Day 42 | Old Men Watching Baseball by Oliver Evans

Old Men Watching Baseball
Oliver Evans

Huddled together for comfort on warm park benches
They sit in the inappropriate noonday sun
With sagging souls and bellies, wearily watching
The baseball boys in bright and agile bronze,
Uneasy knowledge in them of a time
When they, like these, could hit and fitly run
For beckoning bases. Playing then was prime
Before the fast and curving years descended
Upon them one by one, and struck them out.

O baseball boys, see here your final score!
For we grew faces in our flowery years
Soft-smooth as yours, our limbs were likewise limber,
Our throats as statuesque, our muscles moved
As mightily, our waists were just as slender.
Our voices carried, and we played as long
As sunlight lasted, heedless of the fears
Of old men whispering on twilight benches.

Day 41 | The crowd at the ball game by William Carlos Williams

The crowd at the ball game
William Carlos Williams

The crowd at the ball game

is moved uniformly

by a spirit of uselessness

which delights them—

all the exciting detail

of the chase

and the escape, the error

the flash of genius—

all to no end save beauty

the eternal—

So in detail they, the crowd,

are beautiful

for this

to be warned against

saluted and defied—

It is alive, venomous

it smiles grimly

its words cut—

The flashy female with her

mother, gets it—

The Jew gets it straight— it

is deadly, terrifying—

It is the Inquisition, the

Revolution

It is beauty itself

that lives

day by day in them

idly—

This is

the power of their faces

It is summer, it is the solstice

the crowd is

cheering, the crowd is laughing

in detail

permanently, seriously

without thought

Day 40 | The Baseball Players by Donald Hall

Day 38 | The Baseball Players by Donald Hall

Day 39 | Clothespins by Stuart Dybek

Day 39 | Clothespins by Stuart Dybek

Day 38 | Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt by David Bottoms

Day 81 | Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt by David Bottoms

Day 41 | Baseball and Classicism by Tom Clark

Baseball and Classicism
Tom Clark

Every day I peruse the box scores for hours   

Sometimes I wonder why I do it

Since I am not going to take a test on it   

And no one is going to give me money

 

The pleasure’s something like that of codes   

Of deciphering an ancient alphabet say   

So as brightly to picturize Eurydice

In the Elysian Fields on her perfect day

 

The day she went 5 for 5 against Vic Raschi

Day 40 | Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt by David Bottoms

Day 81 | Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt by David Bottoms.

Day 39 | Clothespins by Stuart Dybek

Clothespins
Stuart Dybek

I once hit clothespins

for the Chicago Cubs.

I’d go out after supper

when the wash was in

and collect clothespins

from under four stories

of clothesline.

A swing-and-a-miss

was a strike-out;

the garage roof, Willie Mays,

pounding his mitt

under a pop fly.

Bushes, a double,

off the fence, triple,

and over, home run.

The bleachers roared.

I was all they ever needed for the flag.

New records every game—

once, 10 homers in a row!

But sometimes I’d tag them

so hard they’d explode,

legs flying apart in midair,

pieces spinning crazily

in all directions.

Foul Ball! What else

could I call it?

The bat was real.

Day 38 | The Baseball Players by Donald Hall

The Baseball Players
Donald Hall

Against the bright
grass the white-knickered
players tense, seize,
and attend. A moment
ago, outfielders
and infielders adjusted
their clothing, glanced
at the sun and settled
forward, hands on knees;
the pitcher walked back
of the hill, established
his cap and returned;
the catcher twitched
a forefinger; the batter
rotated his bat
in a slow circle. But now
they pause: wary,
exact, suspended while
abiding moonrise
lightens the angel
of the overgrown
garden, and Walter Blake
Adams, who died
at fourteen, waits
under the footbridge.

Day 81 | Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt by David Bottoms

Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt
David Bottoms 

On the rough diamond,
the hand-cut field below the dog lot and barn,
we rehearsed the strict technique
of bunting. I watched from the infield,
the mound, the backstop
as your left hand climbed the bat, your legs
and shoulders squared toward the pitcher.
You could drop it like a seed
down either base line. I admired your style,
but not enough to take my eyes off the bank
that served as our center-field fence.

Years passed, three leagues of organized ball,
no few lives. I could homer
into the left-field lot of Carmichael Motors,
and still you stressed the same technique,
the crouch and spring, the lead arm absorbing
just enough impact. That whole tiresome pitch
about basics never changing,
and I never learned what you were laying down.

Like a hand brushed across the bill of a cap,
let this be the sign
I’m getting a grip on the sacrifice.