Reviving the Art of Baseball Doggerel
Carny barker, rodeo clown,
Digging ditches in the ground,
Pizza schlepping in Astoria,
Lube guy at some sex emporia,
Blue-haired lady’s gigolo
(Let’s hope you never stoop that low),
Roadkill man on th’ Interstate,
Scrounging cans or selling bait–
Whatever crummy job you get,
Be thankful you’re not Mr. Met.
.
Players busted driving drunk,
Doo dah, doo dah!
Better that than shooting junk,
All the doo dah day!
Gonna drink all night!
Gonna play all day!
Bet my money on the one who’s bombed,
Throwin’ his career away!
.
Twenty-first birthday
and daughter’s a White Sox fan.
Booze might help that pain.
“the body, better than it was here in its best estate of health”
Augustine, City of God 13.20
Unlike the mound and infield now,
where grass, dirt, dew drops,
chalk receive and slow
the stitched sphere, will you watch
the cicatrice on the weedless diamond
heal itself before you, glisten
as if untouched but for
the men who cut it clean
of taller whiskery rising strands
that perfect day you found it once,
a glorious Spring day,
in the park in the middle of town?
Or rather will nature be itself
renewed? To the wind give its scars;
the body, its best estate of health
surpassed, from which not its power
but all need is taken, balanced,
sturdy on the spikes; and action:
you turn, meeting the ball with the rounded branch,
willing time true, and each his own perfection.
This is what you wanted, hope for
every time you play:
love casting its heart’s weight’s core
through time to that eternal day.
With apologies to Dr. Gene Fendt
There are no ties in baseball,
there is no ticking clock.
The game could continue forever.
One night in Rhode Island
the Rochester Red Wings
face the Pawtucket Red Sox.
A fierce wind invades the stadium,
numbing fans and players alike.
Make this one quick, everyone hopes.
Lights generate no warmth.
Fans applaud, the game begins.
Six scoreless innings, then Rochester drives in
a single run. Bottom of the ninth,
the PawSox also score a single run.
There are no ties in baseball,
there is no ticking clock. There are only
more chances. The extra innings creep
like icicles: tenth, eleventh, twelfth arrive
and depart with nothing but snowballs
to show: big, round, cold zeros.
At the end of eighteen innings
the score remains one-one.
The temperature drops to bathyspheric depths.
Players light bonfires in trash barrels,
burning broken bats as fuel. Fans go home
to furnaces that blast hot air.
Players long to go home, too, but first
one of them must cross home.
The stadium sells out of food. Clubhouse men
deploy into the frigid night and return
with chow the players bolt down. The game
goes on — four hours . . . five . . . six.
There are no ties in baseball,
there is no ticking clock.
And then, top of the twenty-first inning —
Rochester scores a second run.
Hallelujah!
The game will, at long last, be over.
Completed.
No. Not meant to be.
Pawtucket also scores a second run
in the bottom of the twenty-first. Game tied,
Continue reading “No Ties, No Ticking Clocks: April 18, 1981”