Cal Ripken, Jr.

Wikipedia - "Calvin Edwin 'Cal' Ripken, Jr. (born August 24, 1960), nicknamed 'Iron Man', is a former Major League Baseball shortstop and third baseman. He played his entire 21-year baseball career for the Baltimore Orioles (1981–2001). Ripken is perhaps best known for breaking New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig's record for consecutive games played, a record many deemed unbreakable. He surpassed the 56-year-old record when he played in his 2,131st consecutive game on September 6, 1995, between the Orioles and the California Angels in front of a sold-out crowd at Oriole Park at Camden Yards."
Wikipedia, Baseball Reference

Baron Wormser - "Listening to a Baseball Game"

for Charles Baxter

The smothering heat of a July night
Squats in a second-floor bedroom
And doean't move despite the desk fan's
Peaceful whir and simulate breeze.
A boy lies on the sheets and reads
A Life magazine which holds
The proper shadow of attention
While he listens to the ballgame
Being played in Kansas City.
He sees it happen and imagines it -
The same thing really. A car swings

Down Maple Steet a hinge complains.
Moths move toward decipherable light
But are stopped by screens. The boy's done
Reading and lies there beside the lamp,
His hands folded beneath his head.
He knows that comfort is rarely pure.
He listens and lets his feeling glide
With each intent description.
He follows a probable dream
As the night sways with outcomes
In houses and rooms and far away.


Line Drives
Edited by Brooke Horvath and Tim Wiles

The Fine Art of Calling Strikes

"Watching major league baseball games on television is a sedentary activity. You won't get into shape by sitting on your butt. But following professional baseball is a mental activity which has spawned a whole technology of statistical data. There are people who apply higher level algebra to the diagnosis of statistical performance. They measure nearly everything that happens on the field, and cross-refer it by player, situation, across time, frequency, and everything else. Frankly, I'm not one of these types."
The Compass Rose

My Cuban Baseball Experience

"This past week I travelled to Havana, Cuba with former Mop Up Duty writer Early to experience Cuban baseball and to immerse ourselves in the Cuban culture. Early’s father (and also former Mop Up Duty writer Daperman) had always regaled us on the Havana Cuba Sugar Kings and we were fascinated by his stories. Pair that with the mysteriousness of a country like Cuba, possessing a league full of major league talent (as evidenced by the World Baseball Classic) that few have ever seen and you have the recipe for a week full of baseball nerdiness."
Mop Up Duty

Richard Hugo - "The Freaks At Spurgin Road Field"

The dim boy claps because the others clap.
The polite word, handicapped, is mutterded in the stands.
Isn't it wrong, the way the mind moves back.

One whole day I sit, contrite, dirt, L.A.
Union Station, '46, sweating through last night.
The dim boy claps because the others clap.

Score, 5 to 3. Pitcher fading badly in the heat.
Isn't it wrong to be or not be spastic?
Isn't it wrong, the way the mind moves back.

I'm laughing at a neighboy girl beaten to scream
by a savage father and I'm ashamed to look.
The dim boy claps because the others clap.

The score is always close, the rally always short.
I've left more wreckage than a quake.
Isn't it wrong, the way the mind moves back.

The afflicted never cheer in unison.
Isn't it wrong, the way the mind moves back
to stammering pastures where the picnic should have worked.
The dim boy claps because the others clap.



Into the Temple of Baseball
Edited by Richard Grossinger & Kevin Kerrane

Mo's 1,000th appearance

"5/25/11: Mariano Rivera works a scoreless ninth after becoming the first pitcher to appear in 1,000 games for one team"
MLB

Jim Piersall

Wikipedia - "James Anthony Piersall (born November 14, 1929 in Waterbury, Connecticut) is a former center fielder in Major League Baseball. Between 1950 and 1967, he played for the Boston Red Sox (1950, 1952–58), Cleveland Indians (1959–61), Washington Senators (1962–63), New York Mets (1963), and Los Angeles/California Angels (1963–67). While he had a fairly good professional career as a center fielder, Piersall is better known for his well-publicized battle with bipolar disorder that became the subject of the book and movie Fear Strikes Out."
Wikipedia, Baseball Reference, YouTube - Jimmy Piersall Double, Fear Strikes Out Tribute

Robert Wallace - "The Double Play"

In his sea lit
distance, the pitched winding
like a clock about to chime comes

the ball, hit
sharply, under the artificial
banks of arc-lights, bounds like a vanishing

over the green
to the shortstop magically
scoops to his right whirling above his invisible

shadows
in the dust redirects,
its flight to the running poised second baseman

pirouettes
leaping, above the slide, to throw
from mid-air, across the colored tightened interval,

to the leaning-
out first baseman ends the dance
drawing it disappearing into his long brown glove

stretches. What
is too swift for deception
is final, lost, among the loosened figures

jogging off the field
(the pitcher walks), casual
in the space where the poem has happened.



Hummers, Knucklers, and Slow Curves
Edited by Don Johnson

Frank Crosetti

Wikipedia - "Frank Peter Joseph Crosetti (October 4, 1910 - February 11, 2002), nicknamed 'The Crow', was an American Major League Baseball shortstop. He played his entire 17-year baseball career for the New York Yankees (1932–1948). As a player, he was on eight World Series champions (in 1932, 1936–39, 1941, 1943, and 1947)."
Wikipedia, Baseball Reference

Charles Barasch - "When Ron Guidry Retired"

For fifteen summers Mrs. Guidry planted
the garden. She pulled the weeds
and kept away the deer.
She watched the sunset.
She talked with women.
She raised three children.

"I'm a little happy," she tells the reporters.
"A little sad - mostly sad.
I still think Ron can pitch."

In the newspaper photo she holds her new baby
and looks up at Ron saying farewell
at the microphone. In the staged lighting
she looks like the Virgin
in an old painting. Her forehead glows,
a shadow runs along her nose
and crosses her lips. She is wearing
a dark dress.


Baseball I Gave You All the Best Years of My Life

1947 World Series

Jackie Robinson knocks Phil Rizzuto into the air
Wikipedia - "The 1947 World Series matched the New York Yankees against the Brooklyn Dodgers, with the Yankees winning the Series in seven games for their first title since 1943, and the eleventh championship in team history. Yankees manager Bucky Harris won the Series for the first time since managing the Washington Senators to their only title in 1924. This was the first World Series involving an African-American player, as Jackie Robinson had racially integrated Major League Baseball at the beginning of the 1947 season."
Wikipedia, amazon - Summer of '49, The 1947 World Series: Game 4 - The Most Exciting Game Ever Played at Ebbets Field!, Yankees Win the 1947 World Series - Video, YouTube - Mel Allen and Red Barber on the 1947 World Series

Steve Hermanos - "These Shrunken Men"

A-Rod in his baggy shirt;
Texeira's face has lost dimension;
Ryan Howard,
The Mini-Me,
Of Ryan Howard;
David Ortiz,
Wearing Subway Jared's old Red Sox pajamas;
Pudge Rodriguez,
Slim Rodrguez;
Former fan-favorite Eric Byrnes is permanently surfing;
Manny Ramirez is lost,
In a nightmare rat's nest of hair extensions;
Jason Giambi is a lithe bench player,
His tattoos saggy, unreadable abstractions;
Roger Clemens was a great pitcher,
And a liar.

The superhero capes,
The pixie dust,
The greenies and magic potions,
The injections and horse pills,
All gone,
For now,
Leaving the pitchers,
Throwing perfect games,
27 up, 27 down,
To shrunken, tired, old-looking hitters,
Has an era
(Save the Vesuvian eruption of '79)
Ever ceased so quickly?

The ballparks have grown.


O, Gigantic Victory!

The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. - Robert Coover

Wikipedia - "The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. is Robert Coover's second novel, published in 1968. J. Henry Waugh is an accountant, albeit an unhappy one. However, each night after he comes home from work, Henry immerses himself in a world of his choosing: a baseball league in which every action is ruled by the dice."
Wikipedia, amazon, SI: J. Henry Waugh's Make-believe Ball Team Stands No. 1 In The Hot Stove League, My Little Blue Book - Baseball Analysts

Joyce Kessel - "Bleacher Rat"

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.


Spitball

Tim Peeler - "Curt Flood"

try to tell 'em Curt,
how you crowned their wallets,
climbed courtroom steps
for them,
swallowed that black ball,
a scapegoat out to pasture,
they don't remember,
can't remember
the trash you ate,
your greedy headlines,
the slope of your career.

you are a ghost at barterer's wing,
your smoky gray eyes
are two extra zeroes
on every contract.


Touching All the Bases

Keith Hernandez

Wikipedia - "Keith Barlow Hernandez (born October 20, 1953) is a former American Major League Baseball first baseman. He is currently a baseball analyst working for the New York Mets, for whom he played from 1983–1989, on SportsNet New York and WPIX television broadcasts."
Wikuipedia, Baseball Reference, I'm Keith Hernandez - vimeo

Mikhail Horowitz - Women Poets: A League of Their Own

“Slippery Sue” Sappho threw sweet, passionate heat for the Attica Athletics and the Lesbos Lavender Sox. Although only a fragment of her stats has survived to the present day, she is remembered as one of the great lyric pitchers of all time, with a fastball that reportedly registered 98 mph on the sapphic meter.


Edna St. Vincent “Babe” Millay played for the Greenwich Village Bohos, burning her bat at both ends. She was awarded a Cy Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for her fourth collection, The Earl-Weaver and Other Poems.


Marianne “Big Hat” Moore inhabited imaginary ballparks with real shortstops in them. After a great career with the New York Modernists, she was invited to throw out the first ball on opening day in Eternity.


Elizabeth Barrett “Bullet Bess” Browning was the battery mate of Robert “Yogi” Browning. She was acclaimed for her Sonnets from the Stengelese, the most famous of which begins: How do I pitch thee? Let me count the ways: I pitch thee to the letters, high and tight; Or low and far away, where bat can’t bite; Or in the dirt, which yet thy timber stays


Emily “Wild Nights” Dickinson spent her entire career in the dugout for the Amherst Visionaries. Finally, in the last moments of her life, she was inserted into a game, and heard a pop fly drop to the left of her as she died.

Smoke Signals

Crosley Field

Wikipedia - "As previously noted, Crosley Field was usually among the smallest parks in Major League Baseball, both in seating capacity and playing field size. Probably the most famous (or notorious) feature of Crosley Field otherwise was the fifteen-degree left field incline, called 'the terrace'. Terraces were not unusual in old ballparks. Most of them were constructed as a way to make up the difference between field level and street level on a sloping block. And most of them were leveled out ('Duffy's Cliff' at Fenway Park is one example) or covered by bleachers (as with Ebbets Field and Wrigley Field, for example)."
Wikipedia, Crosley Field Historical Analysis, Ballparks of Baseball - Video

Gil Hodges

Wikipedia - "Gilbert Raymond Hodges (April 4, 1924 – April 2, 1972) was an American Major League Baseball first baseman and manager. During an 18-year baseball career, he played in 1943 and from 1947–63, spending most of his career with the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers. He was the major leagues' outstanding first baseman in the 1950s, with teammate Duke Snider being the only player to have more home runs or runs batted in during the decade. For a time, his 370 career home runs were a National League (NL) record for right-handed hitters, and briefly ranked tenth in major league history; he held the NL record for career grand slams from 1957 to 1974."
Wikipedia, Baseball Reference, YouTube - Gil Hodges: The Quiet Man

The Black Sox Trial - 1921

Douglas Linder - "It was almost unthinkable: players throwing the World Series? Yet, that's what happened--or maybe didn't happen--in the fall of 1919. The players on the Charles Comiskey's 1919 Chicago White Sox team were a fractious lot. The club was divided into two 'gangs' of players, each with practically nothing to say to the other. Together they formed the best team in baseball--perhaps one of the best teams that ever played the game, yet they--like all ball players of the time--were paid a fraction of what they were worth."
The Black Sox Trial

Thomas Michael McDade - "Players"

The beach made up
of sharp stones
reminds me
of a field
where I learned
baseball.
A bad hop
was always apt
to surprise
but not like this
topless beauty
kneeling to tend
her daughter's braid.
The child's blonde hair
fails to camouflage
the wedding band
that is as imposing
as a World Series ring.
I'm a young sailor
on liberty in France.
I'm used to sandy New England
shores and beach breasts
that are mysteries.
Standing, she leans
over to inspect her work.
Legs apart,
hands resting on knees,
she's a base runner
who just edged off first.
I gather lucky stones
and, skipping them off
the Mediterranean Sea,
I am a pitcher
checking her lead
when our eyes meet.


Line Drives
Foreword by Elinor Nauen

Wezen-Ball: The Back of Your Baseball Cards

"For many of us, the introduction to baseball statistics came not through reading magazines (or Baseball Prospectus) or watching games on television, but through our favorite childhood hobby, baseball cards. When you're a card collector as a kid, you're constantly handling your cards, memorizing the faces and poses on the front, and poring over the numbers on the back. Brilliant players like Barry Bonds or Mike Schmidt are obvious even to seven year old kids when compared to the more pedestrian players that make up the bulk of the set."
Baseball Prospectus

Thomas Hill Ross - "An Evening with Bobby Thomson, 9/20/89"

In an accident of timing he walked in the door
at the very moment the VCR was playing his home run.
He stood next to me and watched himself as a young man
run jubilantly around those bases:
What was going through his head?

A displacement of time, a "warp," a vacuum when
the linear becomes the circular and then is now.
Where once it was the entire Giants team
waiting for him at home
(Mays, Irvin, Durocher, Lockman, Hartung)
tonight it's only the three of us to greet him
at this unfamiliar house.

Off with the VCR, leaving the trgedy that was Branca
(back tured to us, his number thirteen grinning like Death)
and Rube Ealker waiting behind the plate for the pitch
that never arrived.

The circle was completed when he touched home:
the circular returned to the linear,
the past to the present,
and it took off like a line drive
into the future.


(for Gerry, Jane and, of course, Bobby.)

Baseball I Gave You All the Best Years of My Life
Edited by Richard Grossinger and Lisa Conrad

Bull Durham

Wikipedia - "Bull Durham is a 1988 American romantic comedy film about baseball. It is based upon the minor league experiences of writer/director Ron Shelton and depicts the players and fans of the Durham Bulls, a minor league baseball team in Durham, North Carolina."
Wikipedia, amazon, YouTube - "I Believe In..." speech, Arguing with the Umpire

Pat Jasper - "Oiling Down A New Glove"

Neat's-foot oil is best, if you
can find it. If not, any lanoline
based type will. Pour a half
teaspoon or so into the palm and
gently massage into the stiff leather
with your right hand (left, if you're
left-handed). It helps to have music
playing in the background, something
reverent, like "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"
or "Amazing Grace."

Work the slick stuff outward, rubbing
in clockwise circles (counterclockwise
for you southpaws), lavishing
special care on the laces and seams.
And don's forget the back -
When the oil is absorbed, place
a ball the pocket, fold, and secure
with large rubber bands.

Now for the hard part -
Remove the old mill that has served
you faithfully for fifteen years
from the closet. By this time, it is
slack with age and wrinkled in all
the wrong places, an over-the-hill
veteran that's seen one line drive
in your trunk of prized possessions,
(If you feel too guilty, you can
drag it out now and then for
practice or a pick-up game.)

The above should all be done
in the dead of winter when
you haven't fielded a grounder
in month and are suffering
withdrawal symptoms. Come spring,
after the proper gestation, remove
the rubber bands and slip
your hand into place: your
Rawlings or Wilson or Spalding
an extension of your arm, supple
as new skin.



Baseball & the Lyrical Life
Edited by Tom Colnay

Home Base: The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

1957 Ebbets Field
Home Base: The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum - Video

Sal Bando

Wikipedia - "Salvatore Leonard Bando (born February 13, 1944 in Cleveland, Ohio) is a former third baseman and executive in professional baseball who played for the Kansas City & Oakland Athletics (1966-76) and Milwaukee Brewers (1977-81). He batted and threw right-handed. During the A's championship years of 1971-75, he captained the team and led the club in runs batted in three times."
Wikipedia, Baseball Reference

Tom Clark - "To the Chicago White Sox of the 1950's"

Nelson Fox
Orestes Minoso
Chico Carrasquel
Larry Doby
Al Smith
and Jungle Jim Rivera

Ah speak not
to me those names,
but lull me to sleep with them

Jim Landis
Jim Busby
Bob Shaw
Bob Keegan
Earl Battey
and Earl Torgeson

Every man has his
natural song,
and alas this is mine


Fan Poems

Stats Geek Bill James Applies His Science to Serial Killers

"James lives in Lawrence, Kansas, but he spends quite a bit of time in Boston, where he’s worked for the Red Sox since 2002. Technically, he’s the team’s senior adviser of baseball operations, using his deep statistical knowledge of the game to help the Sox develop strategy and decide which players to sign. But it would be a mistake to think of James as a mere number cruncher."
Wired

Jonathan Holden - "How to Play Night Baseball"

A pasture is best, freshly
mown so that by the time a grounder's
plowed through all that chewed, spit-out
grass to reach you, the ball
will be bruised with green kisses. Start
in the evening. Come
with a bad sunburn and smelling of chlorine,
water still crackling in your ears.
Play until the ball is khaki -
a movable piece of the twilight-
the girls' bare arms in the bleachers are pale,
and heat lightning jumps in the west. Play
until you can only see pop-ups,
and routing grounders get lost in
the sweet grass for extra bases.


Hummers, Knucklers, and Slow Curves
Edited by Don Johnson

Lefty Grove

Wikipedia - "Robert Moses Lefty" Grove (March 6, 1900 – May 22, 1975) was a professional baseball pitcher. After having success in the minor leagues during the early 1920s, Grove became a star in Major League Baseball with the American League's Philadelphia Athletics and Boston Red Sox, winning 300 games in his 17-year MLB career. He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1947."
Wikipedia, Baseball Reference, The Baseball Biography Project, YouTube - Lefty Grove pitching mechanics, Pitching Mechanics (Part 2)

Charles Barasch - "The Bet"

In 1978 my friend Bill, a Phillies fan,
bet on a trotter beause it had a face
like Wes Covington's. The horse
led into the stretch and got struck
by lightning. This is a true story.
Bill was at the track
with the woman he's met outside Shibe Park
on the last day of the '64 season,
after the Phillies finally handed over
the last piece
of their 11-game lead.
She was sitting on a bench crying
when Bill sat down next to her.
He was thirty-four and figured
he's never get married.
They agreed not to watch the Series.
The next day Bill went to the bank
and they flew together to Ireland,
where they walked in the purple meadows
of his grandparents' farm.
A year later their first child,
a daughter, was born.



Baseball I Gave You All the Best Years of My Life
Edited by Richard Grossinger and Lisa Conrad