Author: admin

by Gary Fincke

A press-box telegraph operator added his name and stats to one box score and was subsequently listed in six editions of the Baseball Encyclopedia.

In 1912, for St. Louis,
his name was in the box score.

He batted once — drew a walk,
was left stranded — but at the end

of the season that base on balls
fixed itself in records

as the career of Lou Proctor.
This Bible tells us so.

Six editions in all
where he’s near the one at-bat

of Earl Pruess, who stole
a base after his walk, who scored,

Unlike Lou Proctor, a run.
Holding this sixth edition,

we’re dreamy with lies, though
even here, there’s nothing

about birth or death, home town;
whether he batted right or left.

St. Louis Browns, we read,
American League; in the next

revision he’s gone. This text
is the one to love: we learn

the modesty of Lou Proctor,
the accomplishment of fiction.

 

Gary Fincke writes and teaches at Susquehanna University. Reprinted with permission of the author. Found in Line Drives: 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems (Southern Illinois University Press, 2002).