The game was developed in the American South around the beginning of the 20th century, moving north with the Great Migration in New York City and Philadelphia where it was widely played by the 1950s in addition to stick ball.
Legendary origins of this "half-ball"' vary: from kids splitting a ball so that two games could be played at once;[3] to an accident where a pimpleball broke in half and kids had no money to buy a new one so they played with a half-ball;[4][5] to an innovation by adults who wanted to reduce the chances of the ball breaking windows on nearby buildings.
[6] The cities of Savannah, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina both claim to be the birthplace of half-rubber as early as the 1890s.
[8] In the August 1927 edition of American Speech Journal, English teacher Lowry Axley claims that the game originated in Savannah "some eight to ten years ago by two boys who got the idea when they were hitting pop-bottle caps with broom handles.
Beginning in the 1970s, Thomas Cosmo Harper brought the game of halfball to the US West Coast of Turtle Island in Los Angeles, CA as well as Seattle and Spokane, WA.
Coinciding with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, Mr. Harper officially established the World Halfball League (WHBL) to meet the global need for a new sport with built-in social distancing measures.
Some half-rubber regulations call for the pitcher to stand 50 or 60 feet from the batter whereas the WHBL states that "Distance from Home Plate to Pitching Rubber = 13 Strides" and also provides dimensions for distance fields which can be played "down the street" or at any park, parking lot, or indoor gymnasium with sufficient space and for wall fields which can be played on any suitable wall of 3 or more stories in height.
"[2] No baserunning is involved in the game—the score is kept by keeping track of imaginary runners tagging the bases of a non-existent diamond.
Tournament half-rubber has only singles and home runs, the latter being achieved by hitting the ball 120 feet, or double the distance between batter and pitcher.
Because the tire was harder than a half-ball and more liable to break windows, the game was usually played lengthwise in a driveway rather than across a street.