalk marks on the yard designate foul lines and lead to a miniature dirt infield, where a three-step concrete staircase rests in front of a backstop. Displayed on the backstop is an old-fashioned scoreboard titled “Stoopball League of America.”