In 1946, Disney released an animated adaptation of Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s poem, “Casey At the Bat.” The short film proved so popular that in 1954, Disney made a sequel, Casey Bats Again, in which Casey’s nine daughters redeem his reputation.
I’m so glad we now live in a world where girls playing baseball is becoming more widely accepted and appreciated.
I like the imagery in this piece, and the wonder of a child watching a baseball game is always enjoyable to think about. I’m not sure of the author’s actual name, as the poem is posted only with the username, Obthompson. You can find the original post here.
*
The scoreboard reads:
Bottom nine.
2 out;
3 on.
“Batter up!” comes the shout,
Way back in the stands sits a child effervescent with joy;
His father beside him speaks to him softly;
Close your eyes and think,
That could be me.
The roar of the throbbing crowd longing for victory,
Seats teeming with fans
some sad with worry, some happy with glee.
The scuffing of shoes,
The clearing of throats,
The build up to when pandemonium ensues.
That old smell of peanuts,
The roll of the organ,
The batter steps up to take his cuts.
He steps up to the plate,
Breathes; and takes it all in
He closes his eyes and thinks to himself;
Why me and not him?
I enjoy the imagery presented in this piece. The metaphor comparing a pitcher to a dancer can be a good one, especially with some pitchers, like Luis Tiant, who have some rather elaborate windups.
*
Clear August sunlight spotlighted the dancer
he twirled in the style of Tiant
technical in spin, placed practiced choreography.
A white ball, laced red with a season’s skill and hope,
hurled to the stanched batter,
who would nick it to the dirt
In his 7th inning finale
a foul, a strike released in a summer’s era,
the spiraling pitcher spun to a season’s final ovation,
in late afternoon shadows.
Working in education myself, I find I can identify with a lot in this poem. But whether it is school or business or any other kind of official type of environment, most folks we interact with have different personas in other surroundings.
*
I had planned this evening for weeks.
A beautiful May night at the ballpark with friends.
But now, due to circumstances beyond my control
Because I live in a community where everyone is related to everyone else,
Two of my tickets were given to
My student.
And not just any student–
The one who caws like a crow out my window daily–
The one who groans in exasperation whenever he’s asked to do
Anything beyond breathing–
The one who raises his hand to respond to every question but whose answers
Come from his bottomless pit of irrelevant responses–
The bane of my existence: the sophomore boy.
Sworn enemies.
Seven rows up on the right field line
His dad between us as a buffer zone,
We sat in seats so close you could see
the scuffs on Cliff Floyd’s cleats.
“Prime foul ball territory,” I said to him.
He just nodded as we rose for the national anthem.
By the first inning, we were
Awkward adversaries on neutral ground.
We groaned as Uggla and Cabrera launched white missiles into the stands–
Our team in the hole right off the bat.
We found ourselves heckling the other bullpen–together.
By the fifth inning, we were
wary allies.
We buried our faces at a 3 K performance by Soriano–
(Shouldn’t he be good on his own bobblehead night?)
The game was a rout,
So we leaned forward eagerly and swapped autograph war stories,
Laughing and joking around his dad.
Politely and unprompted, he looked me in the eye and said,
“Thank you for the tickets.”
By the ninth inning, I could see David as
A civil human being.
Later I heard he said, “She’s pretty cool, when she’s not in class.”
I agreed.
This piece, published in 1999, is short and leaves a lot open to interpretation. It does leave me wondering if the baseball division was a contributing factor to the division in the relationship.
*
Relaxing with his son
watching the Mets,
sharing the good times
together.
The court gave him
the best home dates
to root for their team
Relaxing with her son
watching the Yankees,
sharing the good times
together.
The court gave her
the best home dates
to root for their team
as a family.
This piece by Joyce Kessel was published in 2011 in Spitball Magazine. There’s a strong sense of nostalgia, especially in the language about attending minor league games.
*
I grew up a National League fan
of the Pirates, Cards, Reds & Giants,
not even knowing many decades before
my Buffalo Bisons played in the Senior League
well before becoming a minor league stalwart.
So I’d pray for sunny skies over Forbes Field
rather than Cleveland’s “Mistake by the Lake.”
My rare defection to the American League
came when the Orioles gained Frank Robinson
in that lopsided trade and after,
who couldn’t have appreciated Cal Ripken?
My dad & I would troll the minor leagues
where for some reason affiliations
didn’t seem to matter as much,
at least not to me,
who took in the green expanses
beyond dirt as the glowing diamonds
they were meant to be,
even in parks that were bare shadows
to Little League fields today.
In bandbox fields
and open air bleachers
we’d watch players with numbers,
but no names on their uniforms,
trading cards in their future or past
or not at all, their talents raw and wild.
I learned a geography of Rustbelt cities:
Toledo Mudhens, Columbus Clippers,
Rochester Redwings, Syracuse Chiefs,
Geneva Cubs, Oneonta Yankees,
Niagara Falls Rainbows,
a day’s ride away,
hoping they’d play two,
and mastering the geometry
& hieroglyphs of scorecards.
This poem by Jordan Deutsch was published in 1932, and you can see the history all over this piece. I really love the imagery of the sunrise, and the phonetic spelling out of the conductor’s pronunciations (“… Shecargo and Saint Louieeeeee”) just put a voice in my head yelling these cities out.
*
Up from the grasslands,
The plains, the cities,
Up from the vastness of the land itself:
Up Up Up
To the Great Mississippi.
Up to that First Field bathed in the sun,
Basking in the glory of its birth
Immersed in future time.
Further up slides the sun.
Up
To the Red Stockings from Cincinnati,
The original Magnificent Machine,
The dynasty without a future.
Up
To the National Association,
Swaying in its greatness.
Further up slides the sun.
Through the mouth of history slide provocative names
Once breathed on the lips of dreamers.
In what fine grave do the Elizabeth Resolutes
Troy Haymakers,
And Lord Baltimores now rest?
Up moving up
To expanding cities pocketed
In gray concrete.
(Can you hear the shrill and melodic chant of the
Train Conductor calling out his roll?)
:NewYawkHartfordBosstonPhilaDELphia
LouievilleCINCINnatiShecargo and Saint Louieeeeee.
Up up up
Up
To the Great Mississippi.
There doesn’t seem to be a title to this one — it is listed merely as “Haiku 5.” All the same, I found this haiku very relatable, even in its brevity. I’m sure most kids who grow up playing ball have this experience at some point in their lives.
*
an old baseball
soars across blue sky–
broken glass
This one is short and sweet, playing on the metaphor of baseball and life. There are some pretty intense pressure situations in both worlds, for sure.
*
Baseball ain’t just a game
Ask any fan, it’s a way of life
Life and Baseball, so much the same
Similarly filled with fun and strife
Bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, two out
Score tied, full count on the batter
He knows, at that moment, with out a doubt
If he fails to hit, nothing in life will matter
To strike out in life, as many do
Brings consequences, not aspired
Just as striking out with count three and two
Is something, clearly, not desired
This piece is a parody of Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s “Casey At the Bat” that I stumbled upon, and it’s a pretty good one. Adam Morris Garfinkle does a really good job of maintaining the rhythm and spirit of Thayer’s piece while capturing the story of the Washington Nationals’ 2019 season. I found this poem published in tandem with a piece, also written by Garfinkle, titled “In Lieu of Opening Day: The Poetry of Baseball.”
*
[in gratitude, to Ernest Lawrence Thayer]
The prospect wasn’t bright at all for the Washington Nats in May;
Their record stood at 19 and 31, with 112 gruesome trials to play,
Turner he got injured, and ‘ol Zim he turned up lame;
Despondency settled upon the hometown fans, again and again and again.
A faithless few their precious season tickets went to pawn,
But most just sighed with wistful longing, their hopes cruelly smashed and torn,
They thought that if only their pathetic bullpen could finally come around,
The pall of desperation would at least be lifted from the mound.
They blew so many saves we despaired of keeping track,
Of hit-and-run and sacrifice bunts there certainly was a lack.
They bobbled grounders, overthrew first, and dropped innocent pop flies,
You’d have thought the guys were trying to play the game with ‘baca plugs glued upon their eyes.
Our heroes stumbled through a maze of ghastly springtime torpors;
At one point losing five games straight, even getting swept by them New Yorkers;
“Fire the manager!”, the disgusted minions insistently demanded.
As if that would have made any difference, to be perfectly candid.
At last faint embers of diamond life slowly began to glow,
In early June they finally managed to win four games in a row;
The bats all at once seem to jump, their Louisville sluggers did thrive,
The pitching improved significantly with a revised rotation of five.
Little by little they strove to turn their season right around,
By the All-Star Break they’d mostly healed and felt pretty gosh darn sound,
Before long they passed up the Mets, then swiftly dropped the Phillies,
Waving back to Bryce as they gave chase for Atlanta willy-nilly.
They never did catch ‘em, their goofy tomahawk chop to still,
But they played good enough to climb high enough upon the standings hill,
To wild card their way into the lustrous postseason playoffs,
Finishing the regular season with a win streak that handsomely paid off.
So it was that the Nats came face-to-face with the Milwaukee Brewers,
In a winner-take-all single game, fans’ nerves jangling as if on skewers
Scherzer fell behind early, three big runs to zip,
The lineup looked utterly punchless, not one batsman connected with a rip.
Strasberg came in to relieve Max, for his very first relief stint ever,
And shut down Milwaukee’s mighty crew in a masterful endeavor;
Then with but six outs between them and cursed oblivion,
The eighth inning became at last a friend, and started us a-singin’.
For Taylor got plunked (maybe), and Zim cracked a solid single,
Rendon then walked to fill the bases, and Soto solidly delivered ‘em.
Three runs came home before the dust had settled, their first lead of the game,
Then Hudson came in to shut the door, and the town went totally insane.
“Beat LA!” the crowd then chanted, but that demanded gallantry;
The mighty Dodgers had won 106 games, and the Nats a mere 93,
The first game was a six-zip shutout, things did not look at all good.
But the Nats won the second 4 to 2, they knew in their hearts they could.
Game 3 was an unmitigated full-frontal home field disaster,
LA scored ten runs and our faces turned to alabaster,
Now down two games to one in a short best-of-five series,
Our breathing went giddily shallow and our attitude turned quite leery.
The guys pulled out game four 6-1, to even the series two and two,
But back to LA they had to go for the crucial deciding set-to.
They fell behind again, three-nothing after two,
Exactly as in the Brewers game; hmm, could that be a clue?
They tied it in the eighth off Kershaw, the poor bedraggled fellow,
Rendon and Soto dinged him back to back, and we felt oh so mellow.
Then Howie Kendrick slammed the Dodger door shut in the tenth,
After which Mr. Excitement Sean Doolittle one-two-threed a breathless heaven-sent.
Then came Saint Louis for to joust the coveted NL Pennant,
This was to be no ordinary series, and we really truly meant it.
For oh how cruelly had the Cardinals crushed us back in 2012,
Erasing a 6-run Nats lead in game six, dropping us straight down into hell.
The Nationals were taking no prisoners this time around,
They chewed up the Red Birds, flung them hard down on the ground,
Plucked them but good they did, winning four games in a row;
No one believed the Nats could sweep ‘em; it only goes to show.
And so came the World Series, the Nation’s Capital exploded
With joy and rapture and mirth; some folks even got loaded.
Off to Houston the victors then made for to travel,
As serious underdogs surely, most thought, bound quickly to unravel.
But we whooped ‘em twice in Texas, ‘twas hard even to conceive!
Our spirits were buoyant, you bet your sweet life we believed.
Houston was supposed to be down in the great state of Texas, doc.
But the Nats left that city reeling in a total state of shock.
Not so fast countin’ your chickens, said the Astros, we ain’t done yet.
Then they won three straight in DC; d’ya think we got upset?!
Now down three games to two, and facing two more on the road,
The odds-makers smirked, the Nats’ll flush right down the hall-of-shame commode.
But we pulled out the first one 5 to 4, forcing a deciding game seven,
On the day before Halloween no less, we were jumpier than a flea in denim.
The guys got down two zip with but a measly nine outs to give,
It seemed that maybe, just maybe, the boys had finally run out of fizz.
But that’s not how it ended, I’m oh so glad to tell,
The guys sliced clean through the Astros bullpen pell-mell;
Howie lined one off the right-field foul pole; Houston sunk down in pain.
How he even hit Harris’s low outside sinker at all, no one could explain.
In the baseball dome of heaven dugout angels rejoiced on high,
The Big Train looked down on where Griffith used to be and plaintively cried,
Huzzah and hosannah, shouted Saint Kenesaw Mountain Landis,
Not since Calvin Coolidge was President have I seen anything so marvelously outlandish.
So hats off to the Nationals, true champions of baseball lore,
Bringing the Nation’s Capital its first Series win since 1924.
We even booed the President, and some held out snotty hankies.
The only way it could have been better? Had the Astros been the goddamn Yankees.