by The Baseball Project
All-Star Clerihews #4 — Clerihews and the Dial of Destiny
Lourdes Gurriel
Knows Seattle well.
He loves their seafood and coffee thing
And wants to attend Wagner’s “Ring.”
Bryce Elder
Spends the off-season as a gelder.
Separating boars from their testes
Keeps him at his besties.
Spencer Strider
Has a thing about spiders.
Even though his last name does that Middle Earth thing,
He can’t bear to sit through “Lord of the Rings.”
Justin Steele
“Has a heart just like a wheel,
“Let him roll it to you.”
(He’s a big Macca fan, too.)
Playing Ball in the Hereafter
by Bill Cushing
As children, Henry Aaron and Don Sutton
grew up in towns three hours apart
and learned the game between fields of cotton;
then the hitter moved east, the pitcher, west,
as they took paths to opposite coasts.
Two All-Stars, they became among the best.
Upon dying, Sutton arrived first and may
have used the time to loosen his arm
while warming up on the clay
waiting for Hammerin’ Hank’s arrival.
As they play, now in eternal prime,
celestial fans admire erstwhile rivals
and wonder, from where they sit,
what is the most wonderous display:
the sweet pitch or power-driven hit?
A former New Yorker, Bill Cushing lives and writes in Los Angeles as a Dodger fan (by order of his wife!). His latest collection, Just a Little Cage of Bone (Southern Arizona Press), contains this and other sports-related poems.
The Cleveland Spiders
by R. Gerry Fabian
I am sitting at the bar watching
the Braves versus Phillies game.
Second inning.
The Braves have the bases loaded,
two outs and their seventh batter,
a rookie catcher, at bat.
From out of nowhere,
a woman sits next to me.
“Can you buy me a drink?’
The Phillies’ pitcher throws
a slider, down and away.
Ball one.
I use semantics on the woman.
“If you mean do I have the money
to buy you a drink,
then yes, I do.”
The next pitch is high and tight.
The kid catcher steps out of the box
and then reenters crowding the plate.
“Okay.” The woman agrees.
“Will you buy me a drink?”
Again, I use semantic in hopes
of ending this dialogue.
“If you mean, is there a chance
that in the future
I may purchase a drink for you,
the odds are 75 – 25 in your favor,
if only to end this conversation.”
The next pitch is an outside fastball
and the kid fouls it off.
Count 2-1.
That was your pitch, I think silently.
The woman is unyielding.
“I like baseball, and I would
like you to buy me a drink.”
Count 2-2
I know the pitcher is going to throw a curve.
Hang it. I try to jinx the pitcher.
He throws a sharp breaking curve
but to my astonishment and surprise,
the kid catcher stays on the pitch
and drives it into the right center gap
for a bases-clearing double.
“Do I get my drink now?”
I decide to put an end to this
annoying invasion of privacy.
“Tell me who the greatest pitcher
of all time is and I’ll buy you a drink.”
She smiles.
“Denton True Young.”
The Limits of Human Vision
by Greg Maddux
You just can’t do it.
Sometimes hitters can
pick up differences in spin.
They can identify pitches
if there are different
release points
or
if a curveball starts
with an upward hump
as it leaves a pitcher’s hand.
But if a pitcher can
change speeds,
every hitter is
helpless,
limited by human vision.
Except for that (expletive) Tony Gwynn.
