I.
On Labor Day of 1916
Matty pitched his last game
Locking up with his ancient foe
Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown of the Cubs
In in second game of a twin-bill.
Matty's fadeaway was a mere crook by now, and
Neither old-timer was baffling,
But with nothing hanging in the balance
Both stayed around until the end,
Matty picking up the win, 10-8.
II.
Thirteen years later, in 1929
Grover Cleveland Alexander
Was nearing immortality, and
The St. Louis chapter of A.A.
Was having a field day
Keeping him off the wagon.
Drunks in every corner of Missouri
And Southern Illinois
Were dropping by the local headquarters
With home remedies.
One more victory, and
Pete would break Matty's
National League record of 372.
III.
On a somber day in August
Pete accomplished just that.
Though weaving, all the same
He had receded sufficiently from the tremens
To make out in the shadows
Shoulders gingerly affixed to bats.
Those who saw him that day say
He pitched as if the world were a drop of wine
Clinging to the bottom of a slender necked bottle.
To retrieve it, all he had was
A coat hanger and a sponge.
IV.
Fifteen years later,
Give of take a year,
A figure filbert discovered an error
In the National League records of 1902.
A victory by Matty had accidently been recorded
A defeat.
V.
Out on the prairie near St. Paul, Nebraska
Ol'Pete was too drunk to know, or care
Or even differentiate the difference
If anybody had cared to explain it to him.
Matty's case was another.
In 1925, almost a year to the day before
Pete's infamous whiffing of Lazzeri,
Matty was dead at forty-five
At Saranac Lake, New York
After a bout of spinal meningitis,
An erroneous number imprinted on his brain.
Baseball I Gave You All the Best Years of My Life
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