Reviving the Art of Baseball Doggerel
Based on an incident witnessed on June 13, 2023, in a game between the Vancouver Canadians and the Hillsboro Hops.
I’m having a swell time, Pops,
Behind the plate for the Hillsboro Hops,
And speaking of swell,
I might rest a spell
After catching a foul tip in the knob.
• Don’t talk to a pitcher who’s throwing a no-hitter or perfect game.
• Never slap the ball out of a fielder’s glove or distract him from catching a pop-up.
• Don’t swing at the first pitch if the last two hitters hit home runs.
• Never try to break up a no-hitter by releasing feral pigs onto the field.
• After a home run, a batter should not flip, burn, bury, lick or sing a love song to his bat.
• After making an out to end an inning, the batter should not run over the pitcher’s Mounds bar.
• After hitting a home run, a batter should not drop trou and shit on the pitcher’s mound. The mound is considered the pitcher’s exclusive “territory,” and only he is allowed to shit there.
• A pitcher should not throw at a batter’s children.
• On a 3-0 pitch, a batter should not break out his iPhone to check texts or post on Instagram.
• Infielders should not write love letters in the dirt.
• A catcher should not rip a piece of fabric when a batter swings to make him think he has split his pants.
• When a pitcher has a no-hitter going, everyone in the dugout should use exaggerated mime actions (e.g., pulling an invisible rope) to communicate.
• Whether pets or no, hybrid wolves are not allowed in the bullpen.
• Outfielders are not allowed to use dune buggies to field their positions.
• Batters are not allowed to bunt if they make more than $13 million that season.
• Extension grabbers hidden in outfielders’ gloves are strictly taboo.
• “Cumbly mumbly jumbly fumbly / Gimby gumby foo foo!” (sic)
• First basemen should not discuss existentialism with baserunners.
• Catchers are not allowed to give fake haircuts to batters.
• If a rhinoceros enters the field, play is suspended until the head umpire finishes reading aloud from Ionesco.
Reprinted from the nation’s best humor magazine, The American Bystander, issue #25.
Empty baseball field
Games of childhood played in lots
Tall grass makes me sad
Swing!
watching — eyes:
perfect,
brown bat
— swingng,
above brown dirt,
(above my bare brown feet).
The ball pops!
Whistling seams widen my eyes;
I hear my Dad (jumping off the mound).
He’s really twenty thousand people
cheering for me,
and my home run
(that went all the way over the dugout).
I round the bases
and he still hasn’t fetched the ball.
The captain has turned off the seatbelt sign and out comes the lighter and with a flick and a dip the birthday cake is aglow and in the arms of the attendant with an enhanced chest followed by the power hitter with enhanced pecs, the guy no one likes, and everybody now happy birthday dear skipper and of course there’s the lefty bullpen specialist or whatever in the vestibule with a camo koozie and matching trucker hat hitting on the other very good looking attendant in fact look at that all of them are All-Stars that’s no coincidence because even in this day of time’s up I’m not here for you there’s still more work to do especially in the big leagues but we’re getting there and hey now batter up everyone’s got a chance the night before opening day and tonight’s flight is the time to feel good because tomorrow afternoon at about the time hats cover hearts for the rockets’ red glare comes the spotlight of expectancy right in the eyes but not now, right now this is the feel good express and the coaches they all feel it especially the hitting coach, guy thinks this is a seventies British rock band, and shortstop batting leadoff he feels it, mister happy peeking over the seat in front of him eyeing this curious celebration, and the dad-bod married guy with three kids what’s he even play now anyway left field now he’s two years postpeak and two years yet on his contract you know he’s hoping he can keep it together that long, oh but what’s that, did you see Arañita coming out of the can just now, looks like he puked his guts out, skinny guy with rubber arm and baconsizzle fastball, poor guy all the tools save location and he’ll lay it up for you, that cockhigh fastball and he knows he doesn’t have that tool yet that’s for the vets with meat on their bones, drives him to the can it does, but he’s a bet for the future that he can pull it together and turn in something nice, a good career, and isn’t that what this flight is, a manifest of all the hopefuls here together at once on board at six hundred knots and thirty thousand feet, an earthbound missile at the apogee still up in the clouds, trajectory of the bombs off Arañita, peanuts and Cracker Jack happy birthday to you.
Ken Derry is a former editor for the New York Yankees and has an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. Some fiction credits include HAD, Danse Macabre, and The Carolina Quarterly.