Reviving the Art of Baseball Doggerel
Jackie and Willie and many others
helped bring the stolen base back to the game;
I did my part, especially in the Series
I saw the asterisk nonsense
the Commissioner pulled
with Maury Wills and Roger Maris
and I vowed that wouldn’t happen with me
I know it was a different commissioner,
but I wasn’t taking any chances
on him issuing a similar ruling,
and I succeeded.
Barry Bonds saunters to the plate,
His bat heavy, probably the biggest Louisville Slugger ever,
Hollowed out from an old-growth Appalachian ash tree.
Waving it,
As the crowd roars,
Voices crescending,
like an ocean swell from under the Golden Gate.
His eyesight? Exquisite pinpoint, radar–
Like a soaring bird of prey, he tracks the baseball.
His reflexes?
Feral now,
Muscle fibers firing off like a crack hit of adrenalin, crouched at the plate,
Bat pulsating in a death dance.
Through his baseball brain,
The Divine drugs course,
As the horrified pitcher fires his best fastball, 100 mph,
every stitch and spin revealed by the Bonds dystopian gaze.
Then the famous Bonds swing is unleashed,
handed down from father Bobby–
Extraterrestrial,
flashing through the zone in a nanosecond.
A batsman like no one has ever seen before.
Not a clumsy oaf, like
Ruth,
But a work of art,
Grecian marble chiseled by the stoned baseball Gods.
Crack!
The spheroid rises into the blue azure,
as bat meets ball,
an upper-cut for the ages,
Perfect arc rising above the frozen right fielder,
Splash!
Into San Francisco Bay.
Remember that summer day at Candlestick?
The hapless Giants 25 games behind?
Before the era of steroids, Bonds had already won three MVPs.
The immortal titan was still a skinny kid then,
Already a three-time MVP.
We’re all alone in the left field bleachers, way up high,
Does he see us?
We’re getting plastered on cheap beer and strong homegrown,
watching superstar Barry Bonds standing so alone in the outfield.
He’s “Sullen, rude, entitled, misunderstood,” the sportswriters say. . .
What do they know?
Barry just looks bored and lonely to us that day.
Between innings, he trots out to his position, turns in circles, people-watching.
“Shit, ballplayers never talk to the fans,
especially if they’re loaded.”
We yell at our hero anyway,
screaming drunken banshees that we were.
“Hey Barry, we love you!”
The old park is nearly empty, and he’s standing 20 feet away from us,
surely he can hear us:
“Peace, Man!”
We flash him the universal hippie sign.
Surely, he won’t respond. They never do.
We’re just dreaming, diehard Giant fans, after all.
Then between batters, the great Barry Bonds holds up his extra big fielder’s glove to the side of his head, and flashes us the universal sign of love right back.
“Peace to you hippies partying all alone in the cheap seats!”
is surely the message.
He holds his large fingers in the V for us,
As the mystical skunky sinsemilla smoke drifts in the outfield breeze, and Barry at last smiles,
even for the next few pitches, the good feelings linger, as we flash “Peace” back.
Was the great Barry Bonds just feeling nice that day?
Who cares! He’s our San Francisco Giant hero for life now.
Let him in, Cooperstown!
Ron Halvorson is a freelance writer and lifelong San Francisco Giants fan who went to his first game at windy Candlestick Park in the early 1960s.
I had been in the Cardinals organization
as a player, a coach, and a manager
for most of my adult life,
but when they got rid of Bing in August ’64
I sensed I would be the next to go
if we didn’t win the pennant
My hunch was confirmed a few weeks later
with reports of Gussie meeting with Durocher
The Yankees were going to fire Yogi
if they didn’t come back and win the pennant,
so I was open to their backchannel overtures
You know what happened:
the Yankees won the flag but fired Yogi anyway
after we beat them in the Series
Gussie decided to give me a new contract,
but at the press conference to announce it
I handed him the resignation letter
I had been carrying around for weeks
and a few days later took the Yankees job
Biggest mistake of my life:
I was a Cardinal and should have stayed so
I wasn’t cut out for New York or the Yankees,
they fired me early in the ’66 season,
and I died within a year
Managers do make a difference
Not in the way sportswriters thought,
by making brilliant strategic decisions
to outwit the opposing manager;
the difference was instilling confidence
by treating us as human beings.
On the Cardinals the change
from Solly Hemus, an old-school racist,
to Johnny Keane, one of the best human beings
I was fortunate enough to meet,
was dramatic for me, Curt,
and the rest of the team, even Stan
Without that change there would have been
none of the October heroics I became known for,
because we wouldn’t have made it to October
Going from the Yankees to Kansas City officially
was a trade between two big-league teams,
but everyone knew it was more like
being farmed out, with return certain
if the player developed sufficiently,
which is what happened in my case
After my return I experienced
the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat
before that became a sports catchphrase,
both times in a Game Seven:
giving up the walk-off to Mazeroski,
two years later shutting out the Giants, one-nothing
Later, in retirement,
I qualified for the pro golf tour
I think I’m still to this day
the only former major leaguer to do so
