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All summer long, kids playing punchball—hitting a pink “Spaldeen” ball with your fist and then running bases drawn in chalk on the streets—had tried to steal home to copy Robinson.

One resident of the old neighborhood, Michael Meehan, told the filmmakers how he and his friends used to play ball on West 62d Street with a Spaldeen, using sewers as bases.

Another Oompa Loompa came over to inform the two new friends that Tracy Anderson, Ms. Paltrow’s human Spaldeen of a personal trainer, was about to begin a question-and-answer session inside, but they seemed in no particular rush to get out of the California sun.

“I kept them quiet, but I always had stories, very dramatic stories, melodramas, from the time I was 9. I would bounce a pink Spaldeen ball against the side of the house every afternoon and let the stories run around. And then, the next day there would be different stories.”

This is a question I’ve been asking, usually of fellow New York expatriates in my post-World War II generation, since I found a “Spaldeen” among my belongings.