Reviving the Art of Baseball Doggerel
Miguel “Sugar” Santos
Signs a pro baseball contract
Every Dominican boy’s dream
First step to “The Show”
In a small Iowa town
Battling differences
In culture and language
Miguel’s dreams play out
Is baseball
The only road to success
Divergent paths appear
A future reconsidered
Mantle ran so hard, they said,
he tore his legs to pieces.
What is this but spirit?
52 homers in ’56, the triple crown.
I was a high school junior, batting
fourth behind him in a dream.
I prayed for him to quit, before
his lifetime dropped below .300.
But he didn’t, and it did.
He makes Brylcreem commercials now,
models with opened mouths draped around him
as they never were in Commerce, Oklahoma,
where the sandy-haired, wide-shouldered boy
stood up against his barn,
lefty for an hour (Ruth, Gehrig),
then righty (DiMaggio),
as his father winged them in,
and the future blew toward him,
now a fastball, now a slow
curve hanging
like a model’s smile
William Heyen’s poems have appeared in over 100 periodicals. He taught English literature and creative writing at the State University of New York College at Brockport for over 30 years. He recently performed “Mantle” at the Chautauqua Festival.
Brandon Inge will take a trip to Triple-A.
Where he will attempt to swing his slump away.
Fans can hope he hits the way he did five years before,
But there ain’t no getting over being 34.
Where the dreams come from not everyone knows
but the fortunate few who the old coaches chose
stand straight now in two perpendicular rows
recite the good pledge, then take a few throws.
The glare of bright lights, the cameras, the action
excite each young ballplayer’s loud hometown faction
and give tickled fathers some proud satisfaction
that’s tempered with hope, and a tinge of distraction.
A few in the Big Show once played on this stage
but so many more advance to old age
not reaching this peak of pure athletic rage –
a peak just a championship will assuage.
With fundraising over, long practices done
it’s time for the whole world to tune into fun:
to watch catchers gun and the fast runners run;
to see which team ends up on top, number one.
Regular contributor Todd Herges has passed along the exciting news that his son, Jack, plays on the new Nebraska state champ Little League team! Congrats to Jack and the squad from Kearney!
Saturday afternoon, alone in the living room
I crouched on the floor to watch
the Tigers lose another game.
Don Wert let a ball roll through
his legs and down the line in left.
You pimp, I cried
as the winning run scored.
My mother dropped laundry, grabbed my arm:
what’d you call him?
Pimp, I mumbled. I was nine
and about to learn a new word.
My mother turned off the tv.
A man sells a woman’s body.
I thought about that for a long time:
Don Wert missed a ground ball.
Don Wert did not sell women’s bodies.
Don Wert was not a good third baseman.
Don Wert was not a pimp.
It would be a couple more years
before I thought much about women’s bodies
before I etched a g for girls
into my dresser drawer knob I used
to dial in my dreams.
That night I pinned Don Wert’s baseball card
to my dartboard and took my pleasure.
Pimp, I whispered, pimp.
Jim Daniels is the Thomas Stockham Baker Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, where he has taught creative writing for 30 years.