"The body of a horse, the heart of a boy,"
Campanella claimed, catching four games
a day in the negro leagues - sometimes
losing twenty pounds in the process.
Talented enough to do it,
little boy enough to think it's important,
beyond the money and people shouting,
the pure pleasure of driving a fastball
over the three-eighty sign.
When he objected to her Korean tour,
Monroe lectured )Joltin' Joe.
"You don't know what it's like
to have thirty thousand people cheer
for you." Some time before, sixty thousand watched
him catapult two shots into the seats off Feller.
"Yes, I do," he said.
Even a hundred mile-an-hour fastball has its limits.
Feller warned young pitchers
of "hitters you can't throw it by."
He hadn't seen Dalkowski throw.
Maybe Dave Pope had the fastest hands
of anyone. In the cage or in a game,
turn on it. It turns on that.
In the beat of a boy's heart Campanella
ended up "a horse that couldn't run."
Pulled from a tangle of twisted metal
he sits at home plate in a wheelchair,
the stars and stripes draped across his legs.
For years DiMaggio sold coffee-makers.
Feller and Pope lived on to old age,
old age. Dalkowski simply dropped off
the radar, or so it seems.
Monroe? Everybody knows that story.
How they souped-up the ball,
lowered the mound,
reduced the strike zone,
suspended pitchers for throwing at hitters,
brought in the fences,
yes, they brought in the fences.
Everybody knows that story.
A Season of Long Taters
