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End-of-Season Moment

by Stephen Jones

Standing at the edge of a long, dusty road
I watched a procession slowly pass me by:
A peddler dressed in a motley of old and new
Followed by a patient, plodding mule
And a creaking, groaning two-wheel cart
Piled high with neatly stacked baseball bats.

The peddler, his face lined by many seasons,
Nodded to me, then jerked his thumb up
To a sign plain-as-day overhead.
I looked and read: “October Straight Ahead.”
Then he grinned — his eyes were bright as suns —
And signaled me to follow, and I did.

 

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The Great One

by Tom Clark

So long Roberto Clemente
you have joined the immortals
who’ve been bodysnatched
by the Bermuda Triangle

When your plane went down
it forced tears out of grown men
all over the hemisphere
Al Oliver and
even Willie Stargell cried

You had a quiet
pissed-off pride
that made your countrymen
look up to you
even if you weren’t
taller than they are

No matter how many times
Manny Sanguillen
dove for your body
the sun kept going down
on his inability to find it

I just hope those Martians realize
they are claiming the rights to
far and away the greatest rightfielder
of all time

Copyright Tom Clark. From Fan Poems (1976).

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Miller Huggins

by Joseph Ceraolo

Professor Taft was correct to advise me
to choose baseball as my career:
I spent the rest of my life in the game
as a player, player-manager, and manager,
and had success in all three positions
I only wish that Lady Bee had followed through
on allowing me first chance to buy the Cardinals,
instead of selling it to a cast of thousands of locals
(I was a silent partner in a minor-league team later,
but that’s not comparable to owning a big-league team)
While every position in baseball is stressful,
I think that being an owner would have been less so
than being a manager and dealing with the Babe and others
(the Babe did come around eventually,
to the extent possible for him)
One final note:
I understand Mr. Mays professes not to know
why I hated him, almost alone among all my players
You know I was a lawyer,
so I’m not about to make any allegations
that certainly can’t be proved at this late date,
and maybe couldn’t have been proved even back then
Suffice it say
Mr. Mays knows full well the reason for my feelings,
and he knows he will one day have to answer for what he did

 

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Tom Cheney

By Michael Ceraolo

Many had pitched as many innings,
or more, in a game before me
(adrenaline and nicotine kept me going),
but no one before, or since,
has struck out as many in a game
Yet very few fans know who I am:
I was anonymous long before
the anonymity of the grave
Though I can’t prove it definitively,
I’ll always believe
the more-than-two-hundred pitches
I threw in that game contributed
to my elbow problems the next year,
but no one forced me to stay in the game,
and I would have fought being taken out