Posted on

The Play-by-Play’s the Thing!

by James Finn Garner

To honor the birth and death of the Bard of Avon on April 23:

His spirit having shed this mortal clay,
Consider Shakespeare doing play-by-play.

With artful language, could he break the code,
Or just “stand like a house by th’ side of th’ road”?

To hear, egads, of someone “going yard”
Might sow farming tableaux within the Bard.

A “dying quail” or “Texas Leaguer”, s’truth,
are chestnuts we might hear the playwright uthe.

The redhead like old Barber might repeat
A phrase like “sitting in the catbird’s seat.”

Shout “Holy cow!” he’d not, nor tipsy sing,
Though quaffing Falstaff would remove the sting.

Arrives the pitch both high, tight and inside,
Quoth he: “With patience do such things betide.”

Having Shakespeare on the broadcast team!
Faith, t’would be the sweetest wordsmith’s dream!

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”
Rings brighter than, “These two teams came to play.”

To catch, though, baseball’s phantom ballyhoo,
He’d trail stout Ernie: “Let us playeth two!”

 

Posted on

My Storied Stuff

by James Finn Garner

My friends Steve and Sharon Fiffer started a marvelous site a year ago called STORIED STUFF, where people show the various precious objects in their lives and share the story. He asked me to write one about baseball, so here are my random thoughts attached to an old autographed pill. You can find the original post and other storied stuff here.


This baseball was signed by all of the 1973 Detroit Tigers. I sprayed it with lacquer before my hands wore off the ink of all the signatures. This spherical madeleine is for:

–all the neighbor ladies (Mrs. Moran, Mrs. Galer, Mrs. Caccavo) who knew baseball and knew the players, and taught me a lot about dedication

–Father Bueche who was in charge of the altar boy ranks at church and took us down to Tiger Stadium occasionally, before being removed in scandal later

–all the men in the dark recesses of The Bengal Bar on Michigan Avenue—though I could never see you, I heard your shouts and laughs, and marveled at the tawdry pleasures of adulthood, and wondered who painted that near-psychedelic tiger on your vestibule wall

–the dozens of transistor radios — silver, aqua, cherry red, as the fashions changed — that I used to listen to Ernie Harwell

–the high school Dad’s Club dads, who always managed to snag a dozen of these baseballs to raffle off on new parent night, gladhanders my dad never could stand

–my mother, who pushed my dad constantly to take me downtown to a ballgame

–my dad, who only very late in his life finally told me he much preferred basketball over baseball

–Willie Horton, “Willie the Wonder,” always my favorite player, home-grown

–and Jim Ray, signing right next to Willie, about whom I remember absolutely nothing.

 

Posted on

The Baseball Season of 2020

by Millie Bovich

So what was the season like for year 2020?
Just read on and I’ll tell you plenty!

Like your mud splashed car that you just had washed,
Like a chocolate soufflé that’s been badly squashed,

Like another little hole in your old rowboat,
Like your neighbor’s new pet is a smelly goat,

Like an unfinished piece of coconut pie
That the waiter took away when you turned your eye,

Like a loan repaid but the check just bounced,
Like the Detroit Tigers when they’ve just been trounced,

Like your morning coffee that’s just tepid warm,
Like your bunch of flowers where the bees will swarm,

Like a rusty screw that you can’t get out,
Like the pain that caused by a big toe gout,

Like a close-up talker who has garlic breath,
Like a Stanley Cup game going sudden death,

Like no chips or pretzels when the kids come home,
Like no gas in the car when you want to roam,

Like rain on the roof when a picnic’s planned,
Like the last chance lost when the hitter fanned,

Like your sunny-side-ups at your favorite spot
With the yolks not runny and the toast not hot,

Like the clock that stops with one last tick,
Like the power goes out in a mystery flick,

Like lasagna when the chef forgot the cheese,
Like your big presentation and you feel a sneeze.

That’s a baseball season with just 60 games played
Just like no sugar in the lemonade!

 

Posted on

Go Get ‘Em Tigers

by James Finn Garner

The blue plastic transistor radio
I snuck into
Sister Geraldine’s class
That October
Poured heavenly images
Into my ears

The centerfielder moved to short
The old lion roaming in right
The brawny arms of Willie the Wonder
The soulful stare of Mickey Lolich
And the plate Freehan protected from Brock

NONE SHALL PASS!

All the saints and martyrs
Bringing a miracle to Motown
Narrated by the voice of God
In a sweet Georgia baritone

Posted on

Reverend Percy Kendall

by Michael Ceraolo

Even some well-versed in baseball history
are probably wondering who I am and why I’m here
I’m in the Hall of Fame
I don’t mean to say I was inducted into the Hall;
there is a photo of me in the library there
And that photo of me attending an Indians game in 1937
shows a radio next to me and an earpiece in my left ear
The radio is two-and-a-half feet tall and almost twenty pounds,
which certainly stretches the definition of the word portable
I usually listened to the broadcast of the game I was watching,
though I occasionally switched to broadcasts of Tigers games
I think I was the first to bring a radio to the ballpark,
or at least the first to be photographed doing so,
and that’s why the Hall has a picture of me

Michael Ceraolo is a 62-year-old retired firefighter/paramedic and active poet , the author of two full-length books (Euclid Creek, from Deep Cleveland Press; 500 Cleveland Haiku, from Writing Knights Press), and two more in the pipeline (Euclid Creek Book Two, from unbound content press; Lawyers, Guns, and Money, from Writing Knights Press).