by Hilary Barta
Where Addison Street crosses Clark
Sound echoes in still empty park
By the lake now there’s peace
As the fake soundtracks cease
With an end to pretend crowd noise spark.
Da Boat Uvvem
by Hilary Barta and Jim Siergey
The Cubs and the Sox have both signed
The best baseball men they could find
But hold the applause
They both have their flaws
Though what if the teams were combined?
Final Score
by Jim Siergey
They were all about winning
Tom, Lou, Bob, Whitey and Joe
But they reached the last inning
of Life’s quid pro quo.
Fred Merkle
by Michael Ceraolo
I was nineteen, playing occasionally
and learning inside baseball from Mr. McGraw and the veterans
What I did on September 23, 1908
was the common practice at the time
We had to re-play that tie game and lost,
missing out on the pennant by that one game
To his eternal credit, Mr. McGraw never blamed me,
nor did any of my teammates that I knew of
But sportswriters needed a scapegoat for their stories,
and so from that day forward I was Bonehead Merkle
to the sportswriters and fans
And that wasn’t the only bum rap I took:
there were whispers that I was involved in
the fixing of the Cubs-Phillies game of August 31, 1920,
and though there wasn’t a shred of evidence
(there couldn’t be, because I wasn’t involved),
the whispers were enough to keep me out of the majors,
though I came back in ’25 and ’26
for a few games as a player-coach
I was managing in the minors a few years later
when some rookie called me Bonehead,
and I walked away from baseball that day,
with absolutely no regrets in doing so
Drubs Will Bring Us Together
by Hilary Barta
Chicago’s postseason was brief
As fans we’re supposed to feel grief
In a season so weird
Such unease, the worst feared
What I’m feeling is more like relief.