Reviving the Art of Baseball Doggerel
At eighteen he committed himself
to baseball . . . for fifty years.
Detroit should be grateful.
He didn’t fail stadium fans —
their team’s porous bats did
like unidentified blips
on baseball’s radar screen.
Mr. Leyland deserved better.
Jim Leyland
Is beloved from Grosse Ile to Ignace to Zeeland.
All across the mitten
Tiger fans are still smitten.
In Boston they shave with a cleaver
Being tossed on a wave of beard fever
But poor Motown is shattered
By big blows they were battered
All is lost with no saving reliever.
With Halloween approaching, you need to check out all the limericks at Hilary’s blog, LimerWrecks.
Bumper to bumper on the way home,
October baseball on the AM waves.
The guys in the booth are nattering
and then one allows, “Hee-ere’s the pitch.”
In the pregnant pause, a log is split
on my radio, a violent snap
of sound, like the dude from Green Day
just pulverized his snare. Or maybe
one of those “Where The Wild Things” saw red
and razed a roof. Either way, that pure
noise story-tells better than Scully.
Detroit’s sigh is broadcast nation-wide.
We are no longer wedged in traffic,
because bat met ball met microphone
and Marconi trots with Napoli.
Goodbye, Grandyman…
Though I never knew you at all
You had the grace to swing away
While those around you walked
They crawled out of the woodwork
And they whispered into your brain
They set you on the homer porch
And they made you change your game
And it seems to me you swung your bat
Like blowing out a candle in the wind
Never knowing what to swing at
When the pitch came in
And I would have liked to have known you
But I was just a fan
Your average burned out long before
You became an also-ran
This post first appeared in the comments at It Is High, It Is Far, It is … Caught. Â