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“Polish Baseball Power”

by Sig Sakowicz

Sig Sakowicz (1924-2004) was a legendary Chicago TV and radio personality who wore his own Polish heritage on his sleeve. He hosted a show on WGN from 1954 to 1971 and then became a TV celebrity in Las Vegas. This piece – in which Sig recounted every Polish-American to don a baseball uniform, up to the point of this record (1970) – gained such fame that in 1980 the Baseball Hall of Fame requested a copy to be displayed in Cooperstown. It was written by Al Trace and produced by Gordon Wagner for the Mishawaka, IN-based Mishawaka label.

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A Yogi Poem

by Ralph Badagliacca

Shakespeare shaped the language.
Some say he invented it.
Wilde and Shaw spun expressions of unrelenting wit.
Whitman taught the mother tongue
How to sing for us;
Yeats scaled the beauty of her lonely peaks.
Joyce uncovered something new,
And so did Eliot.

But unlike Yogi, none of them could hit.

 

Taken from Ralph’s book, The Yogi Poems, available here. 

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Mr. Scoreboard

by James Finn Garner

the ledger of the sport that night
quiet and relentless
innings in other parks decided
three outs somehow made

if action here was lagging,
it was hopping somewhere else
and this wide network was tallied
with metal placards
slotted by men in shirtsleeves, sweating, smoking

Chesterfields and Old Golds
as advertised
and checking their watches
B-U-L-O-V-A

when the out-of-town games ended
east coast, then west coast,
the placards were put away
retiring like the faces of fans heading home
just as we would soon do
under the silent watchful eye of
Mr. Scoreboard

Sportsmen’s Park, St. Louis, July 20, 1951.