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Rube Benton

by Michael Ceraolo

It’s better to be lucky than good
I wasn’t good:
I knew the Series had been fixed in ’19,
though I’ve always denied that I profited from that knowledge
(wink wink)
And though I fit the Commissioner’s definition
of someone who wasn’t strictly honest,
and though others had been banned for ‘guilty knowledge’,
I was lucky to be a pawn in the game
between the Commissioner and the league presidents,
so I was not banned, and was able to play
three more years in the majors
and then eight years in the minors after that

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Playing Center Field

by Dan Campion

“Kids, don’t be too big to accept advice.” —Lewis Robert “Hack” Wilson

Hack Wilson said he played “hung over, yes,
but never drunk.” He said, “when I see three
balls, I just swing at the middle one.” You’d guess
he’d likely die of drink, in poverty,
and so he did, in Baltimore, far from
his glory days at Wrigley, where he’d hit
the big green scoreboard with a homer, some
poke for a guy just five foot six. His mitt
failed him in ’29, when two fly balls
played three balls with the sun, and Hack missed both
and blew the World Series, no animals
like Billy Goats involved. Though one is loath
to draw a moral, it’s just common sense
to wear shades near the center field fence.

 

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Hank O’Day

by Michael Ceraolo

I was a player, manager, and umpire,
the only one to do that in League history,
and that eventually got me in the Hall of Fame,
but of course there’s only one thing everyone wants to know about
A few weeks before the Merkle incident
there was a similar scenario in a Cubs-Pirates game
I told Evers to go home, the game was over,
and wrote up the incident in the game report to President Pulliam
Many have criticized me through the years
for calling Merkle out on a technicality
for what was a common practice at the time,
but we actually called him out
because McGinnity interfered on the play,
which is hardly a technicality
And if I were consumed with technicalities
I could have ruled the game a forfeit to the Cubs
because the Giants couldn’t clear the field
I made what I think is the right decision:
calling the game a tie ended by darkness
First President Pulliam, and then the League Board,
upheld the decision,
and you know the rest of the story

 

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Hack Wilson

by Michael Ceraolo

I started life with two strikes:
born to alcoholic, unmarried parents
and probably suffering from what would come to be called
fetal alcohol syndrome
Mom dying when I was seven,
Dad pretty much abandoning me,
leaving school after the sixth grade
and working dangerous jobs;
none of those managed to strike me out
Baseball saved me for a number of years,
especially my good fortune
in having Joe McCarthy as a manager
I had a fantastic five-year run;
you know the numbers, especially the one
When the Cubs fired McCarthy
and replaced him with Rogers Hornsby,
that was the beginning of the end for me
I was out of baseball a few years later,
and my alcoholism was the third strike,
taking me out of life at forty-eight

Chicago Cubs Hack Wilson with bat