Franchise disarray
Post-season fingers pointing
Rumor mill working

Franchise scrambling
Truth . . . Boston fog obscuring
Who did what . . . or not?

A manager leaves
Pitchers eat chicken drink beer
Ownership denies

What to remember?
Two championships . . . or collapse?
Or “What’s next at bat”?

Rain pours down
drenching everything.
The season has ten days left.

Why does the fall always try us?
Why must you need to be brave?

If I stay still I will not wake you.
If only the rain would stop,
my thoughts would not try to drown it out
and we could both sleep.

Dream of baseball. Can I?
The Giants and Cardinals are making a late run.
They’re fighting for their lives…
their playoff lives.

“Fighting for their lives.”
Where we’re living,
That sounds so stupid now,
so totally stupid.

Miguel “Sugar” Santos
Signs a pro baseball contract
Every Dominican boy’s dream
First step to “The Show”
In a small Iowa town
Battling differences
In culture and language
Miguel’s dreams play out
Is baseball
The only road to success
Divergent paths appear
A future reconsidered

All about his team
The Sandman keeps stats second
He pitches to win

Fans may make raucous noise
But on the mound he’s quiet grace
Humble with history

Genuine in his humility
His smile tells it all as he tips his hat
Sharing the moment with thousands

Mariano Rivera

What I remember is large
some of it confused
the sadness the heroes
some still unnamed

but I zero in on baseball
not to forget but because
like a constant outside history
baseball resonates for me

the heroics of play on a field
the belief that a game is sometimes
better than grief
a comfort & something to point to

Salary caps,
Spending caps,
Baseball caps…
Caps the Mets couldn’t wear with their uniform,
Because they didn’t conform,
Or some crap.
Baseball’s image burned
As Bud Selig took a nap.

Auspicious signs
Ten games up
A month to go
September in Wisconsin
Baseball still a hot topic
Three million fans
Make the trek to Miller Park
Skeptical fans
Beginning to believe
This will be a season
To remember
Ryan, Prince, and T. Plush
On the cover of S.I.
LaRussa disconcerted
Still
The pennant
Not clinched yet
Work to do
“Gotta Go”

Betsy says a friend of hers
went to high school with Kirk Gibson
and that he was stuck up even then.

Debbie says Frank is taking her
to one of those things
where they play two games in one day.
What’s it called, a double bubble?
She makes a face: I can hardly stand one game
much less two.

Jack, the burly security guard says
it’s too damn boring. Everybody
standing around picking their asses.

I sit at my desk
flipping through accounts, pulling overdrafts.
My ass squirms in padded comfort
longing for the bleacher’s hard bench.

Arnold says he likes it better
on tv. Why go to the ballpark,
he asks, and deal with the traffic
and the crowds?

Better on tv?
Get yer red hots heah!
Coke! Iiiiiiice Cooooold Coke!
Crack of bat on ball. Smell
of stale cigars and spilled beer.
Seventh inning stretch.
Cold beer in the sun.

Cold beer in the sun.
I bang my seat
to start up a rally.

Jim Daniels is the Thomas Stockham Baker Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University.  His newest story collection, TRIGGER MAN: More Tales of the Motor City, is now available, and can be ordered from Amazon here.

One moment The Yankees set a record
three grand slams in one game

The next they fumble like dead wood
decidedly not the same

In golf drive for show
. . . but putt for dough

In baseball the axiom is the same
more often pitching wins the game

As playoffs loom strong arm Yankee batting
alone will not guaranty Yankee winning

Mantle ran so hard, they said,
he tore his legs to pieces.
What is this but spirit?

52 homers in ’56, the triple crown.
I was a high school junior, batting
fourth behind him in a dream.

I prayed for him to quit, before
his lifetime dropped below .300.
But he didn’t, and it did.

He makes Brylcreem commercials now,
models with opened mouths draped around him
as they never were in Commerce, Oklahoma,

where the sandy-haired, wide-shouldered boy
stood up against his barn,
lefty for an hour (Ruth, Gehrig),

then righty (DiMaggio),
as his father winged them in,
and the future blew toward him,

now a fastball, now a slow
curve hanging
like a model’s smile

William Heyen’s poems have appeared in over 100 periodicals. He taught English literature and creative writing at the State University of New York College at Brockport for over 30 years. He recently performed “Mantle” at the Chautauqua Festival.