Reviving the Art of Baseball Doggerel
Baseball
is the president tossing out the first ball of the season
and a scrubby schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm.
A tall, thin old man waving a scorecard from the corner of his dugout.
That’s baseball.
Thanks to the always fascinating Twitter account of Jim Koenigsberger (@jimfrombaseball).
Before I moved to California to marry in 1996, my wife never paid much attention to baseball, which makes sense. She arrived to the states in 1987 from Peru, so soccer was her focal point in sports, not baseball.
It’s also odd that I introduced her to the game that year — being still upset over the ’94 strike. However, I succumbed that summer as Cal Ripken chased Lou Gehrig’s consecutive game record. I lived in Baltimore during Cal’s rookie year, and even though I leaned to the Yankees as a New Yorker, I admired him as both player and person.
So, I suspended my personal boycott against the pros and watched those games.
Occasionally, Ghisela would stop and watch, asking about the game. While explaining the action on the diamond, I told her the best way to watch baseball was in person, promising to take her to a Dodgers game sometime.
That Fall we got tickets to a home game at Chavez Ravine. In the opening inning, Mike Piazza came up to bat and hit a grand slam, which was not that unusual in those years, but for my wife, was a grand treat.
“You know,” I turned to her, shouting above the crowd while Piazza ran the bases, “I’ve been going to games all my life and have never seen one of these in person. You go to your first and whaddya get?”
Perhaps it was the manic environment, although statistics, the mainstay of baseball, may have appealed to her clinical mindset. Of course, there is the fun in the game’s connection to superstitious beliefs and behavior.
Whatever the cause, she was hooked — on baseball in general and the Dodgers in particular, a love that blossomed into passion — with all the necessary accessories that condition entails: hats, water bottles, shirts, license plate frames. She even forbade me from wearing my old Yankee hats around her.
Now we are season ticket holders for the Dodgers; my wife is a baseball fiend, and I created the monster.
This story first appeared in the collection, Time Well Spent, published by Southern Arizona Press.
(In appreciation of the April 8, 2024 solar eclipse and with apologies to Bonnie Tyler)
Baseball was my reliable Chicago sun:
Warm summer days, filled with run after run.
Basketball was my Windy City moon:
Cool winter nights, swishing nets into June.
My heart had space for Doubleday and Naismith’s games;
My heroes in Cooperstown and Springfield’s Halls of Fame.
But my steadfast true love
Began with bat, ball, and glove.
Once upon a time, Whitman waxed serious,
“The game of ball is glorious.”
The poet couldn’t imagine “base” falling apart.
There’s nothing I would lament, for
Nothing could eclipse my game of ball.
Then a madness occurred;
Began with Magic and Bird.
Ernie Banks’ around-the-bases smile,
Was displaced by MJ’s high-flying guile.
Today’s kids are in far too much of a hurry,
Thrilling to threes by sweet Steph Curry.
They know not the wonder of a triple play,
As rare as the moon getting in the sun’s way.
Once upon a time, there was light in our life,
But now there’s only love in the dark.
Is there nothing that can save us from
A total eclipse of the game?
I have difficulty explaining concisely how I throw the ball.
Its high arc dropping into an imaginary box, as if suspended by cable.
And so I perfect my elevator pitch.
After a 40 year absence, the eephus was resurrected by Rip Sewell for the Pirates in 1941.
–
Brad Roudebush’s favorite baseball movie is “Mr. 3000” because when Bernie Mac pulls the hidden ball trick, it accurately portrays that the pitcher may not be standing on the mound.
It’s Opening Day
Your favorite team loses
No perfect season
Ron Kaplan, among much other writing, writes and maintains the marvelous Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf.