Other forms: softball, stickball, wiffle ball.

Many Radical Baseball ideas are not really radical at all.  They are simply borrowed, consciously or not, from other earlier forms of baseball.  Who says that the only real form of baseball is that of the Major Baseball League (MBL)?

I've long maintained that the essence of the game is slow pitch softball.  The main reason is the absence of fear by the batter of being hit by a pitch thrown at high velocity.  Without that fear and with the ball being delivered in a manner intended for it to be put into play, batters are very successful and on equal ground, both literally and figuratively, with the pitcher who is truly pitching, i.e., throwing underhand.

You may say that slow pitch softball is an amateurish form of baseball, intended for players who are not very good, something analogous to touch football and half court basketball.  However, those other sports derivatives are very different from their major league versions: NFL and NBA.

Slow pitch softball is basically the same as MBL except for ball delivery to home plate.  The other sports require less physical exertion than the big league versions.  Slow pitch softball requires more since the ball is put in play much more.

Stickball, a city game, contributes the elimination of a catcher and a fool proof strike zone: a rectangle drawn on a wall.  Also, the ball is much less dangerous, just a pink rubber ball, and, no, I never called it a Spaldeen.  I don't know where that junk word came from but if the ball happened to have been made by Spalding it was not a big deal and not a reason to mispronounce a pretty simple word.

There was no base stealing in stickball or slow pitch softball. No bunting.