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
Rays 7, Yankees 5
by Stephen Jones
Tit for tat,
The Rays came back.
Now the series is tied …
Whether game three
Will a street brawl be
Is anybody’s guess.
But one thing’s for certain:
Bubble or not,
In future days
The electronic strike zone
Is a must.
Go Get ‘Em Tigers
by James Finn Garner
The blue plastic transistor radio
I snuck into
Sister Geraldine’s class
That October
Poured heavenly images
Into my ears
The centerfielder moved to short
The old lion roaming in right
The brawny arms of Willie the Wonder
The soulful stare of Mickey Lolich
And the plate Freehan protected from Brock
NONE SHALL PASS!
All the saints and martyrs
Bringing a miracle to Motown
Narrated by the voice of God
In a sweet Georgia baritone
Yankees 9, Rays 3
by Stephen Jones
In this bubble-ball age,
Anything can happen —
Including a socially distanced
Rivalry between two teams
That actually hate each other.
I grew up hearing about crimson stuff
Just like this — you know,
New York vs Boston, and the like, and
It made going to school easier then.
New York vs Tampa now does the same.
It may be a new world, now, what
With social media and a pandemic,
But some gut things just don’t change.