Reviving the Art of Baseball Doggerel
Of drubbings my writing once oozed
The Cubs’ sorry plight I abused
Now they’ve won and don’t suck
And I’ve run out of luck
My club’s reached the heights, I’m de-mused.
Hilary Barta runs the essential film-noir-and-monster-movie limerick website, LimerWrecks.Â
You may be a young fast baller for Cleveland or Pitt
You may like to rear back and put heat on it
You may want to strike out eight-teen batters a game
You may dream of the high life filled with fortune and fame
But you’re gonna have to curve somebody, if you wanna stay
You’re gonna have to curve somebody
If it’s not in the Big Leagues, then it will be Triple-A
But you’re gonna have to curve somebody
You might be fed cock ‘n’ bull stories about how you’ll be a star
You might have scouts with radar guns readin’ how fast you are
You may have a businessman to help sign you for a lot
They may call you Doctor K but call you up, they will not
Cuz you’re gonna have to curve somebody, if you wanna stay
You’re gonna have to curve somebody
If it’s not in the Big Leagues, then it will be Triple-A
But you’re gonna have to curve somebody
You maybe can reach back with your physical skill
And feel you can reach the mountain top strictly through your will
You may be thinkin’ that you can’t be stopped, at a hundred miles an hour
You may be somebody’s “can’t miss” but you’ll head straight to the showers
Cuz you’re gonna have to curve somebody, if you wanna stay
You’re gonna have to curve somebody
If it’s not in the Big Leagues, then it will be Triple-A
But you’re gonna have to curve somebody
They may call you Nolan, or even Big Train
They may call you Warren Spahn and then pray for rain
They may call you Sandy or maybe Aroldis
They may call you anything but you’d best answer to this
You’re gonna have to curve somebody, if you wanna stay
You’re gonna have to curve somebody
If it’s not in the Big Leagues, then it will be Triple-A
But you’re gonna have to curve somebody
If you’re traveling in the north country fair
Where the winds hit heavy on the fans’ behinds
Remember him for all the hits he had there
Edwin Encarnacion did his time
If you got used to the Jays winning games
By knocking hits and flipping bats
Saunders is gone, and Navarro the same
And Edwin’s now in Cleveland, swatting gnats
I’m a-wondering if he’ll remember them at all
The fans who came to see him play
As they drink and fight and lament
Watching Melvin Upton flail away
If you’re traveling in the north country fair
Where the winds hit heavy on the fans’ behinds
Remember him for all the hits he had there
Edwin Encarnacion did his time
When you’re lost in the rain in Cleveland
And it’s Game Seven too
And your confidence has failed
‘Cuz your bullpen didn’t pull you through
Don’t make any more errors
Or Fate will be laughin’ at you
You got some hungry fans there
And they all bleed Cubbie Blue . . .
Now if you see J. Heyward
Please tell him thanks a lot
He could not hit
But what he did won’t be forgot
‘Cuz he built up their strength
To go out and take another shot
He was the motivatin’ factor
behind them givin’ all that they got
Route 66 (Opened 11/11/1926, decommissioned 6/27/1985)
Chuck Berry (10/18/1926–3/18/2017)
On my birthday Chuck Barry has passed.
Local icons my St. Louis past:
Mr. Moke left the zoo,
Stan the Man is gone, too–
Like Route 66, they were all gassed.
Some 40 days older than his fellow St. Louis icon, Chuck Berry outlasted Route 66 by nearly 33Â years.