by Bob Carlton
A game of pepper–
flattened grass keeps getting
back up
The Good Old Days
by Dick Flavin
Whenever I need a good cry
I stop and think
Of when the Sox were on the rocks
And how they’d stink
I’d take some glee from misery
I confess
And what is worse, I miss the curse
And the stress
I see Billy Buckner bending
And all our hopes are ending.
The ball is rolling through
His legs before our gaze.
And that horrible truth
When we learned they sold Ruth
Those were the good old days.
I see Bucky Dent of all guys
The weakest of the small guys
That cheesy little homer
Floating through the haze.
And my heart is at risk
They forgot to sign Fisk
Those were the good old days.
I know it’s not pretty to wallow in pity
There’s nothing of value one can gain.
Then all of a sudden I see Don Buddin
And again I’m awash in wondrous pain
(Is everybody crying?)
I see Grady Little snoring
While Yankee runs are scoring
Pedro’s out of gas
But in the game he stays
And there’s Slaughter’s mad dash
Another late season crash
Those were the good old days
Oh I’d complain and I’d beef
But I miss the grief
Of those good old days.
Boston broadcaster Dick Flavin is considered the Poet Laureate of the Great Fenway Park Writers Series.
A Rocky Salute
By Stuart Shea
Let’s raise our glasses
To Nolan and Tulo–
The greatest twosome
Since the lovers Von Bulow.
Masahiro Tanaka Can Do (Yankees-Mets, 5/15)
by Stephen Jones
With signature splitters
He retired Met hitters.
He pitched a 4-0 shutout,
Leaving some with little doubt.
Gunslinger David Cone did speak:
“His pitching control is truly elite.”
And Ron Darling, former Met, did chime:
“He just may be once-in-a-lifetime.”
And if his splitter wasn’t enough,
Tanaka showed other nasty stuff –
Fast ball, change up, slider, curve –
And at the plate had some nerve,
Hitting in the ninth inning a single.
It gave Girardi a fit, others a giggle,
And in the end seemed perfect garnish
For his on-the-mound dominance.
Baseball Canto
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Watching baseball, sitting in the sun, eating popcorn,
reading Ezra Pound,
and wishing that Juan Marichal would hit a hole right through the
Anglo-Saxon tradition in the first Canto
and demolish the barbarian invaders.
When the San Francisco Giants take the field
and everybody stands up for the National Anthem,
with some Irish tenor’s voice piped over the loudspeakers,
with all the players struck dead in their places
and the white umpires like Irish cops in their black suits and little
black caps pressed over their hearts,
Standing straight and still like at some funeral of a blarney bartender,
and all facing east,
as if expecting some Great White Hope or the Founding Fathers to
appear on the horizon like 1066 or 1776.
But Willie Mays appears instead,
in the bottom of the first,
and a roar goes up as he clouts the first one into the sun and takes
off, like a footrunner from Thebes.
The ball is lost in the sun and maidens wail after him
as he keeps running through the Anglo-Saxon epic.
And Tito Fuentes comes up looking like a bullfighter
in his tight pants and small pointy shoes.
And the right field bleechers go mad with Chicanos and blacks
and Brooklyn beer-drinkers,
“Tito! Sock it to him, sweet Tito!”
And sweet Tito puts his foot in the bucket
and smacks one that don’t come back at all,
and flees around the bases
like he’s escaping from the United Fruit Company.
As the gringo dollar beats out the pound.
And sweet Tito beats it out like he’s beating out usury,
not to mention fascism and anti-semitism.
And Juan Marichal comes up,
and the Chicano bleechers go loco again,
as Juan belts the first ball out of sight,
and rounds first and keeps going
and rounds second and rounds third,
and keeps going and hits paydirt
to the roars of the grungy populace.
As some nut presses the backstage panic button
for the tape-recorded National Anthem again,
to save the situation.
But it don’t stop nobody this time,
in their revolution round the loaded white bases,
in this last of the great Anglo-Saxon epics,
in the territorio libre of Baseball.