Reviving the Art of Baseball Doggerel
Playing Softball in Central Park
with chorus dancers traipsing
around bases and pirouetting
to snag fly-balls and I in
tight gold and green MGM
Lions uniform, as-twinky-as
could be, enjoying the sights,
sounds, and après drinks
and egos and all that comes
with thespians and Broadway
“types” in Baseball costumes.
Strawberry Fields memoir.
Welcome Tony Puma to his first at-bat with Bardball. You can read more of his poetry at his website.
The bells are ringing for inter-league play –
A diet staple, just like a holiday.
What was once a summer oddity
Is now regular baseball commodity,
Some match-ups enhance old rivalries –
Like Mets/Yankees, a subway series.
Others are fuel for the ongoing fire –
To DH or not? That argument doesn’t tire.
To Judy and Der Bingle – my apologies.
Baseball is fathomless, with twisting eddies.
It continues, Zeus-like, with cosmic mystery
Ordaining: The AL keeps its singularity.
They are the boys of summer promise in spring
A World if they can make it
Beginning their perennial journey
To repeat the bounty of past
Or quest for the yet unfulfilled
Knowing the only known is the unknown
The boys are mixed of hurlers and battery mates
Speed demons and some thunder
Mighty cracks and broken bats catch the eye
Of mentor, coach and locker bums
Of spectators ready for play
In their spring these boys of summer stand out
Their numbers thin as play begins to reject
Only so many chances
To prove they belong and will contribute
To the team that becomes family
To the family of fans who root
And wish to leave day’s worry at the gate
They are the boys of summer into the grind
Day after night in the park
A series of Series upon Series
Sacrifice and personal feats
Bring thrill or grief, sorrow or joy
Streaks and slides and stats will tell the story
The boys write a chapter every summer day
Each pitch, each hit, each error
Recorded forever to be compared
With summer boys who came before
Are here now and those yet to be
Shared history in kind and harsh beauty
Boys of summer simmer heat beat and battle
As Cobb said, “It’s like a war”
With an accounting of those left to die
Stranded on the no-way-back path
Failing teammate summer warriors
Victory is in bringing your boys home
Some boys of summer now reach second season
Leave the fallen in autumn
Top standings will boast and wild cards may toast
Now is the time the true live for
The summer glory is memory
The sweat and toil prelude to the pennant
They are the boys of autumn who were tested
All those days and all those plays
Brought them to the brink of the Promised Land
Time to be better than before
Being good enough to get here
Means nothing as the game begins once more
The culmination of the last two standing
The Series to end it all
The best of the best fight to the last out
Cheers and champagne for the victors
Tears and pain for those so close
Summer boys come home to dream of next year
According to family legend, Art Gomez was conceived in a Chicago hotel room when his father had a tryout with the Cubs. A devoted Mariners fan, Art reads his poems in the Seattle area as a member of PoetsWest and Seattle Free Lances. His poems have appeared in Spindrift, Minotaur Press, Poetic Matrix, Seattle Muse, and Poets Against War, and on KSER 90.7 FM (Independent Public Radio).
The burden of hard hitting. Slug away
. Like Honus Wagner or like Tyrus Cobb.
Else fandom shouteth: “Who said you could play?
. Back to the jasper league, you minor slob!”
. Swat, hit, connect, line out, get on the job.
Else you shall feel the brunt of fandom’s ire
. Biff, bang it, clout it, hit it on the knob—
This is the end of every fan’s desire.
The burden of good pitching. Curved or straight.
. Or in or out, or haply up or down,
To puzzle him that standeth by the plate,
. To lessen, so to speak, his bat-renoun:
. Like Christy Mathewson or Miner Brown,
So pitch that every man can but admire
. And offer you the freedom of the town—
This is the end of every fan’s desire.
The burden of loud cheering. O the sounds!
. The tumult and the shouting from the throats
Of forty thousand at the Polo Grounds
. Sitting, ay, standing sans their hats and coats.
. A mighty cheer that possibly denotes
That Cub or Pirate fat is in the fire;
. Or, as H. James would say, We’ve got their goats—
This is the end of every fan’s desire.
The burden of a pennant. O the hope,
. The tenuous hope, the hope that’s half a fear,
The lengthy season and the boundless dope,
. And the bromidic; “Wait until next year.”
. O dread disgrace of trailing in the rear,
O Piece of Bunting, flying high and higher
. That next October it shall flutter here:
This is the end of every fan’s desire.
ENVOY
Ah, Fans, let not the Quarry but the Chase
. Be that to which most fondly we aspire!
For us not Stake, but Game; not Goal, but Race—
. THIS is the end of every fan’s desire.
Franklin Pierce Adams was a columnist and prolific doggerelist, best known for “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon (Tinker to Evers to Chance)”. This poem is from his book In Other Words (1912).
A tale of a batter renowned
His exploit will always be known.
While the pitcher was taking the mound,
Our hero struck out on his own.