Reviving the Art of Baseball Doggerel
Au revoir, Dusty
In you did we trusty
Smart, passionate, steady
Toothpick at the ready
Giant, Astro, Dodger, Cub
You always improved a club
You have nothing more to prove
And lots of grandchildren to love
Raise a glass of Baker Wine
And celebrate the good times.
The kids from Charm City
Didn’t play so pretty
In their short series with the Rangers
But these orange sprats–
Good defense, strong bats–
To the postseason will not be strangers.
They play the game right,
Alert but not tight,
And act like a team, not selfish.
They outpaced the Rays
And will not go away,
Not unlike a batch of bad shellfish.
New York Mets under investigation,
For supposedly stashing fit players
On the injured list (read: paid vacation);
Manfred’s sleuths don Sherlock-style deerslayers.
A major transgression? A petty crime?
An attempt to deprive a neophyte
Of valuable big-league service time?
Was the man’s groin pulled or just kind of tight?
Team owner Steve Cohen, hedge fund tycoon,
Ran afoul of the feds, paid immense fines;
To diehards, he’s promised the stars and moon,
But this fall, Mets news is outside the lines.
To a longtime fan, it’s a small misdeed,
Far worse is somehow blowing every lead.
All baseball season
night after night
I listen
And here’s the pitch . . .
Who wins or loses
no longer matters
despite what
The most rabid
fans and sports
radio hosts tell me.
I try to pay
attention to
the spaciousness:
The way
each moment opens
green
Like the smell
of freshly
mowed grass.
Often, I get lost
remembering who taught
me how to love the game:
Backyard catch
sandlot games
grandfather, father
uncles, cousins,
friends, teammates.
We know the best
hitters fail more often
than they succeed
At their craft.
I, as a listener,
am no different
On deck is . . .
I look ahead to
warmer weather,
an upcoming game
When I will be
on vacation,
the World Series.
The crack of the bat
always returns me
to the beauty
Of players in motion,
of fans living and dying,
and the open field of green.
Tom lives in Connecticut, the battleground state split between Red Sox and Yankee fans. His baseball short stories have appeared in The Feminine Collective and Turnstyle: The SABR Journal of Baseball Arts.
A Billy goat, black cat, and Bartman with headphones–
Just a few novel ways which Cubs’ seasons have been blown.
Add the Babe’s called shot to the centerfield stands
And a Gatorade glove on Leon Durham’s right hand.
Then in 2016 Cubs’ curses got squished,
108 years of agony all mercifully vanquished.
But curses! A new scourge unleashed in late ‘23
Thwarted hot pursuit of wild-card playoff glory.
Blown saves and gaffes and bats that went dry,
Then Seiya Suzuki misjudged a routine high fly.
(One solution to the team’s most recent imbroglio:
Trade Suzuki to the Cards for pitcher Ernie Broglio.)
So another year ends with a historic choke job,
A lousy ‘69 rerun, where again fans got robbed.
The looney toons finish was just one more sad joke.
What else can be said but, “Th-th-th-th-that’s all folks!”
