Winter in Fenway

Winter in Fenway (sonnet 97) from DGA Productions on Vimeo.

The Crowd At the Ball Game - William Carlos Williams

The Crowd at the Ball Game
By William Carlos Williams

The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly

by a spirit os uselessness
which delights them -

all the exciting detail
of the chase

and the escape, the error
the flash of genius -

all to no end save beauty
the eternal -

So in detail they, the crowd,
are beautiful

for this
to be warned against

saluted and defied -
It is alive and venomous

it smiles grimly
its words cut -

The flashy female with her
mother, gets it -

The Jew gets it straight - it
is deadly, terrifying -

It is the Inquisition, the
Revolution

It is beauty itself
that lives

day by day in them
idly -

This is
the power of their faces

It is summer, it is the solstice
the crowd is

cheering, the crowd is laughing
in detail

permanently, seriously
without thought.

Baseball Canto by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Baseball Canto
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Watching baseball, sitting in the sun, eating popcorn,
reading Ezra Pound,
and wishing that Juan Marichal would hit a hole right through the
Anglo-Saxon tradition in the first Canto
and demolish the barbarian invaders.
When the San Francisco Giants take the field
and everybody stands up for the National Anthem,
with some Irish tenor's voice piped over the loudspeakers,
with all the players struck dead in their places
and white umpires like Irish cops in their black suits and little
black caps pressed over their hearts,
Standing straight and still like at some funeral of a blarney bartender,
and all facing east,
as if expecting some Great White Hope or the Founding Fathers to
appear on the horizon like 1066 or 1776.

But Willie Mays appears instead,
in the bottom of the first,
and a roar goes up as he clouts the first one into the sun and takes
off, like a footrunner from Thebes.
The ball is lost in the sun and the maidens wail after him
as he keeps running through the Anglo-Saxon epic.
And Tito Fuentes comes up looking like a bullfighter
in his tight pants and small pointy shoes.
And the right field bleechers go mad with Chicanos and blacks
and Brooklyn beer-drinkers.
"Tito! Sock it to him, sweet Tito!"
And sweet Tito puts his foot in the bucket
and smacks one that don't come back at all,
and flees around the bases
like he's escaping the United Fruit Company.
As the gringo dollar beats out the pound.
And sweet Tito beats it out like he's beating out usury,
not to mention fascism and anti-semitism.
And Juan Marichal comes up,
and the Chicano bleechers go loco again,
as Juan belts the first ball out of sight,
and rounds first and keeps going
and rounds second and rounds third,
and keeps going and hits paydirt
to the roars of the grungy populace.
As some nut presses the backstage panic button
for the tape-recorded National Anthem again,
to save the situation.

But it don't stop nobody this time,
in their revolution round the loaded white bases,
in this last of the great Anglo-Saxon epics,
in the territorio libre of Baseball.

Baseball by John Updike

Baseball
by John Updike

It looks easy from a distance,
easy and lazy, even,
until you stand up to the plate
and see the fastball sailing inside,
an inch from your chin,
or circle in the outfield
straining to get a bead
on a small black dot
a city block or more high,
a dark star that could fall
on your head like a leaden meteor.

The grass, the dirt, the deadly hops
between your feet and overeager glove:
football can be learned,
and basketball finessed, but
there is no hiding from baseball
that some are chosen
and some are not - those whose mitts
feel too left handed,
who are scared at third base
of the pulled line drive,
and at first base are scared
of the shortstop's wild throw
that stretches you out like a gutted deer.

There is nowhere to hide when the ball's
spotlight swivels your way,
and the chatter around you falls still,
and the mothers on the sidelines,
your own among them, hold their breaths,
and you whiff on a terrible pitch
or in the infield achieve
something with the ball so
ridiculous you blush for years.
It's easy to do. Baseball was
invented in America, where beneath
the good cheer and sly jazz the chance
of failure is everybody's right,
beginning with baseball.

The Night Game By Robert Pinsky

The Night Game
By Robert Pinksy

Some of us believe
We would have conceived romantic
Love out of our own passions
With no precedents,
Without songs and poetry -
Or have invented poetry and music
As a comb of cells for the honey.

Shaped by ignorance,
A succession of new worlds,
Congruities improvised by
Immigrants or children.

I once thought most people were Italian,
Jewish or Colored,
To be white and called
something like Ed Ford
Seemed aristocratic,
A rare distinction.

Possibly I believed only gentiles
And blonds could be left-handed.

Already famous
After one year in the majors,
Whitey Ford was drafted by the Army
To play ball in the flannels
Of the signal Corps, stationed
In Long Branch, New Jersey.

A night game, the silver potion
Of the lights, his pink skin
Shining like a burn.

Never a player
I liked or hated; a Yankee,
A mere success.

But white the chalked-off lines
In the grass, white and green
The immaculate uniform,
And white the unpigmented
Halo of his hair
When he shifted his cap:

So ordinary and distinct,
So close up, that I felt
As if I could have made him up,
Imagined him as I imagined

The ball, a scintilla
High in the black backdrop
Of the sky. Tight red stiches.
Rawlings. The bleached.

Horsehide white: the color.

Of nothing. Color of the past
And of the future, of the movie screen
At rest and of blank paper.

"I could have," The mind. The black.
Backdrop, the white
Fly picked out by the towering
Lights. A few years later

On a blanket in the grass
By the same river
A girl and I came into
Being together
To the faint muttering
Of unthinkable
Troubadours and radios

The emerald
Theater, the night.
Another time,
I devised a left-hander
Even more gifted
Than Whitey Ford: A Dodger.
People were amazed by him.
Once, when he was young,
He refused to pitch on Yom Kippur.

The Science Of The Knuckleball

Take Me Out To The Ball Game - Dr. John

2014 Baseball Cards

Former Pelicans Stadium

My Zephyr's Cap

Go Zephyrs! My well worn baseball hat:

Willie Stargell Round/Square Quote

"They give you a round bat and they throw you a round ball and they tell you to hit it square."

- Willie Stargell

Found it at this collection of Stargell's quotes.

Play Ball!

Time to restart this thing. This will be a collection of writings, pictures, and quotes about baseball. Sometimes I might find some good documentaries online to put on here. I might report on games I go to, or events in baseball. There will be long form writing and maybe even some fiction (and with some of the long form writing, there might be elements of fiction there as well for the pieces coming from my memory since sometimes it is hard to separate the fact from the myth).

I love baseball. I love it on all levels and fronts. I loved playing it even though I wasn't that good. I love watching it in person and on TV. I love listening to it on the radio, which might be the best medium for broadcasting baseball games. I love watching movies about and documentaries about baseball.

I will try and update the site daily to keep things going. This blog will have a mirror site on tumblr. My main goal is to create the writing I want to read about baseball. I want to tell the baseball stories I know and have in my head. I hope you will join me.