Driving past empty ballfields on these hot summer days bring back memories — of when we used to fill them.

You don’t see many pick-up games taking place on baseball fields anymore.

In truth, we rarely played pick-up games in my day, either.

It was neighborhood vs. neighborhood. And rivalries actually developed over time.

Instead of groups of 10 guys from a neighborhood hurrying to the field to try to beat another neighborhood’s 10 guys — just so we could play 5 on 5 against each other — we all eventually wised up and decided to pit our 10 against somebody else’s 10.

Our team became known as The Boys From Boxer, since our Bethel Park neighborhood was called Boxer Heights. All of our streets were named after dogs.

Our biggest rival was Bill’s Gang, led by a giant of a boy named Bill. This guy weighed well over 350 pounds and stood maybe 5-foot-9. The field we played on had no outfield fence and Bill could crush the ball.

He never did get an inside-the-park home run on us, though. No matter how far over our head he would hit the ball, Bill would collapse in a heap at third base and settle for a triple. The game would be delayed until he caught his breath.

They had another player, Harley Pratt, who set a world record by getting tagged out on the hidden ball trick 172 times one summer. That’s an arbitrary number, but, trust me, it’s close.

Everyone seemed to have a nickname on our team: Duck, Mole, Julio, Buddy, X ... whatever. You could buy souvenir major league batting helmets for two bucks during the 1970’s and we’d all wear the helmet of our favorite non-Pirate team.

We beat them, they’d beat us, we never kept track of the won-loss records, but we had a blast playing baseball from 9 a.m. until dusk every day.

When we got a little older, we switched over to softball and developed a rivalry with a group of guys simply known as Bennie’s team.

Bennie was your typical cocky weekend warrior and his team was the terror of the church league. His father played first base and could have played a starring role in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I mean, this guy was freaky.

They could be beating a team by 25 runs and they would jog off the field each inning saying “down by one, down by one” to keep themselves motivated to pile it on even more.

Needless to say — I’ll say it anyway — the feeling of finally beating that team was pure ecstasy.

It’s sad in a way that most kids today don’t play baseball unless they’re wearing a uniform in an official league game with coaches, umpires and a stop for ice cream after the game.

Some of my fondest memories are from those neighborhood games.

There was a creek running parallel to the right field line at our field.

Hit the ball in the creek, you were out.

We only had so many baseballs to get through the summer.