Reviving the Art of Baseball Doggerel
Two weeks of contests in Paris
Of every conceivable style
Athletes honed like hardened steel
Ladecky, Tebogo, Yee, Li, Biles
What focus and determination
To swim, box, dive, run, throw
Pushing their mental endurance
And how far their bodies can go
They remind me of what John Kruk
Once told a hotel lobby hater.
He said, “Lady, I ain’t an athlete–
I’m a baseball player.”
Eloy was my boy
His power was a gimme
A South Side homeboy
Just like Pico and Timmy.
These faces are all gone — oy!
Ruined, traded, DFA’d.
The advice of Sox coaches, boy,
Should make any player afraid.
Now there’s no joy
At 35th and Shields
Hope is destroyed
At Fill-in-the-Blank Field.
Should we ask the batboy?
Maybe he has a solution.
The EPA should deploy
To contain this pollution.
Summer savings is everyone’s goal
Blowing saves over time can get old
A bullpen redo
Might pull your team through
How clever are you with your payroll?
This clip turned my knees into jelly
As Snitker took one “not on the belly”
But saved was the skip
From glandular rip
By the belt corralling his potbelly.
1BÂ Â Pop Joy
2BÂ Â Bill Smiley
SSÂ Â Jurickson Prozac
3BÂ Â Chipper Jones
LFÂ Â Smead Jolley
CFÂ Â Happy Felsch
RFÂ Â Jim Gleeson
CÂ Â Joe Garrulous-giola
LHPÂ Â Happy Foreman, Drew Smyly, John Smiley, Aaron Laffey
RHPÂ Â Happy Townsend, Julian Merryweather, Dave Jolly, Buddy Lively
MGRÂ Â Jolly Cholly Grimm
