Chicago Public Schools chief Arne Duncan was a little fry in Hyde Park when he played “Running Bases.”
“I was really small,” said Duncan, who is now 6 feet 4 inches tall. “I was a late bloomer.”
Being small didn’t help or hurt his skill at the game, he said.
The neighborhood kids would gather in a local park and mark out two bases about 50 feet apart. A baseball would be produced, a thrower stationed at each base. The rest of the kids, the runners, would gather in the middle and attempt to steal a base without being tagged out by a thrower, he said.
“If they tag you out, you become the thrower,” he said. “It was a lot of fun. It was baseball without the baseball diamond.”
Was it a big bummer to be a thrower?
“It was all right. But it was more fun to be a runner,” he said. “The goal was to run all day.”
Duncan doesn’t remember learning the game from anyone in particular. “It was something you grow up doing as little kids,” he said. “I am sure someone is playing it somewhere.”
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