For the first time in 32 years, I am spending most of my summer in Long Beach, the city where I grew up. And I am reminded of several of the patterns of summer, here by the Southern California ocean. And how we passed the time during those glorious 12 weeks or so between school years.

We didn’t go to camp. We didn’t go to school. We just played games. Board games, sometimes, especially a baseball game that I believe still exists, named Strat-o-Matic. It involved a sort of early stat-wonk analytical breakdown of real baseball teams, and by playing enough games you could achieve a sort of real-life simulation of what really happened. Though when two of us (we started with four) replayed the entire 1969 National League schedule — that would be 972 games, I believe, at about 15 minutes each — it was the Chicago Cubs who won the East, not the Miracle Mets, and it was the Willie McCovey Giants (not the Atlanta Braves) who won the West — and then the NL pennant.

Ultimately, we spent more time playing an outdoor baseball-like game named Over the Line. We spent a couple of hours a day playing, time outside, running around, completely unsupervised. And I wonder if kids do that, anymore.

About the only time I see or hear references to Over the Line, the past 20 years, are in regard to a big tournament held each summer in San Diego on a spit of sand named Fiesta Island. I covered the event once or twice for the newspaper because it’s a sort of Spring Break paean to college-kid hijinks. The main entertainments are the silly, often amusingly obscene team names … and lots of members of the opposite sex wearing nearly nothing.

We played a simpler game, the handful of adolescent (and pre-adolescent) boys, in the neighborhood, back in the 1960s.

All we needed to play were four guys (girls didn’t exist, in our sports world; sorry), a bat, at least two baseball gloves (though everyone had his own, and usually a backup) and a hard rubber baseball — basically a baseball-size (9-inch diameter, that is) softball. We used that instead of a real baseball because it lasted forever, cost less, wouldn’t break much of anything it hit and didn’t travel as far.

So we needed our own equipment. There was that. We needed our own organization. We had that. We formed and re-formed 2-on-2 competition groups at the drop of a ball (including basketballs and footballs, in season). And we needed a venue. Which I wonder if kids have anymore, in these security- and liability-conscious times.

We walked the three blocks over to the elementary school, where the big, asphalt-paved playground always was accessible. The playground gates were left open to anyone walking in off the street, day or night. Though not that many people did, and certainly not many used the baseball/softball backstop, which was our base of operations.

On that patch of asphalt, which often was plenty hot, late in a summer day (even a mile from the ocean) … we were lucky enough to encounter a batch of painted lines — for various games. What we needed was this: Lines 90 feet apart demarking the basepaths of a baseball field … and the extension of the first-to-second line into left field for some distance.

We had that. And we were set.

It was two against two. Two kids would bat. Two would be in the field. And we would play. Nine innings. At maybe an hour per game.

The rules were simple. The game is called Over the Line because if the batter hit the ball on the fly over the line between second and third — and it fell without being touched — it was a single. If it bounced before that line but passed the infielder (and bounced at least once in that long rectangle before exiting it), that was also a single.

The second fielder was in the outfield. If he kept everything in front of him, it remained a single. If it bounded past him, it was a double. If it flew over him, it was a home run. And you could get a triple but it was rare; the ball had to hit the outfielder’s glove and fall behind him. Not many triples.

And one more caveat. The batted ball had to bounce at least once in that rectangle formed by the extension of the third-base line and the first-to-second line to be considered fair. You could hit it 300 feet to dead center but that was a foul ball.

Over the Line made for lots of action. In a few hours, we would play several entire games, and all of us had a good idea of what the situation was (first and second, two outs, etc.) at any time, and if he didn’t, one of us would announce it after every at-bat. We basically never had arguments over the status of baserunners and outs.

Your teammate would lob the ball to you, and you would hack. Two strikes, and you were out. If you hit a ground ball that bounced before the second-to-third line and was fielded by the infielder, you were out. If you hit the ball in the air and either defender caught it (fair or foul) … you were out. There may have been a four-fouls-and-you’re-out rule, too. To move things along. That one I don’t remember for sure. A kid hit until he made an out, and after three outs, the hitters and fielders switched sides. And it went on until nine innings were complete.

And we would play. And play and play. All afternoon. After dinner, until it was too dark to see. It amused us. It gave us a lot of exercise, because the fielders did scads of running. And it cost us nothing. No dues, no fees, no uniforms, very little equipment. No adults paid to keep an eye on us.

The four of us who played came from the five boys of approximately the same age who grew up in the neighborhood. Ron and Rob Washam, Frankie Poturica, my brother Alan and me.

Ron was the oldest of us, and the smallest and slightest of us all. But he was without question the best hitter, which I never could understand, back before the idea of “bat speed” and “quick wrists” registered in my head. He hit by far the most home runs, and was the toughest out. He could hit low liners that fell for singles time and again, and then he would upper-cut one for a homer. He was a tough out.

I nearly always played infield, and loved fielding the ball at least as much as hitting. I was good at it. And in one game of Over the Line I probably handled as many chances at “third base” as any Little Leaguer might in a week. Or a month. To my left. To my right. Chasing foul balls to my right and left. Charging bloops. Stabbing liners. Going back for pops hit over my head and in front of the outfielder. And then firing it back to the pitcher, a good simulation of going to first base, had it been a “real” game.

I never faced real pitching. But I followed enough lobs onto the barrel of the bat … that combined with all those thousands and thousands of fielded balls, I was able to go out for high school baseball as a junior — with zero “organized” baseball experience — make the team and be named the team’s best defensive player. (I think that trophy is still in my mother’s house someplace.)
Mainly, though, Over the Line got us out of the house, doing something vaguely taxing, physically, and off the streets.

Does any of that happen anymore?

I can’t remember the last time I saw a pickup baseball game. Actually, I’m not sure school districts allow kids onto their grounds. Or anyone onto their grounds, aside from school hours. Even in “good” neighborhoods, where everything is fenced and gated and invariably locked up.

What made me think of all this? The elementary school where our games went on, Lowell Elementary, is getting a new surface, this summer. All the asphalt has been torn up, and the backstop has been broken down and set aside. And if I were still 12 years old, we would have to go somewhere else to play, and we would have been ticked.

But maybe it doesn’t matter anymore. If kids can’t go out there, even when the “field” is flat and smooth (and not a batch of uneven dirt), it doesn’t much matter that it’s torn up, does it?

We also played basketball there, on the shorter courts painted over to one side of the ball field. One court had 10-foot rims, the other hand 8-foot, and when we wanted to feel like NBA guys we played on the latter. Usually, though, we played on the regulation-size rims, and sometimes bought and brought our own nets to put up — often with one or two kids holding up one of the smaller kids so he could thread the net.

I suppose the utility in all this was getting us out of the house but staying off the street. Getting exercise by playing baseball — but with only four guys. We weren’t solving the world’s problems, but neither were we sitting in front of a TV set banging the buttons of a video game.

It was a simpler era. Sometimes we fell and suffered bangs and bruises on our knees or arms. But we never thought about suing the school district. That was a ridiculous concept; if we hurt ourselves, it was our own silly fault. And the district didn’t have any big, high fences and locked gates and roaming security guards. (Though perhaps they should have, considering the times we climbed ONTO the school buildings and roamed over the roofs … though that happened about twice a summer, as opposed to our daily OTL games.)

I worry that kids aren’t exposed to these sorts of simple pleasures. We have fenced them out, walled them off, from much of this. Afraid they will be hurt or that they might somehow break something at the school. So they sit at home, by and large, watching DVDs (previously, videos), staring at computers or playing video games.

Yeah, like 99 percent of old guys, I think our system was better. But it might not be only our generation. I can remember Yogi Berra, the former Yankees catcher now in his 80s, talking about how he got more baseball played in one afternoon on the streets of St. Louis than did any kid in a season of Little League. But those organized, adult-supervised games seem to be the only ones that survive into the New Millennium.

It’s too bad. We had a place we could go where we ran off some energy and had a great time and adjudicated our own competitions, and sometimes even kept stats. (I think Ron Washam hit nearly .400 one year.)

Something has been lost. Maybe if I worked in Long Beach’s parks-and-rec department I could tell you if any kids still play Over the Line. I don’t think they do. That’s too bad.  For the exercise lost. For the fond memories never had.