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Inscription Found in a Used Copy of Roger Angell’s “Late Innings”

by Andrew Wiesner

To Andy–

Baseball is a jewel of many facets. It is the innocence and emerging skills of a Cub Scout softballer. It is the cavorting delight of a pick-me-up neighborhood sandlot game. It is the semi-comic adult intensity surrounding a Little League contest, and the sub-conscious adult affectations of the Little Leaguers.

It is the hopes and expectations on Opening Day of an otherwise amorphous horde, unified and partially civilized by their allegiance to a common dream.

It is the bitter-sweet experience of attendance at a late September game of two teams who are by then running not in a pennant sprint, but only out the season’s clock.

It is a harmony of mind and body–like ballet–except that baseball’s skills are forged and honed in a furnace which demands not only grace, but victory, and in view of millions.

It is something which enraptures even as it saddens.

It is something which uplifts even as it frustrates.

It is subjective, and yet it is honest.

It is something we have shared, and I am grateful.

–Dad

 

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Sock it to ’em, Tigers

by James Finn Garner

The transistor radio
I smuggled into
Sister Geraldine’s class
Broadcast heavenly images

The centerfielder moved to short
The old lion roaming in right
The mighty arms of Willie the Wonder
The soulful stare of Lolich
The plate protected by Freehan
(None shall pass)

All the saints and martyrs
Bringing a miracle to Motown
Narrated by the voice of God
In his sweet Georgia drawl

 

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Angels Fans Furious

by Stephen Jones

Shohei Ohtani, the
Angels’ star and season,
Now with an UCL tear.
And
What was management thinking?
They knew
His elbow wasn’t right
And knew
They were 12 games behind.
So why
Put him in for 2+ innings
In a meaningless Sunday game?
Now
Comes a visitor, well-known
To the mound–
Mr. Tommy John
Comes recommended and is
Knocking at the door.

Oh no Ohtani

 

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To Orestes Minoso

by Tom Clark

Poet, editor and sportswriter Tom Clark died tragically in a traffic accident last Friday in Berkeley, Cal.

Minnie, you collide
with Roberto Clemente
when I try to summon up
the greatest ballplayer I ever saw

I’m not talking about reputations
but what you did day in day out
was so much more than anyone had a right to expect
that no one except Bill Veeck
ever really understood it

You busted your ass every minute, like your heroic namesake
although I’m not too sure about that
since unfortunately I remember my Greek mythology
less well than I remember you

If you’d have been a white Protestant from
Maryland, you’d have been in movies and the Hall of Fame
and today instead of an obscure coach
you’d be a celebrity
drinking coffee on television
and flashing us your famous smile
in ads for athletes foot

Maybe it’s better this way

 

From Tom’s 1976 collection, Fan Poems.

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Baseball Couplet

by Donald Hall

When the tall puffy
Figure wearing number
nine starts
late for the fly ball,
laboring forward
like a lame truckhorse
startled by a gartersnake,
–this old fellow
whose body we remember
as sleek and nervous as a filly’s–

and barely catches it
in his glove’s
tip, we rise and applaud weeping:
On a green field we observe the ruin
of even the bravest
body, as Odysseus
wept to glimpse
among the shades the shadow
of Achilles.

 

Donald Hall, who died on Sunday at age 89, was a writer, editor, literary critic and U.S. Poet Laureate in 2006.