Reviving the Art of Baseball Doggerel
If a batter stays cool in the box
He’s a grad of the school of hard knocks
Leaning in on the plate
Means his chin has a date
With a thousand unnatural shocks.
Hilary’s blog delivers doggerel limerick goodness every day, on film noir, monster movies and other bits of pop culture. Check it out at LimerWrecks.
The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly
by a spirit of uselessness
which delights them —
all the exciting detail
of the chase
and the escape, the error
the flash of genius —
all to no end save beauty
the eternal –
So in detail they, the crowd,
are beautiful
for this
to be warned against
saluted and defied —
It is alive, venomous
it smiles grimly
its words cut —
The flashy female with her
mother, gets it —
The Jew gets it straight – it
is deadly, terrifying —
It is the Inquisition, the
Revolution
It is beauty itself
that lives
day by day in them
idly —
This is
the power of their faces
It is summer, it is the solstice
the crowd is
cheering, the crowd is laughing
in detail
permanently, seriously
without thought
From The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams Vol 1:1909-1939 (New Directions Publishing Corporation ). Copyright by New Directions Publishing Corporation.
I read all the headlines
About the trading deadline–
Who is Pittsburgh-bound?
Brewers, Mets, and Blue Jays
Slumping in the dog days…
Can they turn around?
Hot-shot rookies
Hittin’ cookies–
The ROY debate,
Great pennant races
In fan-packed places…
Isn’t summer great?
146 home runs so far
Shades of 1927?
It’s bad luck to compare
But fun to tease tradition:
The big bat
is where it’s at
in Yankee Stadium
A mantra that
is “Ohmm . . . swat!”
amid fan-demonium
One thing is certain
and just to say:
The Bronx Bombers
are pure Broadway
That’s the only job for you, take your tip now, Theodore,
Think of how your pulse will leap when you hear the angry roar.
Of the bleacher gods in rage, you will find the action there,
Which you’ve hunted for in vain, in the Presidential chair.
Chasing mountain lions and such, catching grizzlies will seem tame,
Lined up with the jolt you’ll get in the thick of some close game.
Choking angry wolves to death as a sport will stack up raw,
When you see Kid Elberfeld swinging for your under jaw.
When you hear Hugh Jennings roar, “Call them strikes, you lump of cheese!”
Or McGraw rushing in, kicking at your shins and knees.
This advice to President Theodore Roosevelt (not a fan of the game) was published in Baseball Magazine, in June 1909.