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Your Baseball Days

By Stuart Shea

When was the last time you ran barefoot in the grass?
When was the last time you even threw a baseball?

Roll your fingers over the seams.
Try a fingertip knuckleball.
Pound your glove.

Think of your baseball days, before OPS and Direct TV
When you’d play all day until the sun went down
And even then you’d switch to ‘running bases,’ tossing the ball under the misty summer lamplight.
While other kids ran
And millions of bugs headed toward the bright.
And when everyone goes in for the night,
See if the Cubs game is still on.

They’re in Pittsburgh, blowing another lead in the ninth.
Jack Brickhouse is moaning. The bullpen crumbles.
And when it’s all over, and you’re exhausted with frustration
At Dave LaRoche and Oscar Zamora,
You realize there’s another game tomorrow, both for you and the big boys.

You knew NOTHING of the world at 12. But you knew baseball, and that’s what counted.
The game was an escape, a separate world with its own set of rules, a prism through which to look at your existence.
Organized rules, hope, glory, sunshine, and action.
Nothing like your own, seemingly arbitrary, life.
Which is why you needed it.

You’ll always need it to bring you back to joy, to freedom, to your own self.
For that skinny 12-year-old just begging for acceptance, begging to just be good enough at something.
And the game gave you hope.
So turn off the TV, the computer, the instant updates on your device
And play catch.
Just play catch.

It’s nice.

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The Wave Land, Part II

by Thomas Dyja

While the Chicago Cubs are enjoying a terrific year in 2008, for generations they have embodied dashed hopes and weary resignation. To honor those Cub fans of the last century who perished without seeing their team in the World Series, we present this elegy set in the 1980s from award-winning novelist Thomas Dyja.

II. A Game (More or Less)

The bench we sat on, like a worn out bar,
Peeled in the bleachers, where the scoreboard,
Held up by standards wrought of Gary steel, and
From which a pale scorekeeper peeped out
(Another hid his paunch behind the clock)
Posted the score of seven games—Candlestick
Reflecting the time upon the coast—as
The zeroes next to “Cubs” rose to meet defeat
From Cardinal runs poured in rich profusion.
…yet there Jack Brickhouse
Filled all the TV’s with inviolable voice
And still he cried, and still the outfielders pursued,
“Hey Hey” to dirty ears.
And other withered stumps of time
Were set in their green seats; staring forms
Leaned out, leaning, jeering the team below.
Footsteps shuffled on the basepaths.
Over DeJesus, far to his left, Mitterwald’s throws
Spread out in fiery points
Rolled into centerfield, then would be savagely booed.

“The Baron is bad today. Yes, bad. Stay with the pitch!
“Hit to left. Why can’t Murcer hit to left? Hit.
“What’s Wallis waiting for? Why’s he taking? Why?
“I’ll never know why they always take. Swing!

Joe thinks we need a late rally
But I just want to go home.

“What is the score?”
The Cubs are down by four.
“What is the score now? What is the wind doing?”
Nothing again nothing.

“Can’t
“They hit anything? Can’t they field anything? Do you remember
“ ’69?”

I remember
Cardenal’s eyelids stuck to his eyes.
“Can you play, or not? Is it something Lockman said?”
But
O O O O Clines overslid the bag—
Tried for too many
A win for Denny
“What shall we do now? What shall we do?”
“We shall go out for a beef, and have a beer
“With our heads down low. What shall we do to-morrow?
“What shall we ever do?”
The game starts at one-thirty.
And if it rains, a pass at the door.
And we shall see a game, more or less,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for the Cubs to maybe score.

Posted 7/16/08

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The Wave Land, Part I

by Thomas Dyja

While the Chicago Cubs are enjoying a terrific year in 2008, for generations they have embodied dashed hopes and weary resignation. To honor those Cub fans of the last century who perished without seeing their team in the World Series, we present this elegy set in the 1980s from award-winning novelist Thomas Dyja.

I. The Burial of the Dead

August is the cruelest month, bringing
Cub fans into the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull rightfielders with cold beer.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Wrigley in forgetful snow, feeding
A little hope with traded pitchers.
Summer surprised us, coming over Addison Avenue
With a cup of Old Style; we stopped at the Cubby Bear,
And went on in sunlight, into the Bleachers.
And ate Smoky Links, and talked for a few hours.
I’m no Sox fan, from Logan Square, pure Cub.
And when we were children, staying at the tool and die makers’,
My cousin’s, he took me to the Upper Deck,
And I was frightened. He said, Tommy,
Tommy, hold on tight. And down the Cubs went.
In the grandstands, there you sit for free.
I read, much of the season, and go south in summer.

Where are the runs that score, what pitches thrown
By this human rubbish? Son of Wrigley
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A team of broken retreads, playing where the sun beats
And the dead ivy gives no shelter, Jim Enright no relief,
And the vendor no sound of beer. Only
There is baseball in this old park,
(Come watch baseball in this old park),
And I will show you something different from either
The dome at Houston rising above you
Or the fans at Philly looking to beat you;
I will show you grass and a team that is bust.

Posted 7/12/08 

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Dayenu (Translation: It Would Have Been Enough)

By Jonathan Eig

For Ken Holtzman

If He had led us through a century without a World Series triumph, it would have been enough.

If He had led us through a century without a World Series triumph and not allowed Hippo Vaughn to lose a no-hit game in 1917, it would have been enough.

If He had allowed Hippo Vaughn to lose a no-hit game and not given us the idiot P.K. Wrigley, it would have been enough.

If He had given us the idiot Wrigley and not banished Grover Cleveland Alexander to the St. Louis Cardinals, it would have been enough.

If He had banished Grover Alexander to the Cardinals and not sent Babe Ruth’s called shot into the center-field bleachers, it would have been enough.

If He had sent Babe Ruth’s called shot into the bleachers and not blinded us to the availability of a minor-league outfielder named Joe DiMaggio, it would have been enough.

If He had blinded us to the availability of Joe DiMaggio and not cursed us with the goat, it would have been enough.

If He had cursed us with the goat and not given us the College of Coaches, it would have been enough.

If he had given us the College of Coaches and not cast out Lou Brock to St. Louis, it would have been enough.

If He had cast out Lou Brock and not showered blessings upon the Mets in the summer of 1969, it would have been enough.

If He had showered blessings upon the Mets in the summer of 1969 and not directed a ground ball through Leon Durham’s legs, it would have been enough.

If He had directed the ball through Durham’s legs and not sent forth Greg Maddux to Atlanta, it would have been enough.

If He had sent forth Greg Maddux to Atlanta and not delivered unto us the prophet Steve Bartman, it would have been enough.

If He had delivered unto us the prophet Bartman and not made clumsy the hands of shortstop Alex Gonzalez, it would have been enough.

If He had made clumsy the hands of Alex Gonzalez and not sent the plague of loud salsa music from Sosa’s boom box, it would have been enough.

If He had sent the plague of salsa music and not rendered feeble the arms of Prior and Wood, it would have been enough.

If He had rendered feeble the arms of Prior and Wood and not given us Sam Zell, it would have been enough.

If He had given us Sam Zell and not smote Geremi Gonzalez with a lightning bolt, it would have been enough.

For all these things we say Dayenu. It would have been enough. Really.

And let us all say, Amen.

Jonathan Eig is the New York Times Best-selling author of Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig and Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season.

Posted 6/26/08 

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When Color Meant Color

by Sid Yiddish

Listening to the Cubs-Padres game on the radio the other night, I fell asleep in the midst of the fourth.
It happens a lot to me,
But I’m not sure why.
Perhaps it’s the broadcast itself that seems to have a shelf-life of three innings before it goes stale.

Oh man…take me back to the days of the radio broadcast team of Vince Lloyd and Lou Boudreau And good old TV announcer Mr. “Back-Back-Back Hey-Hey” Jack Brickhouse in the latter half of the sixth
And “Drunk-As-Punk” Harry Caray near the end of the eighth.

That is, when color meant color.

And insults were good
And if a name was incorrectly mispronounced, no apologies were forthright or swift
And mistakes in commercials meant laughter and fun
And broadcasters just did their jobs with intelligence
And baseball games were just good old-fashioned baseball games you tuned into on your AM transistor mid-afternoon or late at night
And there was no such thing as
Political correctness.

Posted 6/6/08