Reviving the Art of Baseball Doggerel
Published in the Detroit Free Press, 1934
Came Yom Kippur — holy fast day world wide over to the Jew,
And Hank Greenberg to his teaching and the old tradition true
Spent the day among his people and he didn’t come to play.
Said Murphy to Mulrooney, “We shall lose the game today!
We shall miss him on the infield and shall miss him at the bat
But he’s true to his religion — and I honor him for that.”
Detroit, you’ve got no Uptons left.
Justin’s long gone — of Kate, bereft.
Pray those front office moves are deft
Just like Verlander’s chin so cleft.
O, how I wish Destiny put
As catcher, one day, Barry Foote
While on the mound lands
The hurler Bill Hands
I’d pay an arm and a leg to see that
The bullpen is aptly in place
With perfectly named Elroy Face
As one last zinger
We add Rollie Fingers
With Heinie Manush up to bat
As he comes to the plate, there’s a buzz,
The one man with the name to give pause,
Each syllable clear-
Ly a body part dear:
Here comes man-of-parts Tony Armas!
Salma Hayek with a broken nose
Kittens stuck in lava flows
Graffiti at the Alamo
Steve Bannon in seductive pose
Zombies chawing on my toes
Sarah Sanders’ underclothes
A schoolbus in an undertow
But worst of all
JV decked out for the ‘Stros.
It’s sad watching Tigers go slumping,
All season they’ve taken their lumping.
So they circle the drain
With their fans all in pain–
Is it time now for manager dumping?
Millie Bovich may be the senior regular contributor to Bardball. “I had the pleasure of meeting All-Star Johnny Pesky when he visited the Detroit office of the FBI where I worked,” she writes, “and met and married a special agent from New York and made a Tigers fan out of him!”