Reviving the Art of Baseball Doggerel
The Cleveland Indians, fighting for life,
Rallied with bloopers and darts.
But Austin Jackson fired a BB
Into the Indians’ hearts.
They trailed by seven, but came back strong,
Those Tribesmen played their parts!
But Austin Jackson fired a BB
Into the Indians’ hearts.
The tying run is on third with one out–
On a fly ball, the runner starts!
But Austin Jackson fired a BB
Into the Indians’ hearts.
Brandon Inge will take a trip to Triple-A.
Where he will attempt to swing his slump away.
Fans can hope he hits the way he did five years before,
But there ain’t no getting over being 34.
Saturday afternoon, alone in the living room
I crouched on the floor to watch
the Tigers lose another game.
Don Wert let a ball roll through
his legs and down the line in left.
You pimp, I cried
as the winning run scored.
My mother dropped laundry, grabbed my arm:
what’d you call him?
Pimp, I mumbled. I was nine
and about to learn a new word.
My mother turned off the tv.
A man sells a woman’s body.
I thought about that for a long time:
Don Wert missed a ground ball.
Don Wert did not sell women’s bodies.
Don Wert was not a good third baseman.
Don Wert was not a pimp.
It would be a couple more years
before I thought much about women’s bodies
before I etched a g for girls
into my dresser drawer knob I used
to dial in my dreams.
That night I pinned Don Wert’s baseball card
to my dartboard and took my pleasure.
Pimp, I whispered, pimp.
Jim Daniels is the Thomas Stockham Baker Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, where he has taught creative writing for 30 years.
One
of the 10,342 baseball cards in my parents’ attic
sneezes in the dampness, remembers
sweaty hands.
He calls to me across hundreds of miles:
Remember me, Jake Wood, 1964, 2nd base, Detroit Tigers,
Series 2, No. 272?
He wants to stretch his legs, climb out
from between Wilbur Wood and the 4th Series Checklist
wants to outsail all the other cards
in a game of farthies, float down
on Jose Tartabull in a game of tops.
He wants to smell like fresh from the pack
wants to be perfumed again
with the pink smell of bubble gum.
.
Jim Daniels is the Thomas Stockham Baker Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, where he has taught creative writing for 30 years.
‘Twas octval, and the pravish thrim
Did glate and glibble in the grome
All woolsy were the vitrenim
As the tegris wrast bethrome.
“Beware the Wockenfuss, my son!
The glove that claws, the cleats that slash!
Beware the corn-can-cut, and shun
The pronvistle mustache!”
He took the vorpal orb in hand:
Seeking with nails the laven stitch
And scrying he the fingers three
He gathered up to pitch.
A sinewed serpent’s coil, it stood
The Wockenfuss, with legs askew
It wiffled and glaved the winding wood
And ellipsed, as he threw.
One, two! And three! No contact he
The knuckleball went snicker-snack!
It spun in place, and in disgrace
It went galumphing back.
“Thou hast slain the Wockenfuss?
Hand me the sphere, my roogish gent.
Callooh! Callay! That’s all today.”
And to the showers he went.
‘Twas octval, and the pravish thrim
Did glate and gliddle in the grome
All woolsy were the vetrinem
As the tegris wrast bethrome.
Patrick Dubuque writes the blog The Playful Utopia.