As I suspected, the spontaneous game -- pickup baseball, makeup something -- that kids used to invent in the days before PlayStation et. al, is a rare occurrence in American life. Sports for kids are either very organized or not organized at all. It's the in-between that's missing -- kids making it up as they go along, hunting up friends to make use of an empty baseball field in summer. I wrote about the 'joy of unorganized sports' in May, and asked readers to let me know what they do and when and where they do it -- anything at all spun out of the imagination or the spur of the moment.

Very little feedback on this. A trickle. Most people don't seem to know what I'm talking about.

I've just about given up the idea of posting neighborhood games in this space, or sending alerts about them on Twitter for readers who want to get up a game of Wiffle Ball. It just doesn't happen much anymore.

Then Bradley Kolodner, a college sophomore from North Baltimore, sent me a note about what he calls Monster Ball. The Baltimore Messenger's Louisa Peartree wrote about it a year ago, when Bradley was a senior in high school, and here's a link to her story.

Below are photos Bradley sent along. Here's the Monsterball Facebook Group.

"Originally, the field was made up of paper plates as bases and we only had a few regular players," Bradley says. "The field and game have evolved over the years.  We pick teams once everyone arrives and play for a couple hours or until the neighbors tell us to be quiet.  Quite often, my friends who play bring their younger siblings. I just thought I'd share with you my effort to keep up that 'simple joy of unorganized sports.'

Thanks, BK. Monster on . . . !