Baseball Rooting

by Thomas O. Davenport

Your favorite athletes move from team to team
The hitters, hurlers, fielders all chase bucks
Old-time fan loyalty is but a dream
As players drive their wealth away in trucks

Free agents’ names and faces give no clue
So raise your voice for the best color scheme
Choose purple, crimson, orange, green or blue
Urge on your favorite sports apparel theme

Or pick the mascot that’s most bold and fierce
The one inclined to slash and slice and slay
With jaws that chomp and bloody claws that pierce
My Tiger dines on fricasseed Blue Jay

What’s more, our park serves only the best ale
No better motive could there be to cheer
And though our squad may flounder, flop and fail
Hip hip hooray! Let’s hear it for our beer!

When you select the club that you’ll support
The nine athletes for whom you’ll choose to root
Ignore the friendly confines of the sport
And contemplate the price in hard-earned loot

The cost is high each time you disembark
So back the team that charges less to park

Tom’s collection of comic verse, Get the Hell to Work, was published by Kelsay Books in 2020. 

 

Kellogg’s at the Bat

Oh somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout
But there is no joy in Mudville — for the Corn Flakes are fresh out.

Kellogg’s ad, 1963

The Tycoon

by Ogden Nash

The business life of Mr. Musial
is, to say the least, unusual.
First base, outfield, restaurant, bank,
All are home to Stanley Frank.
One moment, slugger of lethal liners,
The next, mine host to hungry diners,
And, between the slugging and the greeting,
To the bank for a directors’ meeting.
Yet no one grudges success to Stan,
Good citizen and family man,
Though I would love to have his job…
One half tycoon, one half Ty Cobb.

Nash with Dagmar on the TV show Masquerade Party, 1955.