I was watching my puppy darting between two friends slowly lobbing a ball over his head. He was having the time of his life.
Then I remembered the feeling of monkey in the middle, and it sucked.
Is the game of monkey in the middle by definition something done to tease, annoy and otherwise abuse a kid by other kids?
Can’t remember.
I always hated it, but I was usually the monkey. 
We used to play it all the time, on land and in water, and I don’t remember any one person consistently being the monkey. So apparently we found some enjoyment in it. If the folk on the ends were wizzes at throwing and catching, and the monkey slow and awkward, yeah, that would be mean.
Depends entirely on how the participants are doing it - in a mean, spiteful way? And how good the monkey is. If the monkey is fast and good at snatching the ball, some actually relish being in that role.
We played it occasionally as kids growing up in the 60s and 70s. It was never mean or spiteful, never intended as a tease. It was the kind of game that lasted maybe only 5-10 minutes, that’s all. If even that long.
When I was the monkey it usually didn’t take me long to turn the tables. Sometimes it involved a punch to the gut though.
When I was a kid, it was “keep away” and I think it depends entirely on context and intent. Bullies tossing around your backpack? Clearly mean. A bunch of friends throwing around a ball? Probably everyone is having fun. When we played, it worked out something like a game of tag where the person in the middle rotated pretty frequently.
That’s pretty much my childhood, right there. 
I could never get out of being the monkey by virtue of my lack of both height and general athletic prowess. However, it was usually only a short game in which my brother was intending to tease, and rarely ended in tears. Not never, but rarely.
More often, we played “running bases,” which I’m not even sure is an actual game. A brief Google shows it’s not unheard of, but I can’t remember if those were the rules we played by. It at least gave you the chance to not be a runner after a certain amount of time … but since I couldn’t throw, catch, or run, it was less fun for me.
I was bitchin’ at spud, though.
We played this at the pool a lot, both in and out of the water. I was always the younger sister and often in the middle and don’t recall any duress from the position. It was fun to try to jump as high as you could!
Maybe like a puppy kids are just too stupid to realize they will never get the ball? Or sometimes they do.
I did not like Running Bases as much. Probably because it involved running.
Thanks to all.
I was a good athlete and remember some monkeys who weren’t. After a bit you would start taking some risks to make it easier for the monkey to win.
When I played, the idea was that when the monkey got the ball, the non-monkey that was supposed to catch it became the new monkey. So the position rotated as the ball got lost. And as sitchensis said, if you went too many throws without a rotation, it was good form to start making wacky throws so there was a higher turnover ratio.
This doesn’t mean bullies didn’t taunt someone while playing keep-away, but that’s in the same vein that boxing isn’t a fistfight by the swingsets either.
My experience was that unless you played the full contact version of the game the monkey had little chance of getting the ball.
Around here, we always made a distinction between “monkey in the middle,” which was a voluntary game where you were supposed to gradually throw the ball lower and lower until the person in the middle could catch it and then whoever made the intercepted throw would become the new “monkey,” and “keep away,” which was what jerks did just to be cruel. The latter was never fun for the victim, because the whole point was to piss him or her off and then laugh about it.
ETA: In other words, basically what yellowjacketcoder said.
In my day, “monkey in the middle” was generally fun. “Keep away” was teasing someone by taking his glasses or books or something. “Smear the Queer” was tossing a ball to someone and when they caught it he’d get tackled hard. Sort of like rugby or returning a kickoff where the sides were 11 to 1.
Exactly.
MitM was a game, keep-away was a taunt. They had nothing in common - in MitM, the “monkey” kept rotating, it was supposed to be fun for everyone, etc.
Standard childhood game here in my part of Chicago, growing up in the 80s.
As for monkey in the middle, I remember it as a fun game. I loved being the monkey, but we rotated fairly evenly.
Never heard of it.
The closest I can think of is dodge ball. We did that for fun.
If you had a problem with someone, the answer was to fight them. Anything less wouldn’t have been worthwhile.
If a game like that ever bothered me, I always just walked away. Did the same thing in tag. Get bored, start walking slowly. No one tags you if you are walking slow.