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Emil Levsen

by Michael Ceraolo

Nineteen twenty-six was my year:
almost eighty percent of my career wins came that season
And August 28th was my day that year
We had a doubleheader against the Red Sox:
I was to pitch the first game and George Uhle the second
Boston was a bad-hitting team that year,
so I decided not to expend any effort
trying to strike any of them out
And so after I had pitched the whole game
allowing four hits and a walk and not striking anyone out,
I asked Spoke if I could go the second game too,
and he agreed to let me try
And that game was nearly identical to the first,
except that I walked two instead of one
And unless the game of baseball
has a seismic shift in strategy,
I’ll remain for all time the last one
to pitch and win complete games
in both ends of a doubleheader

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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!

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Taiji Master Coaches the Rookie Before His First Major League At-Bat

By Louise Grieco

Gather the yin energy and the yang energy
into your dantien – the center of gravity
from which all power emanates.
Soften all the joints and disjoints of your body.
Calm your mind – and in that stillness
wait with patience for the pitch.
Follow its journey through time and space
as the stadium expands to touch
the edges of the universe.

Time will stop. The world will stop.

Then the chi energy begins its spiral
outward from the dantien,
flowing like water, radiating like the sun,
sparking to the bat, the ball as it flies
to the upper deck of center field.
Stillness gives way to a roaring sea,
and the world begins to spin again
as you round the bases.

Okay, Grasshopper, show ‘em what you got.

Louise Grieco’s baseball poems often travel at lightspeed to the outer reaches of the galaxy. More a fan of the sport than of any particular team, she nevertheless rooted for the Yankees as a child growing up near Boston in the 1950’s-’60s. She lives and writes in Albany NY.

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Salary Dump

by R. Gerry Fabian

The season was over
six months ago.
The veterans worth anything
were traded;
those remaining
slowly got DFA notices.

Saddled with a bunch of raw kids,
the manager suffers through their lapses
and assures the media
it’s all part of the “youth movement.”

Alone in his tiny office,
leans back in his squeaky chair
and wonders when
one of these kids
will give him six “solid” innings.

R. Gerry Fabian is the author of three novels and four books of poetry. His latest book of poems, Ball On The Mound, is a collection of original baseball poems, available at Amazon.

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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.