We Got Happ

by HoraceClarke66

We got H-a-a-a-ppp!
Inning after inning of pure crap!
When the odds are saying you’ll never win
Break out the gin
You sap!
‘Cause we got J.A. Happ!

We’re so Happy that we’re hummin’
Hmm-hmm-hmm!
That’s the Happy thing to do.
Ho-ho-ho!
‘Cause we know our ship will come in
Though it’s nine years over due.

What can we do, man
But can Cashman?

We got H-a-a-a-ppp!
Nice if Coops could be a genius, of course
But keep that old horse
Out on the mound!
‘Cause we hadda have Happ!

 

Originally appeared on the Yankees blog, It Is High, It Is Far, It Is….caught.

 

Baseball Couplet

by Donald Hall

When the tall puffy
Figure wearing number
nine starts
late for the fly ball,
laboring forward
like a lame truckhorse
startled by a gartersnake,
–this old fellow
whose body we remember
as sleek and nervous as a filly’s–

and barely catches it
in his glove’s
tip, we rise and applaud weeping:
On a green field we observe the ruin
of even the bravest
body, as Odysseus
wept to glimpse
among the shades the shadow
of Achilles.

 

Donald Hall, who died on Sunday at age 89, was a writer, editor, literary critic and U.S. Poet Laureate in 2006.

Casey At the Baton, or Pete Rosenkavalier

By Patrick McCaughey

Overture

Baseball and opera. Basses, runs, and what’s more —
They each need a pitch before there’s a score.

Act I

Why would anyone take an opera box? There
Are better ones at the stadium.
Instead of watch opera, I’d rather go hear
Brooklyn’s phone book read verbadium.

Act II

I know how to handle a one or two hoppera,
And that Sparky Lyle was a lights-out stoppera,
That Tampa Bay plays at the Tropera,
And that Yogi was a malapropera.
But I’m as far from getting opera
As Bangor is from Santa Bopera.

Intermezzo

The seventh inning stretch — baseball’s intermezzo.
How do I know? My scorecard sezzo.

Act III

The drama! The length! The Mets! And before
The weary trudge up the aisle, two more —
Be it Series or Nibelung they each have rings,
And neither one’s over ‘til the fat lady sings.