One day in the early 1960s, when Millie Lammano was in her home on Garfield Place, a few young boys playing Stickball in the street came knocking on her door, asking to use her bathroom. She let them in, which started a decades-long relationship with the boys on the block. This past Sunday, much of the same crew, now men in their sixties and seventies, returned there to play stickball.  

“They all lived down the block, but they didn’t want to miss their chance at bat,” recalled the 101-year-old. Like they have the first Sunday in June for more than 25 years, the Garfield Boys, a name emblazoned on their blue shirts, played the old-time New York City street game, hitting a Spaldeen with taped-up wood bats, using the tree-lined streets as the foul lines and loosely marked bases, which they ran—or gimped—around after they hit the bouncy pink ball.