Reviving the Art of Baseball Doggerel
(With apologies to Wallace Stevens)
Would the Cubs be good
Without Travis Wood?
(What the hell are you talking about?
They’re still 14 games out.)
J.J. Hardy
Is often tardy,
Which you can plainly see
From his OBP of .293.
Perhaps it is silly
To cite Jason Grilli
As a reason for the Bucs’ success.
But without him, it’d be a mess.
The Pods will have a scare-a
If Everth Cabrera
Is suspended as rumored–
Bud will be Black-humored.
The burden of hard hitting. Slug away
. Like Honus Wagner or like Tyrus Cobb.
Else fandom shouteth: “Who said you could play?
. Back to the jasper league, you minor slob!”
. Swat, hit, connect, line out, get on the job.
Else you shall feel the brunt of fandom’s ire
. Biff, bang it, clout it, hit it on the knob—
This is the end of every fan’s desire.
The burden of good pitching. Curved or straight.
. Or in or out, or haply up or down,
To puzzle him that standeth by the plate,
. To lessen, so to speak, his bat-renoun:
. Like Christy Mathewson or Miner Brown,
So pitch that every man can but admire
. And offer you the freedom of the town—
This is the end of every fan’s desire.
The burden of loud cheering. O the sounds!
. The tumult and the shouting from the throats
Of forty thousand at the Polo Grounds
. Sitting, ay, standing sans their hats and coats.
. A mighty cheer that possibly denotes
That Cub or Pirate fat is in the fire;
. Or, as H. James would say, We’ve got their goats—
This is the end of every fan’s desire.
The burden of a pennant. O the hope,
. The tenuous hope, the hope that’s half a fear,
The lengthy season and the boundless dope,
. And the bromidic; “Wait until next year.”
. O dread disgrace of trailing in the rear,
O Piece of Bunting, flying high and higher
. That next October it shall flutter here:
This is the end of every fan’s desire.
ENVOY
Ah, Fans, let not the Quarry but the Chase
. Be that to which most fondly we aspire!
For us not Stake, but Game; not Goal, but Race—
. THIS is the end of every fan’s desire.
Franklin Pierce Adams was a columnist and prolific doggerelist, best known for “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon (Tinker to Evers to Chance)”. This poem is from his book In Other Words (1912).
In the East the first pitches are tossed
The Cubs lead while the ground still has frost
. It’s beyond all belief
. But just wait for “relief”
When the Bucs feast on his not-so-hot sauce
CHICAGO
A brand-new playpen?
That’s just a distraction for
Your crumbling bones.
CINCINNATI
As we get older
We learn to use our wisdom.
What’s Dusty’s excuse?
MILWAUKEE
I’d walk a mile for
A Gamel–a healthy one.
Now: power outage.
PITTSBURGH
Brand new calendar,
Same old days. Same old people.
Same old misery.
ST. LOUIS
Another spring, a
Young man in charge–well, young by
Managing standards…
Home run king with the
most walks and most MVPs,
but struck out in court
Charles Ghigna (Father Goose) is a poet, children’s author, speaker and nationally syndicated feature writer. He has written more than 60 award-winning books of poetry and been reprinted extensively, even in the ACT and SAT tests.