Reviving the Art of Baseball Doggerel
You couldn’t have picked a better spot
In all the U.S.A.
Our welcome to St. Louis, son,
We send without delay.
If you can’t use these tickets
For just any game at all,
We’d be pleased to have your parents
When the umpire cries: “Play ball!”
Congratulations,
Bill Veeck
For a time, the Browns sent 2 free tickets to newborn children in St. Louis. Found on the marvelous Twitter feed of Jim Koenigsberger (@Jimfrombaseball).
Tony La Russa intentionally walked a batter
with two strikes and two outs
The next guy up hit a homer,
bringing Tony’s mind into doubt.
A head scratching choice
A questionable call
Tony swore the statistics
Would cause the Dodgers to stall.
But the Sox have a plan
to get back on the right track:
Swapping 77-year-old La Russa
for 87-year-old Connie Mack.
(Editor’s Error! This limerick was submitted in June of 2022, but was lost in the Inbox.)
Where were we
. when we began to see
most of these men
. were half our age
and that any dream we had here
. was mud-caked and attic-packed?
It’s all small ball now—
. little victories, fundamentals.
Good knees. Pension plans.
. Cold beer. Shaded stands.
A sacrifice bunt sets up
. a suicide squeeze.
A body learns a lifetime
. of committing toward the base,
of being waved again and again
. toward home.
Winning is remembering
. neither team escapes the fate
of swirling dust kicked up
. from the slide into the plate
no matter how far they pull
. their caps down over their eyes,
nor how the ump
. will call the play.
Aaron Sandberg has appeared or is forthcoming in Asimov’s, No Contact, Alien Magazine, The Shore, The Offing, Sporklet, Burningword Journal and elsewhere. A multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, you can see him—and his poetry posts—on Instagram @aarondsandberg.
On a warm June evening in my 54th year
my 16-year-old son asks me to hit him fungos
my diminished prowess clearly states
who is the coach and who is the player
I hit rainbow fly balls to his left and right
he sprints lithely, with grace, speed and
determination after the cowhide spheres
arcing to earth
sweat glistens on his brow and mine
I see the present and past collide in
intergenerational confusion
vicariously reliving the simple uncluttered
pleasure of pure pursuit
to test one’s physical limits against time and space
I loft one hope and challenge after another
into the twilight
and my son gives his all in the chase
he is not consciously aware of the metaphors
of this exchange
my inner delight is immense in this physical
give-and-take
the baseball tossed from my hand to bat to sky
to be snared in his glove and thrown back to me
the pattern repeated over and over
caught up in this rhythmic dance,
wishing time would pause in this magic moment
of ordinariness
I humbly acknowledge that life doesn’t get any sweeter than this
The kid’s seated on the bench.
His father’s standing in the rickety bleachers.
The kid’s team is trailing by a run.
The father’s screaming at the coach, the umpires,
everybody on the field and in the stands,
to put his boy into the game.
The kid’s small.
Others his own age
are from Brobdingnag
by comparison.
He can barely swing a bat.
His fielding’s more confusion
than skills.
And his pitching arm’s
as limp as lettuce.
And, besides, he despises baseball.
The kid’s praying the coach doesn’t look his way.
The father’s yelling won’t let up.
So the kid’s happy on the bench.
But misery can’t keep his mouth shut.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, and Red Sox fan, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Rathalla Review. Latest books — “Covert”, “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” — are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and Open Ceilings.