by Ralph Badagliacca
Thanks so much for the relief
Of three hours or so
On a field we recognize
Where rooting for our team
Is passionate, but harmless.
Thanks for the escape from our reality
Where the rules of the game change every day.
Dodgers 3, Rays 1
by Stephen Jones
The Rays came to play,
Leading the Dodgers
1-0 through five.
Snell was magic, was unhittable,
And then (incredibly), Cash
Pulled him off the mound.
Whaaaat?
In their dugout, the Dodgers
Must’ve thanked the gods
(Because, up till then,
They’d no answer for his stuff).
They promptly scored two runs
In the sixth, and never looked back.
Tempus Fugit
by Ralph Badagliacca
Sobering news drives me to drink
Sharpening the way I think.
How could these champions be done
Who in my memory still hit and pitch and run?
That I still see the skill with which they pass each test
Drives me even more to do my best
In this game of life.
Whitey Ford, 91
by Stephen Jones
Six times a World Series champ,
Ten times an All-Star.
Whitey wore Yankee pinstripes
For his entire 16-year MLB career.
One of the best lefties
To ever toe the rubber,
The Chairman of the Board
Has left a legacy in the Bronx.
Fred Merkle
by Michael Ceraolo
I was nineteen, playing occasionally
and learning inside baseball from Mr. McGraw and the veterans
What I did on September 23, 1908
was the common practice at the time
We had to re-play that tie game and lost,
missing out on the pennant by that one game
To his eternal credit, Mr. McGraw never blamed me,
nor did any of my teammates that I knew of
But sportswriters needed a scapegoat for their stories,
and so from that day forward I was Bonehead Merkle
to the sportswriters and fans
And that wasn’t the only bum rap I took:
there were whispers that I was involved in
the fixing of the Cubs-Phillies game of August 31, 1920,
and though there wasn’t a shred of evidence
(there couldn’t be, because I wasn’t involved),
the whispers were enough to keep me out of the majors,
though I came back in ’25 and ’26
for a few games as a player-coach
I was managing in the minors a few years later
when some rookie called me Bonehead,
and I walked away from baseball that day,
with absolutely no regrets in doing so
