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Baseball Rooting

by Thomas O. Davenport

Your favorite athletes move from team to team
The hitters, hurlers, fielders all chase bucks
Old-time fan loyalty is but a dream
As players drive their wealth away in trucks

Free agents’ names and faces give no clue
So raise your voice for the best color scheme
Choose purple, crimson, orange, green or blue
Urge on your favorite sports apparel theme

Or pick the mascot that’s most bold and fierce
The one inclined to slash and slice and slay
With jaws that chomp and bloody claws that pierce
My Tiger dines on fricasseed Blue Jay

What’s more, our park serves only the best ale
No better motive could there be to cheer
And though our squad may flounder, flop and fail
Hip hip hooray! Let’s hear it for our beer!

When you select the club that you’ll support
The nine athletes for whom you’ll choose to root
Ignore the friendly confines of the sport
And contemplate the price in hard-earned loot

The cost is high each time you disembark
So back the team that charges less to park

Tom’s collection of comic verse, Get the Hell to Work, was published by Kelsay Books in 2020. 

 

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Eddie Collins

by Michael Ceraolo

I was one of the Clean Sox,
but that doesn’t mean I was perfect:
at the start of my career
I played professionally under an assumed name
in order to try to keep my college eligibility,
and I was a contributor to the pot gotten up
to reward Detroit for beating Boston in ’17,
something that the Dirty Sox later
tried to make out as part of a fix
Such rewarding was common at the time,
though I can see now how it could be misconstrued
I should have taken the job as Yankees manager
when it was offered to me;
I thought I was going to succeed Mr. Mack
when he retired, and that retirement would be in a few years
When that few years passed without his retiring,
I took the job with Mr. Yawkey,
and what I did and didn’t do in that job
has justifiably dimmed my reputation,
something that I now see in retrospect

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A Pressing Issue

by James Finn Garner

Mets Can’t Wear Alternative Jerseys Because the Pants Haven’t Arrived

As the nation’l pastime seeks expanse
To pull in those who might just glance
And, intrigued, give the game a chance,
Manfred should provide some pants.

Fans in Britain, Spain and France,
With soccer frustrated perchance,
Might get all “Tinker! Evers! Chance!”
But won’t if players have no pants.

College hoops? Yeah, “The Big Dance!”
Skaters ’round Stanley’s cup prance.
Football thrills all uncles and aunts.
Baseball? They ain’t got no pants.

On-field play can be enhanced
And fortunes made through slick finance
But we might have a free “snake dance”
Unless MLB invests in pants.

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Go Get ‘Em, Tigers

by Millie Bovich

In baseball news, I’ve got a hunch
That the Tigers will finish first, that bunch.
Mistakes of the past
They will remedy fast
And there’s no more saying, “They’re out to lunch!”

 

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Baseball Is

by Ernie Harwell

Baseball
is the president tossing out the first ball of the season
and a scrubby schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm.
A tall, thin old man waving a scorecard from the corner of his dugout.
That’s baseball.

Thanks to the always fascinating Twitter account of Jim Koenigsberger (@jimfrombaseball).