by Fred Lovato
Champs visit White House
incur wrath of Baseball Gods
winning ways have stopped
Bag of Tricks
by James Finn Garner
RIP Octavio Dotel (1973-2025), who died last week after a roof collapsed at a concert he was attending in Santo Domingo, DR.
New York. Houston. Oakland.
When they called
New York Yankees.
(and they kept calling)
Kansas City. Atlanta. Chicago.
I picked up my stuff and left.
Pittsburgh. LA. Denver.
(they still kept calling)
Toronto. St. Louis. Detroit.
My bag of tricks.
By the last season
someone guessed I’d played
with 25 percent of the active players
One out of every four
A lot of friends
Maybe some enemies?
A lot of stops
A lot of life
¡Salud!
Low and Outside #4
Optimism is Dangerous for a Padres Fan
By Ethan McKnight
“One year soon the baseball gods will shine on the San Diego Padres, and we will have a parade.”
—Peter Seidler
“This is the year,” I say,
as Suarez locks down our seventh straight win,
our best start in franchise history.
This is the year
I’ll finally see the Commissioner’s Trophy
lifted high before a roaring sea of San Diegans,
Machado shouting, “This is for Peter!”
as he’s crowned World Series MVP.
This is the year
we win gold
that isn’t just a marketing gimmick.
And then,
as if on cue,
I wake up.
The parade fades into another 24 scoreless innings,
October slipping through our fingers,
as the devils in Dodger blue
send us home early again.
Ethan McKnight is a poet and college student in San Diego, California.
Tokyo Series Blues
by Fred Lovato
Opening Day games
not on TV where I live
who here feels my pain?
Fred Lovato is Bardball’s overseas correspondent in Okinawa.