Reviving the Art of Baseball Doggerel
It’s already one-third of the season,
And the Yankees are tumbling down
The Jack-and-Jill of five-hundred ball.
They’d better find a good reason
To turn around this sad season,
Or to paraphrase Yogi Berra, it’s
Going to get late early, very soon.
By the time I turned thirty,
I had had a couple cups of coffee in the bigs,
neither very successful,
and I wasn’t even consistent in the minors
It looked like I would be one of the countless
small-town ball-playing eccentrics
who never stuck in the big-time
Then, while playing in New Orleans in 1920,
I met a doctor who finally figured out
why my arm had been giving me trouble
off and on for several years;
he corrected it, though to this day
I can’t say what it was he did, exactly
I went from small-town eccentric
to colorful and dazzling major-league pitcher
(all big-city eccentrics are ‘colorful’)
You know all about the three men on third
(I was the one with the right to the base),
and we had club that fined those
who got caught breaking curfew
Hell, I taught the neighbor’s girl how to pitch;
you couldn’t get much more eccentric in those days
It was supposed to be a laugher,
Instead it was a groaner
For the Yankees in Poe’s Baltimore.
Even with 2 strikes, 2 outs,
Baltimore just kept on hitting.
Quoth the Orioles: “Nevermore.”
Don’t dig in against Bob Gibson, he’ll knock you down.
He’d knock down his own grandmother if she dared to challenge him.
Don’t stare at him, don’t smile at him, don’t talk to him.
He doesn’t like it.
If you happen to hit a home run,
don’t run too slow,
don’t run too fast.
If you happen to want to celebrate,
get in the tunnel first.
And if he hits you, don’t charge the mound,
because he’s a Gold Glove boxer.
I’m like, damn, what about my seventeen-game hitting streak?
That was the night it ended.
Gibson would back you
off the plate on a bet.
Pedro had no illusions—
He just hated your guts
if you had a different color uniform.
Nolan Ryan didn’t care if
his 98 MPH fastball hit
a hip, arm, or leg.
Charge the mound for respect?
Next inning?
More chin music…
A nuanced, non-written
rule of the
National Pastime.
A former collegiate offensive lineman and football coach, Dan Provost’s poetry has been published in many print and online magazines. He lives in Berlin, New Hampshire with his wife, Laura, and dog, Bella.