Reviving the Art of Baseball Doggerel
Marcus Semien
Is happy to be a simian.
Can’t imagine being a cat, a cow or a fish
If a genie gave him three wishes.
Nick Castellanos
Thinks he could totally take Thanos,
Darkseid, Kang, the Joker and Lex
Luthor (hmmm, a superiority complex?).
Camilo Doval
Loves music atonal.
Get him started on Anton Webern
Only if you have time to burn.
Lars Nootbaar
Is buying a root farm,
Gonna grow some carrots, beets, and parsnips.
“Root for my rutabagas!” he quips.
I don’t think I was a genius
by any objective measurement,
but it wasn’t hard to seem like one
compared to most of the other owners,
who considered attendance at the games
to be the fans’ religious obligation
My treating baseball as a business
that had to attract its customers
with a good product and fun at the park
was derided as heresy
(though many of my ideas were soon copied)
And that wasn’t their only resort to mystical nonsense:
they first fought, and then severely limited, night games
Just imagine:
running a business whose hours of operation
(set by you)
preclude the vast majority of customers
from patronizing your business.
The captain has turned off the seatbelt sign and out comes the lighter and with a flick and a dip the birthday cake is aglow and in the arms of the attendant with an enhanced chest followed by the power hitter with enhanced pecs, the guy no one likes, and everybody now happy birthday dear skipper and of course there’s the lefty bullpen specialist or whatever in the vestibule with a camo koozie and matching trucker hat hitting on the other very good looking attendant in fact look at that all of them are All-Stars that’s no coincidence because even in this day of time’s up I’m not here for you there’s still more work to do especially in the big leagues but we’re getting there and hey now batter up everyone’s got a chance the night before opening day and tonight’s flight is the time to feel good because tomorrow afternoon at about the time hats cover hearts for the rockets’ red glare comes the spotlight of expectancy right in the eyes but not now, right now this is the feel good express and the coaches they all feel it especially the hitting coach, guy thinks this is a seventies British rock band, and shortstop batting leadoff he feels it, mister happy peeking over the seat in front of him eyeing this curious celebration, and the dad-bod married guy with three kids what’s he even play now anyway left field now he’s two years postpeak and two years yet on his contract you know he’s hoping he can keep it together that long, oh but what’s that, did you see Arañita coming out of the can just now, looks like he puked his guts out, skinny guy with rubber arm and baconsizzle fastball, poor guy all the tools save location and he’ll lay it up for you, that cockhigh fastball and he knows he doesn’t have that tool yet that’s for the vets with meat on their bones, drives him to the can it does, but he’s a bet for the future that he can pull it together and turn in something nice, a good career, and isn’t that what this flight is, a manifest of all the hopefuls here together at once on board at six hundred knots and thirty thousand feet, an earthbound missile at the apogee still up in the clouds, trajectory of the bombs off Arañita, peanuts and Cracker Jack happy birthday to you.
Ken Derry is a former editor for the New York Yankees and has an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. Some fiction credits include HAD, Danse Macabre, and The Carolina Quarterly.
Eager to get to the ballfield
in the morning
to play
baseball, what I lived for
1964,
I followed the Major League scores,
batting averages, and standings;
the rest of the world no more
to me then
than a nightly news show
like Vietnam helicopter
womp womp,
machine gun rat-tat-tat;
I fed on
daily box scores in the newspaper
each breakfast
and left the ballfield only
to return home
for a meal
and on days it rained
I read books about baseball…
A guy my uncle knew, who
played for the local high school, had
played two years with the NY Yankees.
Two hours before the baseball game,
Dock Ellis ate acid.
In his hotel party room,
Blacklight hallucinations.
Jimi Hendrix on the Hi-Fi,
“Electric Lady riffs.”
Whoops! Sports page don’t lie—
“Dock Ellis Pitching Tonight!”
What you gonna do, Dock? She asked.
Dock just smiled, took another hit.
The partying Pirate strolled to the mound.
“higher than a Georgia Pine.” (his words)
The hapless Padres were no match.
Dock’s lively fastball whistled.
90 miles per hour,
Rolling with flaming comet tails.
Sent with fire and brimstone,
Strikes exploding into his catcher’s mitt.
“Steee-rike”, called the Grim Reaper,
Ringing up the stunned batters.
Next came Dock’s curveball,
Floating like a Frisbee.
Ball spinning through a rainbow,
Surrealistic, sublime.
Baseball in slow motion now,
Frozen in its altered state.
Dock pounds the zone,
Sasquatch bellers, “Outta there!”
A gorilla strides to the plate,
Dock whiffs the phantom.
Dock pitching in psychedelia,
Spinning colors to the plate.
Now the strangest apparition:
Nixon behind the plate.
Jefferson Airplane in Dock’s head,
Nixon screams, “Strike three!”
“One pill makes you larger,”
“One pill makes you small.”
Bewildered Padres swung wildly,
Hitting that pill “not at all.”
Purple Haze, Sandoz,
Orange sunshine, Windowpane.
Dock levitates still higher,
High above the stadium.
Mind and body now separated,
Into the cosmic realm.
Dock wills the pitcher onward,
Below, the glassy hyaline.
He’s pitching effortlessly,
So far away from the blue planet.
“It’s all so beautiful,”
And still no hits for the Padres.
Dock’s throwing daggers, thunderbolts—
Like the enraged God.
He’s ever so wild,
Trippin’ so hard.
Where’s the plate?
Dock sees only a river of tie-dye color.
Nine free baserunners,
Eight walks, one hit batsman (who looked like Frankenstein).
Twice Dock loaded the bases,
Sorcerers on first, second, third.
Not even Don Juan would score,
Dock’s electric Kool-Aid too strong.
Padre hitters were getting scared,
That crazy look in Dock’s eyes.
Pitches from the third dimension,
Dock’s tell-tale dilated pupils.
Ninth inning coming,
Still no runs, no hits.
Dock descended from the celestial sphere,
Holding a baseball light, tiny.
Dock fired that last pitch,
A meteorite at light speed.
Through a cloudy vapor trail,
Last man out!
LSD no-hitter!
Dock gazed into the Infinite.
Jewels of the Heavens sparkled,
The Luna moon smiled.
“I pitched a fucking no-hitter!”
The Gods of baseball applauded.
Thus in 1970,
Another folk hero was born.
“What did you see on that last play?”
The confused sportswriters wanted to know.
Dock just smiled like a Cheshire cat,
“Man, you wouldn’t believe what I saw!”
The legend says Dock met Timothy Leary,
An autograph and baseball card for the acid guru.
Leary’s proclamation,
To day-trippers everywhere:
Behold Dock Ellis:
First pitcher to “turn on, tune in, and drop out!”