Reviving the Art of Baseball Doggerel
Today is Wrigley Field’s anniversary.
One hundred years of longevity.
In New York, where short-term memory
Is “What have you done for me lately,”
It often means tearing down history
For the sake of the quick monetary.
As someone prescient once said
When the wrecking ball was poised
To bring down Ebbets Field stature,
“When it’s gone, it’s gone forever.”
All this reflection just to say:
To Wrigley Field . . . Happy Birthday.
He waited
In the whiteness of the afternoon sun;
Black man on green ground.
He waited
In the silence of the tongue
Black man on green ground.
He waited
In the path of his words
White broke his bones;
Black man on green ground.
He waited
As few men have ever
waited
And endured
Before a multitude
as no man before,
O,
To have conquered the white sun,
blinding
To have sailed the sun and ridden
its joy
in tears
And
in laughter.
To have ridden the white sun,
blinding
And to be
struck
struck
struck
by the rising
Of
Your
Own
Black
Sun.
Your crown was white;
…and waited.
.
Found on the Baseball Almanac site.
It was 40 years ago today
The Bums came to ‘Lanta to play
Al Downing tried to pitch with style,
But Hank hit the ball a country mile.
.
So let me introduce to you—the righty with the mighty swing…
Henry Aaron’s record-breaking bomb !
The brand new edition of Stu’s book, Wrigley Field: The Long Life and Contentious Times of the Friendly Confines, is on sale now.
What a wonder!
This year it was in the Land Down Under.
Then again, it began.
Way out West came the first test.
Californians appear in the lead
Until the rest get up to speed.