Reviving the Art of Baseball Doggerel
Mike Trout
An All-Star, but out,
A parallel, I suppose,
To his post-season career with the Halos.
Ozzie Albies
Likes to trek through the tall trees
And ask the numberless stars
How many Ozzies there are.
Carlos Rodón
Has got it goin’ on
Non-tendered after 2020
Now mowing down batters like el jefe.
Buster Posey
Doesn’t want to be nosey
But just wants to know that
You’re gonna finish eating that?
Shohei Ohtani
Crushes balls unlike any
And pitches like a mystery–
Face it, folks, we’re watching history.
Josh Hader
Might bring his waders
Along on the All-Star break
And do some fishing on a cool Colorado lake.
Jesse Winker
Tends to lay off the sinkers
But he can go nuts
For a well-made cronut.
J.T. Realmuto’s
Favorite might be Pluto
Among cartoon dogs, but he
Identifies the most with Muttley.
my father taught religious school every saturday and sunday morning. i was required to attend every saturday. afterwards, we would go over to my great-uncle’s package liquor store, and he would deliver booze for them.
my brother would lay down on crates reading in the back, while i played pinochle with my great-uncle and two of his hanger-on buddies, my clip-on tie hanging on to my disheveled shirt by a tie tack. while they smoked their unfiltered cigarettes, i chose pretzel rods instead, and life savers rather than real coins.
the ball game played on the radio. the three geezers filled my head with baseball tales and local player lore.
after a couple years i turned ten, and they presented me with an all-star baseball mag as a gift. every picture had a hand-signed autograph. i cherished this prized treasure.
years later it came time to move out of the folks’ house. i rediscovered this prize, only to realize that every third signature possessed the same handwriting.
i laughed and looked up at the sky. ‘you guys got me!’
A proud son of Cleveland, Stan Klein is a fine artist, a gallery manager and an usher for both the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
By the time I turned thirty,
I had had a couple cups of coffee in the bigs,
neither very successful,
and I wasn’t even consistent in the minors
It looked like I would be one of the countless
small-town ball-playing eccentrics
who never stuck in the big-time
Then, while playing in New Orleans in 1920,
I met a doctor who finally figured out
why my arm had been giving me trouble
off and on for several years;
he corrected it, though to this day
I can’t say what it was he did, exactly
I went from small-town eccentric
to colorful and dazzling major-league pitcher
(all big-city eccentrics are ‘colorful’)
You know all about the three men on third
(I was the one with the right to the base),
and we had club that fined those
who got caught breaking curfew
Hell, I taught the neighbor’s girl how to pitch;
you couldn’t get much more eccentric in those days
