Getting stuck in to stickball as a child

Stickball (Letters, 15 April) is a New York street version of baseball played with a hollow pink rubber ball called a spaldeen – made by the Spalding sports company – and a broomstick, with the sweeping end either cut or burned off. There is a stickball museum in Harlem. I played at least three variants of the game during my 1950s Greenwich Village youth.
Patrick Carroll
Helston, Cornwall

• Sorry, Richard Lewis, but “stickball” is hockey. Golf is surely “club ball”.
Dr Antony Wyatt
Sheffield

• Tim Dowling had it easy (Can any fool read the news?, 16 April). Most newsreaders also have producers and editors talking in their ears at the same time. It’s a real skill to listen to one thing and talk about another – try it.
Robin Latchem
London

• May I join the chorus in praise of the letters pages (14 April)? A few weeks ago an unusual name leapt out on the page. Reckoning that he lived in a small enough place, I sent a card to a childhood friend with an incomplete address, not sure that it was the right person. The next day, I received an email from him along with a photo of five friends including both of us, taken on his fourth birthday more than 60 years ago. We moved away the following summer when I was five and we lost touch, until the Guardian letters page reunited us.
Teresa Heeks
Ironbridge, Shropshire

• Why do some people (Letters, 16 April) “take” the Guardian and others “buy” it? One for Notes & Queries perhaps?
Gerry Moore
London

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