by Wayne F. Burke
Eager to get to the ballfield
in the morning
to play
baseball, what I lived for
1964,
I followed the Major League scores,
batting averages, and standings;
the rest of the world no more
to me then
than a nightly news show
like Vietnam helicopter
womp womp,
machine gun rat-tat-tat;
I fed on
daily box scores in the newspaper
each breakfast
and left the ballfield only
to return home
for a meal
and on days it rained
I read books about baseball…
A guy my uncle knew, who
played for the local high school, had
played two years with the NY Yankees.