Posted on

Chin Music

by Dan Provost

Gibson would back you
off the plate on a bet.

Pedro had no illusions—
He just hated your guts
if you had a different color uniform.

Nolan Ryan didn’t care if
his 98 MPH fastball hit
a hip, arm, or leg.

Charge the mound for respect?

Next inning?
More chin music…

A nuanced, non-written
rule of the
National Pastime.

 

A former collegiate offensive lineman and football coach, Dan Provost’s poetry has been published in many print and online magazines. He lives in Berlin, New Hampshire with his wife, Laura, and dog, Bella.

Posted on

Boston 1, Mets 0

by Stephen Jones

Inside the Mets’ locker room
Is a future Hall of Fame pitcher,
Probably the only one ever
With a losing record:
The great Jacob deGrom.

He wouldn’t do it –
If you knew him, not his style –
But someone should be advertising
Somewhere, anywhere,
For non-existent Mets’ run support.

 

Posted on

Yankees 9, Rays 3

by Stephen Jones

In this bubble-ball age,
Anything can happen —
Including a socially distanced
Rivalry between two teams
That actually hate each other.

I grew up hearing about crimson stuff
Just like this — you know,
New York vs Boston, and the like, and
It made going to school easier then.
New York vs Tampa now does the same.

It may be a new world, now, what
With social media and a pandemic,
But some gut things just don’t change.

 

Posted on

Harry Frazee

by Michael Ceraolo

I was the first owner who wasn’t handpicked by Johnson,
and I was the first owner to remind him
that he worked for us, not the other way around
Two strikes against me
Most of the transactions I made
were not thought of poorly at the time;
it is only in retrospect that some look bad
And even among these I wasn’t always to blame:
it was years after I sold the team
that one of the players we acquired
in one of the so-called bad moves, Lefty O’Doul,
was sent elsewhere and became a quality player
Even selling the Babe was defensible:
we finished sixth in the standings and fifth in attendance
even with him; he wanted more money,
and it’s extremely doubtful
he would have become in Boston what he became in New York
And I sold the team to Bob Quinn in 1923,
so their finishing last seven of the next eight years
wasn’t my responsibility: remember,
there were no farm systems back then
Every year you had to acquire some new players
in order to improve your team;
if Quinn didn’t have the wherewithal
to do the job, that was on him,
not on me or any supposed curse
But Quinn was a baseball guy, not a theater guy,
and so he escaped the blame from sportswriters
Strike three against me:
having my baseball reputation in the hands of sportswriters
No one should ever have his reputation in such hands