Baseball Universe Let’s make baseball a more universal game. Address: Calle 3, #16 Altos, entre 2 y 4 Reparto José Díaz (Palomo) Holguín, Holguín, Cuba CP 80100
EXTRA INNINGS
There’s me in the front row, blue and white in the black and white, shy; in jeans and baseball jacket, blue with a white stripe on the collar holding with both hands the blue and white cap they wouldn’t let me wear in the picture. Where do they come from Ripken and Wiggins Rudolph Trammel Wade Boggs and Randy Ready Orel Herishiser Alfredo Griffin and Steve Bedorosian Geronimo Pena Odibbe McDowell the hot hand at second base the eagle eye in left? What histories and biographies continents and geographies, street corners, corner lots, back seats of cars, wars and revolutions, discoveries and chance meetings lead to the diamond? Names demand language, command words, a song of their own.
In the order the batter steps in: Wind up or go to the stretch an off-speed slow freight right down the pipe setting the table. A hanging curve a chopper popped up a split finger double clutch grounded out. The pitch that jammed him, behind the count, a delayed steal went up the ladder busted squeeze a sacrifice fly 5-4-3 room service job and double play turned oh and one. Any inning makes an outing and 3 outs make an inning. Rule 8.02.a2 The pitcher shall not apply a foreign substanceof any kind to the ball. How easy it is in the stands alone with your score card or cuddling – sex with mustard a collectivity of beer and popcorn, collusions of bodies collisions of kaons round atomic bases. At home, the catcher
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crouches, thighs wide. Straight from the bullpen, the pitcher paws the mound. Day games lost in the sun, sky so blue you could set it in your ring. Twilight pitchers in the light, batters in the dark which grows toward the mound. The ball is thrown into the dark comes out of the light. Long shadows old as skeletons look up into the Chicago night. The Player of the Game gets an Inuit sculpture. What could I make for you to compete with the rooms full of roto-tillers and fully automatic cameras? Can I catch your eye, develop an irresistible need to follow my curves, calculate my average? Like the old photograph history is caught in baseball. The year it happened… in the World Series… 1919 thrown away and 1989 lives saved, San Francisco Giants and Oakland A’s. And before, the longest time
a Series was postponed: 1911 a week rained out – between the A’s of Philly and the Giants of NY. Games within the game. Statistics nuances of numbers numbness of numbers, no hits and one run, four-out inning. Flashing the signs, autistic grimaces of stealth and purpose. Who’s playing, who wins? It’s the weave within which counts like words in a poem patterns soothing as Persian rugs: as sure as taxes as different as snowflakes infinite chances at a first time. Top of the ninth or extra innings like the game itself the poem remains unfinished a whole new ballgame.
This poem was written and kindly sent to us by our friend and baseball enthusiast Katharine Beeman