by James Finn Garner
The Hall of Fame’s had guys
Named Mordecai,
Rabbit, Gabby, Ducky,
Old Hoss
and Kiki,
Lefty, Frankie, Connie,
and Pie,
Grover, Honus, Napoleon,
Dizzy, Dazzy
and Cy.
Now there’ll be a Todd?
Feels odd.
Difference
by Dizzy Dean
Difference between
the old ballplayer
and
the new ballplayer
is
the jersey.
The old ballplayer
cared about
the name on the front.
The new ballplayer
cares about
the name on the back.
Batters Up
by Michael Gallowglas
Someday, years from now, I’ll be sitting
at the Brooklyn Center for Fiction,
working on some story or other,
and a sound will grow in the background—
soft at first, then it will rise and rise
until it will hit just the right frequency
as the fillings in my teeth. The fillings will buzz
into my mind, creating a whole new kind
of sound that will nearly drown the screams,
screams that will draw everyone outside.
Screams that will draw everyone down
to the East River. Dread Cthulhu himself
will rise from the waters intent
on destroying New York City as his conquest.
His first target will be Lady Liberty.
He’ll break our spirits by breaking that monument.
A bright flash will appear in the sky,
only, it won’t go away, that flash, bright
as the sun, and Gregorian, rag-time hymns
will drown the alien frequency buzzing
through our fillings and into our minds.
A spiritual subway car will fly out
of that perpetual flash, carrying
Jackie Robinson and Babe Ruth from Heaven.
Those two legendary swingers will leap
out of that spiritual subway car and swing away
with their holy baseball bats of righteousness.
Cthulhu won’t stand a chance. Those sluggers
will slug dread Cthulhu back to the depths
chunk by battered chunk, and I’ll head back
to the Brooklyn Center for Fiction
and finish working on some story or other.
From his collection Cameos, which will be released May 28.
Charley Horse
by Jim Siergey
With apologies to you-know-who.
John Wesley Glasscock was a man who played shortstop
He fielded with no glove upon his hand
All through the 1880s he handled many a bad hop
While up at bat rarely did he fan
‘Twas with the Cleveland Blues was this time we talk about
When a runner he did slide with such great force
His gait was compensated and his leg he could not straighten out
Johnny laughed and said he limped just like a Charley Horse
All across the telegraph this term it did resound
And no copyright infringement could they prove
Wordsmiths searched through all their nouns but no better term was found
That would ever cause this phrase to be removed.
John Glasscock began his professional baseball career in 1879 and is regarded as one of the best shortstops in history. An 1886 blurb in the Wheeling Intelligencer credits him with coining the phrase “Charley Horse” because “the way the men limped around reminded him of an old horse he once had named Charley.”
Jim says, “When I learned John’s middle name, it led me to “compose” this.”
Eddie Collins
by Michael Ceraolo
I was one of the Clean Sox,
but that doesn’t mean I was perfect:
at the start of my career
I played professionally under an assumed name
in order to try to keep my college eligibility,
and I was a contributor to the pot gotten up
to reward Detroit for beating Boston in ’17,
something that the Dirty Sox later
tried to make out as part of a fix
Such rewarding was common at the time,
though I can see now how it could be misconstrued
I should have taken the job as Yankees manager
when it was offered to me;
I thought I was going to succeed Mr. Mack
when he retired, and that retirement would be in a few years
When that few years passed without his retiring,
I took the job with Mr. Yawkey,
and what I did and didn’t do in that job
has justifiably dimmed my reputation,
something that I now see in retrospect
