by Matt Lindon
Ted Williams despised Yankee Stadium
The size and shadows persist
Built on a glacial wetland
Underlined by polished schist
So the outfield was sub-irrigated
Into a slow and swampy sod
Naturally moist and ever green
On which Mickey Mantle plod
All the people sitting around Updike
at Ted’s final home win
In the moist autumn wetland ballpark
In Boston’s Post-Cambrian Fens
The chain-smoking Boston babes, the B.C. humor
The insecure insouciance of the Harvard freshmen
Knowing all, knowing nothing
A place we all have been.
But the Ted hypotheticals are a little thin:
What if Mickey Mantle was healthy
and didn’t drink like a fish
or if DiMaggio was not so wealthy.
The tired timeless comparisons
with Ty Cobb and Shoeless Joe Jackson
A game played at glacial pace.
Another era. Another eon.
