by Hilary Barta
The besotted on Clark Street are searching
Dodging potholes they’re parking, then lurching
To watch Cubbies they swarm
Though a drubbing’s the norm
At the bottom those barkers are perching.
Numbers Game: If 9 Were 7
by Stephen Jones
Alexander Joy Cartwright, club member
Of the old New York Knickerbocker,
Declared 9 innings in 1845 –
Something we still keep alive.
Modern baseball’s inventor –
Tired of game disorder –
Called a dream field to order
When he gaveled “9” the number.
Now stirs a business suggestion:
Make baseball’s 9 a 7.
Why? Because the game’s too slow,
Because younger fans are “no-show.”
Mr. Cartwright worked with geometry,
Not with something fiduciary.
Since when, he might opine,
Is baseball governed by bottom line?
You’re A Flop!
by Patrick McCaughey
With apologies to Cole Porter:
You’re a flop!
You’re U.S. Steel!
You’re a flop!
You’re an Arby’s meal!
You’re the bunch of bums
That keep my Tums stock low.
You’re Zsa Zsa’s hubbys!
You’re those Poor Cubbies! You’re Broglio!
You’re the mistakes
Of the “Ishtar” writer!
You’re the brakes
On James Dean’s Porsche Spyder!
You’re a worthless nine,
You’re Jewish wine, you suck!
You’re that black cat!
Sosa’s corked bat! You’re Banks’ luck!
You’re a flop!
The futile prayers I prayed!
You’re a flop!
The ‘84 parade!
You’re a trip to hell
To where Piniella’s coaching next!
You’re Elia’s hate!
You’re Zimmer’s pate! You’re really hexed!
You play as poor
As warped LPs do!
Yes even more
Than Ticketmaster fees, too.
You’re the cause
Of much applause for games you drop!
In St. Louis and New York, well, you’re the top!
You’re a flop!
Each fall I cry a river!
You’re a flop!
You’re Harry Caray’s liver!
You’re the thing
That hits in spring like Tunney’s punch!
You’re watered gin,
A Cardinal win, a Pete Rose hunch!
You’re as unsure
As Yogi Berra’s diction!
As a tie score
When Carlos Marmol’s pitchin’!
My heart can only take so many flubs!
It’s no disease that’s gonna kill me-
It’s you Cubs!
To Mike Francesa and Boomer Esiason–with no love
By Stuart Shea
If we let newborns have time with dads,
They’ll never develop the requisite ‘nads
To preside on AM radio courts
About how these softies are wrecking sports
By bringing in stuff like “love” and “hope”
To an audience raised on slackjawed dopes.
Jackie
by Anonymous
He waited
In the whiteness of the afternoon sun;
Black man on green ground.
He waited
In the silence of the tongue
Black man on green ground.
He waited
In the path of his words
White broke his bones;
Black man on green ground.
He waited
As few men have ever
waited
And endured
Before a multitude
as no man before,
O,
To have conquered the white sun,
blinding
To have sailed the sun and ridden
its joy
in tears
And
in laughter.
To have ridden the white sun,
blinding
And to be
struck
struck
struck
by the rising
Of
Your
Own
Black
Sun.
Your crown was white;
…and waited.
.
Found on the Baseball Almanac site.