Baseball and Verse, from Tinker to Evers to Big Papi

Marianne Moore
"Walt Whitman fell for baseball in its first heyday, saying that it had 'the snap, go, fling of the American atmosphere.' He wasn’t the only poet to be drawn to the game. Longfellow reportedly played an early version at college, and even Masaoka Shiki, the 19th-century Japanese haiku master, wrote about its seductive draw:

spring breeze
the green field
tempts me to play catch
(1890, translated by the Shiki-Kinen Museum English Volunteers)"

Poetry Foundation
Poetry Foundation: "Baseball" by Gail Mazur
Poetry Foundation: "The Baseball Players" by Donald Hall
O Holy Cow!: The Selected Verse of Phil Rizzuto (1997)