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Rocky Road–My Favorite!

By Stuart Shea

Chocolate-dipped in a stale sugar cone,
The Rockies emit a miserable moan.

Last year the Series a reachable goal,
This year, last place and 12 games in the hole.

Their bats are as flabby as Jell-O congealed,
With pitching you’d find on a Little League field.

Where’s Tulo? He’s hurt, batting .152,
And Brad Hawpe’s bat has a case of the flu,

The offense an orange without any juice–
In a ballpark like Coors, there’s just no excuse.
Their 2007 pitchers a challenging foe,
But two thousand eight is a sick horror show.

Ubaldo Jimenez is just 1 and 6,
Jeff Francis ain’t fooling no one with his tricks.

Kip Wells, Micah Bowie, and–ugh–Glendon Rusch
Just prove that this pitching staff hasn’t got much.

What’s in a year? What will the team do?
I’m sure they’ll get better–in a season or two.

Posted 6/7/08 

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Baked Zito

By Stuart Shea

Zito, Zito,
His arm is meat-o.
He goes down
To weekly defeat-o.
His salary is
Really neat-o.
Unless you’re the Giants who may have to eat-o
His contract if he can’t find some team in the National League, or even anywhere at any level of organized baseball, that he can beat-o.

Posted 6/5/08

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BITING

By Stuart Shea

Florida is on the map–the Marlins are hot!
You want a Cinderella story? This we’ve got!

A star in the making with an Uggly name,
A third baseman with a Can-tu approach,
A left fielder Willing-ham to work, and
A superstar shortstop beyond reproach.

VandenHurk didn’t work and
Taylor has Tankersleyed.
But Miller’s ground opponents up,
Kevin Gregg has been the top.
And there’s no bad hops–just Badenhop.

They cannot last, these wriggling Fish,
Swimming in deep water with Phils, Braves, and Mets,
But it’s fun while it lasts, yo,
To see the big boys controlled
By Olson, Treanor, and Nolasco,
And Luis Gonzalez, who is 90 years old.

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I Want to Go Home

By Stuart Shea

Plutocrats were once the Detroit ideal.
Henry Ford and William Briggs
Living high in posh digs
While Ty Cobb rented a house during the season
In a middle-class hood.

When the city started to “change”
And white people moved out,
Somehow it was all the fault of those left behind.
Out of sight, out of mind
For those in Grosse Point and Warren
Who’d come into town a few times a year,
(Of course on Opening Day, where they’d still cheer
For Bunning, Kaline, Cash, Lary,
Willie Horton.)

When the car makers misread the market and made more gas-guzzlers,
One of the puzzlers was apportioning blame
Away from the carpetbaggers, shills, morons, and thieves
And onto the wage-slaves and winos
And others who remained in the city
Without trust funds, mobility,
Pedigree, or nobility.

The Lions upgraded to an oversized Tupperware tub in Pontiac
And the Pistons shuffled to Auburn Hills
But at least the Tigers stayed and played at Michigan and Trumbull
The ballpark half-full
And Ernie Harwell perched above home plate
Telling tales of Sweet Lou and Tram and Senor Smoke
While the city learned to choke on its own exhaust
And the bums sat, cracked and sauced,
In fine brick slums held together by a paste of broken windows and fatherless children.

Now the old ballpark sits, forgotten and overgrown,
Tigers overrun by dandelions.
Structure and seats rusted, torn to chunks,
At the hands of Ilitch raped and scorned,
But mourned
By the lower-level bleacher drunks stuck in hell
And imprisoned by the ghost of Charlie Maxwell.