Baseball and Poetry

Gregory Luce, who writes poems and other stuff out in Washington, DC, calls himself "Enchilada" for unknown reasons. He alerted his readers to an article about poetry and baseball, which you can enjoy here. The article has, among other things, an excerpt from Donald Hall's classic collection "Fathers Playing Catch With Sons." That book has always struck me as a little too sentimental, but I still like it.


With apologies to Bernard Malamud and W.P. Kinsella, my favorite baseball-themed literary work is Mikhail Horowitz's little gem, "Big League Poets." ** A few selections from that book appear below. I have to admit they lack something without the accompanying pictures of the poets dressed in vintage baseball uniforms. I know next to nothing about copyright and fair use and such, so have no idea if I could legally post digital copies of a couple of those illustrations here. And since our #2 son took the scanner with him to college, it's just a hypothetical question anyway.

Vladimir 'Mad Dog" Mayakovsky was an infamous hit man for the Boston Bolsheviks and a well-red Red for the Red Sox. His stentorian batting stance revolutionized the game's rhetoric. Primarily a borscht-stop, he also played extreme left field.

Gerard Manley "Hoppity" Hopkins pitched with 'sprung rhythm' for the Jersey Jesuits in their glory days. Eventually his fastball lost its wimpling wings and he was, in his own words, "pitched past pitch of grief," a leaden echo of his former self.

A centaur-fielder for the Trojan Horsemen, Homer was the father of big league poetry, inventing the epic poem and the epic clout (which still retains his name today) with one great swing of his wine-dark bat.

Richard 'Beanstalk' Brautigan was a troutfisher in America. He also pitched for the Big Sur Confederate Generals and kept the batters fishing with his spitball soaked in watermelon sugar.

As every schoolboy doubtless knows, Long John Milton pitched for Paradise, and Paradise lost.

I hope the Rockies make it a competitive series, but my loyalties are still with the Red Sox, mostly because I spent quite a bit of time in and around Boston as a kid and because of Basegirl's estimable blog.

** Copyright 1978 Mikhail Horowitz; published by City Lights books