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Mother Earth’s Favorite

By Dr. Rajesh C. Oza

Chaupai (quatrain) poetry celebrating Mangla and Rajesh’s 40th anniversary on Earth Day, April 22, 2024.

My children’s mother loves all four of them dearly, holds them closely,
Just as Mother Earth loves her seasons: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall.
As a fan, she loves all sports: Big Four, Olympics, and kabaddi;
As a teacher, she loves all students: quiet, chatty, short, and tall.

Holding my breath, I ask Mother Earth if there is a favorite.
She holds my head in her hands and shakes it like a Raggedy Ann.
“How can I choose one over the other; a child is not a chit.”
I reply, “My Queen, not our kids, but sports. Does one claim you its fan?”

She sighs. “It cannot be football, for it is violent and vile.
How can I root for players whose handsome faces I cannot see?
No, Fall’s game that blitzes and throws bombs and bullets raises my bile.
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is too high a fee.”

She freezes. “It is not hockey, for it neglects too many shades.
How can such a lovely sport be so limited in its pigment?
While it’s scintillating when pucks spring off of slap shots from curved blades,
I look around the ice, and skins brown and black are but a figment.”

She smiles. “It could be basketball; just see the boys and girls in shorts.
To be sure, there is so much beauty in this game of balls and nets.
Still, there is something unforgiving about wood and concrete courts.
To defend against Tex Winter’s Triangle Offense, one plays chess.”

She glows. “I should not choose between my offspring, for they all bring joy.
But it is baseball. It is baseball. Yes, it is our dear baseball.
After Winter’s snow melts, on grassy fields bats and balls we deploy.
A game for all ages and seasons, from Spring to Summer to Fall.”

 

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Taxing Our Patience

by James Finn Garner

As all us plebs pay the tax man,
You owners need to face some facts, man.

In suites with well-heeled sponsors and friends,
You claim your team pays civic dividends

Then you say you need new parks resplendent?
We fans should claim you as a dependent.

Taxes and slush are your basic income,
We ask for returns and you play dumb.

When voters at last come to their senses,
You scream and whine and talk moving expenses.

Pigs at the trough, courting our elected hoes —
Whatever way it’s adjusted is gross.

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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).

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My Own Special Frankenstein’s Monster

by Bill Cushing

Before I moved to California to marry in 1996, my wife never paid much attention to baseball, which makes sense. She arrived to the states in 1987 from Peru, so soccer was her focal point in sports, not baseball.

It’s also odd that I introduced her to the game that year — being still upset over the ’94 strike. However, I succumbed that summer as Cal Ripken chased Lou Gehrig’s consecutive game record. I lived in Baltimore during Cal’s rookie year, and even though I leaned to the Yankees as a New Yorker, I admired him as both player and person.

So, I suspended my personal boycott against the pros and watched those games.

Occasionally, Ghisela would stop and watch, asking about the game. While explaining the action on the diamond, I told her the best way to watch baseball was in person, promising to take her to a Dodgers game sometime.

That Fall we got tickets to a home game at Chavez Ravine. In the opening inning, Mike Piazza came up to bat and hit a grand slam, which was not that unusual in those years, but for my wife, was a grand treat.

“You know,” I turned to her, shouting above the crowd while Piazza ran the bases, “I’ve been going to games all my life and have never seen one of these in person. You go to your first and whaddya get?”

Perhaps it was the manic environment, although statistics, the mainstay of baseball, may have appealed to her clinical mindset. Of course, there is the fun in the game’s connection to superstitious beliefs and behavior.

Whatever the cause, she was hooked — on baseball in general and the Dodgers in particular, a love that blossomed into passion — with all the necessary accessories that condition entails: hats, water bottles, shirts, license plate frames. She even forbade me from wearing my old Yankee hats around her.

Now we are season ticket holders for the Dodgers; my wife is a baseball fiend, and I created the monster.

This story first appeared in the collection, Time Well Spent, published by Southern Arizona Press.