Getting streetwise to the challenges of stickball

The sweet spot on a broomstick is fractional. Like true love, or social justice, it might not exist at all. Doesn’t help that your tendency when playing stickball is to over-swing. “Crush it,” the male mind says. “Blast that silly rubber orb over the moon.”

That ball is also a problem. Zingy and soft, it’s made mostly of false promises. If you swing your hardest, which is almost a law, the ball may as well be invisible.

When you swing your hardest in stickball — or in baseball, or golf, or bar fights — you almost always pull your head. And you open your hips too early. And your blood pressure spikes.

You end up dizzy and cursing something you cannot see. Which is what always does us in, swinging our hardest at the invisibles in life. Lost love. Failed aspirations. Most of all, stickball pitches.

Gave this oddball sport a try last weekend. To call it a sport is probably generous. It’s more an alternative lifestyle. Or a fetish. Maybe a gateway psychosis.

It’s the kind of activity that lures wise guys — sitcom writers and East Coast transplants who grew up with the most urban game there is.

Actually, most comedy writers grew up with books and bassoons. But many still fancy themselves athletes. A break here, a break there, and they could’ve been somebody. The break, of course, would’ve been athletic genes and hand-eye coordination.

Sure, some of these guys can really play. Michael Rosenblum, a voice-over actor, consistently connects at the plate. And Rob Owens, an attorney in his early 60s, can pitch a little. Let me just say that if an attorney in his early 60s is one of your marquee players, then your league has some development issues.

But Owens is a crafty right-hander with some wicked breaking stuff. That’s just not fair, right? Because you’re using a bat without a sweet spot in an attempt to bash a ball that doesn’t quite exist. When Owens throws a slider in that situation, it’s an immoral act.

“It’s all about location and deception,” Owens says of pitching. “Even in stickball.”

Know who else plays? Comedian Richard Lewis. Also, former Dodger Shawn Green — but just once, and without much success at the plate. You can’t hit what you can’t see, even if you could once crush the cow off a major league curveball.

Lewis, he’s another story. By his own admission, the dark prince is 0 for 190 at the plate. He wasn’t there the day I played, but those who have witnessed his performances say he chews a lot of scenery. When he whiffs, the meltdowns are epic. A Berlin of F-bombs. It’s pretty hilarious, they say ... some of his best work.

But he is not here on this day; he’s on the disabled list with some comedy-related malady. Ennui. Performance anxiety. Food allergies. He checks in by phone, and when I suggest that he is letting down his teammates, he tells me to go love myself. Or something to that effect.

So, I do. I love myself for coming out here to play a game I didn’t know existed west of the Hudson.

Stick sports like cricket and rounders date to the 1500s, and this is probably the crudest of them, most famously played by city kids on congested New York streets. Manhole covers subbed for bases. Broomsticks subbed for bats.

Here it is played on a paved playground at a West Los Angeles school. As with most stickball leagues, the rules are fluid and proprietary. The strike zone is taped to a brick wall. Hitters don’t run.

Instead, hits are evaluated by distance. A scorching grounder is a single, or a double, depending on which painted line it crosses. Fielders catch flies, or scoop up short grounders, for outs. If it goes onto the locked tennis courts, or into the adjacent baseball field, it’s an automatic out.

“The thing to know is that the rules can change at any moment,” explains veteran player Tom Rapier, a CBS photographer.

Says TV writer Eric Martin: “It’s the best part of the week, hanging out with these bums.”

Writer-producer Chris Cluess (“The Simpsons,” “MADtv”) is the Kenesaw Mountain Landis of this league, its first commissioner, crass publicist, equipment manager, heckler, tough-love shrink. Under Cluess’ semi-guidance, the eight to 16 knuckleheads who show up each week are divided up for a doubleheader, each game six innings long.

Then they break for brunch.

“I wanted to play the game I played as a kid,” Cluess says of forming the league seven years ago. “So I talked to Richard, I talked to Rob....”

And this is what you ended up with? This mess? This mayhem? This masterpiece?

Well played, Commish.

chris.erskine@latimes.com

Twitter: @erskinetimes