Lynn Rigney Schott - "Souvenirs"

To my daughter, born February 6, Babe Ruth’s birthday

In 1928 my grandfather gave a baseball
signed by Babe Ruth
to my father, who was ten.
Such balls travelled around by the dozen
in the Babe’s suitcase and arrived
eventually in many small hands.
Dad grew up on Frisbee Street in Oakland
and there were never enough baseballs
in the neighborhood, so this one became
a game ball, not a collector’s item.
By the end of a season it was so scuffed
up that the autograph just wore off
the horsehide, disappearing under so many
groundballs, so many slaps of the bat.
But all those pitches, those double-play
balls, those afternoons in the sand lot
never faded, only sharpened
his reflexes and his ambition and his boyish
love of this game that became the indelible
signature written all over my father’s life.