Half Ball -- A Lost Sport?

One of my favorite games played and watched in many neighborhoods in Philly when I was youngster was Half Ball.
We would buy a "pimple ball," that is a hollow rubber ball, at a local general store, and cut it in half with a pen knife. Most all of us carried a small pen knife for various reasons, like playing Territories or whittling or carving scrap wood or tree branches.
The game was played on a side street, like Colona Street, or where there was a factory, like French's mustard factory, on one side of the street, which became our virtual ball field. Hitting the ball to the first floor level was a run to first base, a hit to the second floor got you to second base and so on. The roof was a home run, which was great, but our half ball would then be lost.
We used the sawed-off handle of a broom as a bat. We chose up sides, then the pitcher, standing on the opposite curb of the street, would toss the ball to the batter. Three strikes was an out, or if the ball was hit and bounced off the second story of the factory, it would be a two-bagger, unless a fielder caught it before it hit the ground which would be an out. Get the idea? It was ideal for the cityscape because you didn't need a big field in which to run -- it was all about the hitting.
We would play half-ball for hours until dinnertime, or until we ran out of half balls because they'd landed on the mustard factory roof. No, we didn't break factory windows with the half ball.  But it was just as exciting a game to hit one on the roof, or scramble to catch a triple that the wind sometimes caused to have an erratic drift on its way down. For us, it was almost as good as the real thing in a real ballpark.