This work is a three-part collection of baseball poems.
Part One, entitled "Baseball Snapshots," has 114 short, untitled poems
written in free verse that provide images of "baseball moments" on and off
the playing field. Part Two, "A Baseball Potpourri," features 27 longer,
titled poems with all but one written in free verse. Many of the poems found
in the second part tell stories about particular baseball events in the
lives of a variety of fictional people. Part Three, "A Rhymed Registry:
Player Clerihews," is a compilation of 288 clerihews written about players
from the past hundred years. Each of the three parts have an introduction.
Sample poems from Dancing on the Basepaths:
From Part One:
on wrinkled
baseball cards
chiseled faces
stay forever
the big roundhouse
curved
so many
minor leaguers
toward
home
those World Series
afternoons:
the best
high school lessons
took a back seat
to the whispered urgency
of October
radios
From Part Two:
Marking the Lines
A thousand times he tied the string
between third base and home, first base
and home, filled the roller with lime
and walked the chalkline. He never took sides.
Never took into account which team
had the better bunters, the fastest runners,
the slickest-fielding third baseman.
He rolled the chalk, thick and white, solid lines
so the umpires had no excuse,
so the fans had a clear view.
Then he moved into left field, walking
in a steady line. Eyes fixed on the foul pole,
he used no string, yet walked straight as any string
until the base line rose in an extension of itself
all the way to the fence, an easy task for the ump
to call "fair" or "foul" -- nothing left to chance.
He went to right field and did the same.
A thousand games, maybe more. He had,
more than any of us, a sense of right and wrong,
and he shared it for all to see. When he died,
his widow and son stayed at the cemetery
long after the others had left. In the silence
following the tears, the son opened the car turnk,
pulled out the roller, the sack of white lime.
He used no string, but the white lines
marking the four sides of his father's grave
were solid lines, straight and true, leaving
nothing to chance, making certain that all fans
who might stop by would have a clear view.
From Part Three:
These poems are all Clerihew. A Clerihew is a
four line rhymed poem with no definite meter. It consists of two
couplets. The first line of the poem ends with the player's name. The
four lines should make some significant observation about the player or
reveal something about his career.
Warren Spahn:
Filet mignon
Of pitchers -- rare
Now Pete Rose
Knows
The Hall of Fame
Is not merely a numbers game.
Gaylord Perry:
Sneaky? Very.
The so-called spitter. Did he throw it?
Some think so. Some know it.
What did Boston fans do when Bucky Dent
Went
Deep?
Weep.
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