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I Fart* (Lacking)

by Sid Yiddish

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As noisy as one lone cricket
That is the ticket
To the next movement
For a winning team
But sadly there is never much steam for an under-.500 ball club
The very idea would make all those previous Hall of Fame heroes roll over in their graves
The same men a little past 100 years ago clung to fame
For the pure integrity of winning a game
Now wins and constantly loses
There becomes a choice which one chooses, and sadly reality shows that no matter which age is chosen for flight, a team so old as them beginning to lose the fight
Earlier and earlier each season

The relative jerking and continual line of quaking and quirking from players blaming a team for simply not working hard enough to the relative goal–I’ve heard this all before
From the local newspaper to the TV news
That if it’s not the economy or the stock market,
It’s the Boys of Summer with a worsening case of major league blues

This is the pure reason
Why I can’t stand to see grown men cry
To bear, to wince, to moan, to not understand as much as they try

That for which is called baseball my favorite sport
Is getting the shove like your favorite cousin Mort straight out the door
The old and the young simply don’t care anymore

Giving up so fast is so damned easy.

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*”I fart” does not refer to the act of flatulence, rather it’s a Danish term for speed

Posted 6/16/2010

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The Baseball Sonnet

by Estrid Balslev
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I felt: A bee was swarming in my bonnet!
A voice said, “You’re a bard, so you must write
A real poem, full of spunk and bite.
In other words, you have to write a sonnet.”

“And what about?” I asked the eerie voice.
“On baseball,” was his firm and clear reply.
“Excuse me that I have to ask you why,”
I answered, but he said I had no choice.

“Of baseball I know less than does my cat,”
I said to him. “Come, let us have a chat

On other things that I might write about.”
He told me I had better close my snout

And just get going. Curse him! All the same,
I’m sure that baseball is a splendid game.
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Estrid Balslev is a poet and performance artist from Denmark.

Posted 6/10/2010

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Batting .407

by Todd Herges
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For those who wish, like me, that airtime were left to just one play-by-play guy and a wise, mostly quiet color man who chooses his interjections carefully,letting the analysts to do their important work silently at home, online

Welcome to WHO Radio, 780 on your BN dial.
We’re here at the ballpark for a game between
the hometown team and that one over there
in the first base dugout.

Tonight’s game features the hard-hitting guys
from a certain breezy burg
and their arch rivals from across the Big Muddy.
It’s bound to be a wild one!
Joining me in the booth is one of the great Masters
of the Obvious and Inconsequential …

Thanks Frank, and yes, it does promise to be a wild one.
Before the night is over we’ll see if a certain someone
can pass the milestone last breached by some guy
in Beantown who wore the number 9.
Yes, that’s right, today Mr. Mendoza has a
chance to finish the year with a batting
average above .400 on days ending in “y”
and beginning with “W”, when a southpaw
gets the start and they’re playing outdoors
on grass at night in a stadium with lights
more than 10 years old, and it’s the second game of
a road trip against a team in their own division.
(Except when he’s not hitting in the eight hole, or – if he is –
then he’s being protected
by a pitcher who has taken two or more yard
each year for the past three seasons.)

It’s interesting to note, on the other side of the plate,
that he has a perfect goose-egg average in at-bats that end with
him striking out, or being struck out. Backward
or forward, it matters not which.

I suppose he wishes they never played any games
on Monday or Friday, or on days beginning with “S” or “T”!

Posted 6/23/10

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This Season

by Stephen Jones

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This new season fans fresh
Cards & fantasy leagues lush
Etched stroked boasted

In any hemisphere any ballpark
Any afternoon or evening dark

Of baseball thinking & reacting
The art of pitching
Or sudden art of bat

In any hemisphere any ballpark
Any afternoon or evening dark

Arguments mouthed at a bar
a workplace or home are
part’n’parcel of baseball

In any hemisphere any ballpark
Any afternoon or evening dark

Is baseball feted
Appetite whetted

.

Posted 5/27/2010

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Casey on the Mound (Fourth World Series Game, 1941)

by Joe Pacheco


The outlook was so brilliant for the Brooklyn Nine that day.
The score stood four to three with but one inning left to play.
And when Sturm died on first and Red Rolfe did the same,
A mighty expectation filled the faithful at the game.
They thought if Casey could deliver as he had not yesterday,
The series would be tied with three more games to play.

But Henrich was now batting, with DiMaggio standing by,
And there was three and two on Tommy when Casey let it fly,
And when the moistened sphere broke down upon the plate
Henrich swung and missed it — Strike Three! — the roar was great,
Except that Mickey Owen, All-Star catcher of the year
Had let the ball roll by him with no other player near.

So upon the stricken multitude a sudden panic sat,
The game had not yet ended and DiMaggio was at bat.
Joltin’ Joe let drive a single to the dread dismay of all,
And Charlie “King Kong” Keller tore the cover off the ball,
And when the dust had lifted and they looked to see the score:
New York Yankees five, Brooklyn Dodgers only four!

But Casey wasn’t finished as the Flatbush Faithful found.
The game is never over with Casey on the mound.
A walk and another double put icing on the cake.
Two more runs for seven on Casey’s last mistake.

O nowhere in the Flatlands were there eyes without a tear.
From Coney Isle to Bushwick, they kept crying in their beer.
Fourteen more years they waited for a World Champion to be crowned,
Thanks to Owen’s All-Star catching and Casey on the mound.

.

Posted 5/21/2010