by Gary Gillette
Black Polacks/Negro
Stars play on Hamtramck green.
Dodge Main belches soot.
For more on the Detroit Stars, go here.
Posted 5/16/08Â
Sermon on the First-Place Rays
by James Finn Garner
The first-place Rays?
The Tampa Bay Rays?
Are in first place?
What next? Oy vey!
Will pigs dance plies
As Earth starts to fray?
Or butterflies bray
Like proud dapple grays?
Will roosters now lay
Eggs filled with pate?
Or Felix Pie
Outhit Willie Mays?
Men, count ye the days
Til (the Bible says)
This world is ablaze
in a Doomsday haze!
In previous days
They were Devil Rays.
Deception can pay
In numerous ways.
Oh, kneel down and pray
For a heav’nly stay!
There’ll be hell to pay
For these first-place Rays!
Posted 5/14/08
“We’re Not Gonna Change It!”
Below is the winning entry in the Chicago Sun-Times video contest about fans’ reactions to the possible renaming of Wrigley Field. Stoking the newspaper rivalry in town is that this video was done secretly by Chicago Tribune staffers. For more on the punking, go here.
The latest news is that Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell has rejected a bid for Wrigley Field from the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority and will seek to sell the Cubs and their stadium together to private investors. For more, see this article in the Chicago Sun-Times.
Posted 5/13/08.
The Death of the Bleacher Bum
by Gary Gillette
From my mother’s basement I fell into the Friendly Confines,
And I hunched in its bleachers till my beer-soaked hair froze.
Six miles from first place, loosed from its dream of October,
I woke to black caps and the nightmare Sox fans.
When I puked my guts out, they washed them off the seats with a hose.
Paying homage to Randall Jarrell…
Posted 5/13/08Â
The White Sox’ Rubber Soul
by James Finn Garner
You say your batters can’t swing it?
Their whiffing gives you chills?
I got an old-school remedy for
Fixin’ all your ills.
Take all your Louisville Sluggers,
Arrange ’em in a stack,
Then get set for a mighty hoodoo
(There ain’t no turnin’ back).
Now get yourself some love dolls–
You know the kind I mean,
Those cuties made of polymerized
Isobutylene.
Inflate them gals and set them ’round
Your mighty pile of sticks
And pray for their blow-up blessings
And soon you’ll get your licks.
You’ll feel your eyeballs quicken
And your pencil fill with lead,
And by August your White Sox will be
Twenty games ahead.
But don’t blaspheme the rubber gods
Or disrespect their medicine,
Or they’ll do to you just what they did
To Brian Anderson.
Posted 5/12/08Â