by Hilary Barta
To the bleachers a finger was pointed
With a homer the Babe was anointed
.   The fat patron saint
.   of a lack of restraint
His appetite came double-jointed.
.
The Sacred Room: Yankee Stadium
by Ed Ryterband
My first Yankee game dad is taking us
I’m full of quiverings and pictures
About Mantle, Berra, Ford and
Suddenly we turn a corner in the Bronx
The giant stadium is looming over us
Vendors hawking banners, hats and badges
I’m drooling over all the souvenirs.
Dad tugs me through a turnstile
Then we join the flow streaming through our gate
One of many in the endless curving wall of Yankee Stadium
A hundred voices rumble echoing inside a tunnel,
Up a ramp and then another ramp
My skinny legs aching with impatience
Up another flight of steps
At last out into the open space
The playing field, the neatest grass and careful dirt and endless seats,
More people than I ever saw.
I gape at them, float above myself
A roar jolts me to attention
The Yankees poring from the dugout
A stream of heroes,
Spreading confident to their appointed places
Hats on hearts they face the flag
The anthem squawks
The game begins at last
I stand and sit and stand again
The plays move slow,
I savor them like ice cream.
Another wish fulfilled a boiled hotdog
Strangers hands pass it on to me
Draped in yellow mustard
I sniff it close, steaming still
My first bite tangy on my lips and tongue.
Washed down with coke and ice cubes for my chewing
Dessert: fresh peanuts
Shells collecting, covering my feet
My breath gets raw and stinky
So dad tells me
I don’t care
What I remember
Mantle hits a homer that never seems to end
The roar is deafening and wonderful,
Carries me into the sky
I hope the game will never end
It does
I sleep the whole way home.
No Ties, No Ticking Clocks: April 18, 1981
by Barbara Gregorich
There are no ties in baseball,
there is no ticking clock.
The game could continue forever.
One night in Rhode Island
the Rochester Red Wings
face the Pawtucket Red Sox.
A fierce wind invades the stadium,
numbing fans and players alike.
Make this one quick, everyone hopes.
Lights generate no warmth.
Fans applaud, the game begins.
Six scoreless innings, then Rochester drives in
a single run. Bottom of the ninth,
the PawSox also score a single run.
There are no ties in baseball,
there is no ticking clock. There are only
more chances. The extra innings creep
like icicles: tenth, eleventh, twelfth arrive
and depart with nothing but snowballs
to show: big, round, cold zeros.
At the end of eighteen innings
the score remains one-one.
The temperature drops to bathyspheric depths.
Players light bonfires in trash barrels,
burning broken bats as fuel. Fans go home
to furnaces that blast hot air.
Players long to go home, too, but first
one of them must cross home.
The stadium sells out of food. Clubhouse men
deploy into the frigid night and return
with chow the players bolt down. The game
goes on — four hours . . . five . . . six.
There are no ties in baseball,
there is no ticking clock.
And then, top of the twenty-first inning —
Rochester scores a second run.
Hallelujah!
The game will, at long last, be over.
Completed.
No. Not meant to be.
Pawtucket also scores a second run
in the bottom of the twenty-first. Game tied,
Continue reading “No Ties, No Ticking Clocks: April 18, 1981”
Baseball . . . Soon
by Stephen Jones
Sure ’nuff baseball starts
fan-world balanced on
a new season
by game beer brats
The season-to-be first
pumped by fist
then applause dismays
& maybe applause again
The moments/the pitches
the at-bats & skewed recoveries
brilliant plays or errors by inches
or a bunt called fair
Anticipate whatever
moments of baseball & history long
a long time is April-October
& a baseball song
Holy Cow!
by Susanna Rich
Once you’ve been saved
by the Church of
St. Baseball—the
game is All: the
Hot Dog! grill’s the
altar; bases
are stations of
the moss; the pope’s
on second; cheers
are chants; every
hit aches for the
sky; every word
is—Say Hey!—a
prayer for home.
Susanna wrote and narrated this poem for “Cobb Field: A Day at the Ballpark,” Craig Lindvahl’s documentary, for which she was nominated for an Emmy. The film can frequently be seen on the MLB Network. Susanna has been published numerous times in Spitball and read frequently at the Yoga Berra Museum at Montclair State University in New Jersey.