Reviving the Art of Baseball Doggerel
The American League East
Is a self-eating beast
With no team below .500.
And the way these teams go,
As they consume one another,
It does make me wonder:
When the regular season
Is finally over
And the dust has settled,
It’s possible — it just may be —
That the last one on this list
Of baseball carnivores
May still get a wild card berth.
Who did they think they were
Traipsing through here
Laying waste
Smashing baseballs
Shutting us out
And sending us home
Home to wallow
Home to pine
Lick our wounds
Bow out heads
But before we left
They handed us brooms
Detritus and debris
To sweep and to clear
Memory to erase
Shame to shun
They mighty be Giants
We defeated be Dodgers
Writing poetry gave me a different satisfaction
than what playing baseball provided me
The biggest difference, interestingly enough,
was that, the lower the stakes,
the more power the critics had:
no amount of their vitriol
could take a save away from me
or change any game’s result,
unlike in poetry
Eager to get to the ballfield
in the morning
to play
baseball, what I lived for
1964,
I followed the Major League scores,
batting averages, and standings;
the rest of the world no more
to me then
than a nightly news show
like Vietnam helicopter
womp womp,
machine gun rat-tat-tat;
I fed on
daily box scores in the newspaper
each breakfast
and left the ballfield only
to return home
for a meal
and on days it rained
I read books about baseball…
A guy my uncle knew, who
played for the local high school, had
played two years with the NY Yankees.
I remember rounding third once as if
all of America’s promise rode on my legs
There was a big commotion,
catcher, pitcher, gloves and a ball
were waiting for my pale legs.
I slid as slick as cupid’s bow
and scored lady luck’s run.
No kiss was so sweet.