To Cap Off Our 9/11 Remembrance
By Stuart Shea
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.
Brewer Summer
by Doug Fahrendorff
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”
The Bookkeepers Talk Baseball
by Jim Daniels
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.
Cautionary Yankee Reality As Playoffs Loom
by Stephen Jones
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
by William Heyen
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.
