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Bag of Tricks

by James Finn Garner

RIP Octavio Dotel (1973-2025), who died last week after a roof collapsed at a concert he was attending in Santo Domingo, DR.

New York. Houston. Oakland.
When they called
New York Yankees.
(and they kept calling)
Kansas City. Atlanta. Chicago.
I picked up my stuff and left.

Pittsburgh. LA. Denver.
(they still kept calling)
Toronto. St. Louis. Detroit.
My bag of tricks.

By the last season
someone guessed I’d played
with 25 percent of the active players
One out of every four
A lot of friends
Maybe some enemies?
A lot of stops
A lot of life

¡Salud!

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Buffalo Style

by James Finn Garner

Something didn’t sit right with Cody
That blue cheese dip last night was grotty
Puking Buffalo-style
Nukes him a while
So he won’t face Skubal in the coldy.

 

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A Baseball Game

By Richard Brautigan

Baudelaire went
to a baseball game
and bought a hot dog
and lit up a pipe
of opium.
The New York Yankees
were playing
the Detroit Tigers.
In the fourth inning
an angel committed
suicide by jumping
off a low cloud.
The angel landed
on second base,
causing the
whole infield
to crack like
a huge mirror.
The game was
called on
account of
fear.

From the book The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster. Copyright 1965 by Richard Brautigan. Photo by Chris Felver/Getty Images.

 

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In a Good Winter

by Richie Hebner

In a good winter,
I’ll dig 50 graves.

It’s good work.
I get 25 bucks a grave.

If it has snowed, you just use a pick and shovel, scoop away the snow, the ground is good and soft.
But if it hasn’t snowed, the ground might be frozen two feet down.
You have to use a pneumatic drill.

One time last winter, the ground was so hard and the weather was so cold I said,
“Ah, that’s deep enough.”
There’s a law that a grave’s got to be so deep,
five feet or something,

And the Rabbi says,
“That’s not deep enough.”

“Did you ever see one get out?”
I asked him.

h/t to Jim Koenigsberger and his great Twitter account, @Jimfrombaseball