Stickball

Walter Iooss Jr.:"There's a famous picture taken in the 50's of Willie Mays playing stickball in Harlem. I played a lot of stickball growing up and always loved it. I wanted to replicate the Mays photo in Cuba because baseball is the national sport there. It's everywhere. Cuban children play ball in the streets like kids in U.S. cities used to do. It was my last Saturday on this trip and I was slowly weaving through the streets of old Havana, looking for kids playing ball, when I came upon this corner, La Esquina. If you study the picture, you see that every eye, not just the kids' but even the dog's, is on that taped ball. It's the decisive moment, and there's no way to anticipate when you're going to get it. I had a vision of a picture that I'd tried and tried and tried to find but hadn't yet, and I came within a day of not finding it. To me it was all about getting the photograph I'd been searching for and I did it in 20 frames.

I like to photograph kids because I still dream the way kids do. All those years playing those games were some of the best times of my life. I was a stickball fanatic. When school closed for the summer, we played 12 hours a day. All morning, all afternoon, went home for dinner, then played after dinner."

Photo from cnnsi.com