by Doug Fahrendorff
April
Warm weather returns
Like a long-absent friend
Opening day
Last season’s disappointments
Forgotten
Expectations high
For the new season
Will this finally be
Next year.
.
Posted 4/6/09
Wisconsin Spring
by Doug Fahrendorff
Yesterday
At school
Far from the sun-splashed fields
Of Florida and Arizona
Spring training began
Two boys
Dressed in down jackets
And boots
Against the March wind
Began a game of catch
Near the fence
At the far end
Of the tennis courts
I watched them
Tossing the ball
Back and forth
At times lunging awkwardly
To glove errant throws
Jump-starting spring for me
As certainly as the robins
I’d seen that morning
In my front yard.
Posted 2/25/2009
The Closest Thing to a Cubs World Series
by Sid Yiddish
Now that Barack Obama has won the U.S. presidential election, it’s the closest thing the Northside will ever be in contention, let alone get to a World Series, even if Obama is from the Southside.
.
You see, unlike the Chicago Cubs fans who relentlessly enjoy beating up their rivals bloody, both physically and with words, the White Sox fans wouldn’t do it even if you offered them all the money in the world, because like Obama & his crew, all those guys who support those who wear the black & white uniforms know the right thing to do.
.
They know how to stick together, through all kinds of nasty weather and just rough it in the muddy playing fields, even if there’s no yielding or letting up or break in-between.
.
See, that’s how the Southside grows, just takes what they are given and goes with the flow.
.
So, it’s time to put aside that loveable losers blue and have a little pride for a change, because now that Obama has won the election, it’s a great victory for all of us!
.
Not
Republican
Versus
Dem.
.
Unlike Cubs fans who always cry out, “Wait ‘til next year,” next year is here for Obama and the rest of us, starting right now.
.
For more on Sid Yiddish’s poetry, music and performances, check out his My Space page.
Posted 11/13/08
On Rocking and Rolling and Focus
by Todd Herges
Why is it that the nation’s wide-angle lens
is replaced each Fall with an electron microscope?
The better to focus in on a game – the pastime –
an inning
an at-bat
a single pitch!
And how is it that this incredibly narrow-focused lens
can yet cause the scorecard to ignite
even though the days have grown so short,
the nights so cool,
the games so long?
The players step up to the plate,
they step up their games.
Crunch time.
It’s all been laid on the line.
And with tens of thousands screaming
within easy earshot,
and tens of millions more watching,
this fact easily near the top
of each player’s mind,
somehow, some way, they
show us heroics.
Posted 10/27/08
They’re Shutting The Stadiums Down, In A Two-Team Baseball Town, Part 1
by Sid Yiddish
In the city of cities
Of old New York,
Where Manhattan is an island
And Jews in Brooklyn don’t eat pork,
Where they search you on the subway at the drop of a hat and the kings of the sewers are giant super rats, they are shutting down Yankees & Shea Stadiums,
Just like that, without even asking if the fans truly care, and most likely they do, in a two-team baseball town.
Where the dust never shakes too hard upon Ground Zero, whose souls lie beneath, are now called heroes; where greed and lust encrust Wall Street and where a two-team baseball town swings to its own beat.
You’d think the club owners would leave well enough alone and just refurbish and not rebuild The House That Ruth Built from new bare bones, but sadly, Shea is closing too and where on earth will the feral cats that have lived within the bowels of that park for years, where will they run to after that last stadium light goes dark?
Nine lives don’t cut it even when a two-team baseball town probably will gut it, just like they did to CBGB, too.
Is it any wonder why I’m slowly losing interest in baseball?
For more on Sid Yiddish’s poetry, music and performances, check out his My Space page.
Posted 10/2/08