When
it comes to the High Holy Days of Spring
Major League Baseball Opening Day is right up there with Easter and Passover, no question about it.
Today 28 of the 30 Big League
teams will take to the field. My beloved
Chicago Cubs, the consensus pick of
sports writers and bookies as the National League Champ and World
Series favorite, will play late against the Angels in Anaheim. Take a moment to re-read the last sentence,
pick your jaw off the floor, and slap yourself hard. But it is really true! The Boys
in Blue seem to be the real deal
this year. Which makes me a happy camper.
Baseball is, of course, the perfect game, a challenge
as much to the mind as to raw at athleticism, the only game in which an individual takes on the entire
opposing team, the only game with no
clock and no tie. As such, it has always appealed to poets who understand its sublime
beauty and recognize it as an extended metaphor for life.
Here at Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout, we
have featured most of the best known baseball verse from Casey at the Bat to Tinkers
to Evers to Chance and work by such luminaries as Carl Sandburg,
Marianne Moore, and Ogden Nash. This year we are digging deeper.
 |
| William Carlos Williams. |
The first at
bat goes to one of my favorite dead
white men, William Carlos Williams, the physician
poet of Rutherford and Patterson, New Jersey.
The crowd at the
ball game
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
—William Carlos Williams
 | ||
| Band leader and lyricist Woodrow Buddy Johnson. |
On
deck is
a piece that was song lyric by Woodrow Buddy Johnson, the leader of a hip and tight eight piece jazz band in the post-World War II years. It
became the most famous of half a dozen musical salutes to Jackie Robinson in his 1949 rookie year. Johnson’s band featuring his sister Ella on
vocals had a minor hit with it, but it broke
out even stronger when Count Basie and
his big band covered it. Many who were not around or aware in ’49 will remember the song from Ken Burns’ epic documentary Baseball. It was a great, swinging jukebox hit,
but the lyrics stand on their own as poetry.
Did
You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?
Did you see Jackie
Robinson hit that ball?
It went zoomin
cross the left field wall.
Yeah boy, yes,
yes. Jackie hit that ball.
And when he
swung his bat,
the crowd went
wild,
because he
knocked that ball a solid mile.
Yeah boy, yes,
yes. Jackie hit that ball.
Satchel Paige is
mellow,
so is
Campanella,
Newcombe and
Doby, too.
But it’s a
natural fact,
when Jackie
comes to bat,
the other team
is through.
Did you see
Jackie Robinson hit that ball?
Did he hit it?
Yeah, and that ain’t all.
He stole home.
Yes, yes,
Jackie's real gone.
Did you see
Jackie Robinson hit that ball?
Did he hit it?
Yeah, and that ain’t all.
He stole home.
Yes, yes, Jackie’s
real gone.
Jackie’s is a
real gone guy.
—Woodrow Buddy Johnson
 |
| May Swenson. |
You don’t have to be male to love baseball—or to versify about
it. Marianne Moore wrote some of the
most famous baseball poetry. Women do
bring a fresh perspective to writing
about the game. May Swenson was a widely admired poet with an unusual background—she grew
up in an immigrant family that
spoke only Swedish at home and which
moved to Salt Lake City, Utah to
practice their Mormon religion. She became an editor at the influential
poetry publisher New Directions before leaving to concentrate on her own
work. The recipient of many prizes
and honors, she was Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
from 1980 until her death in 1989 at
the age of 76. In this poem she demonstrated originality of vision and an experimental flair for structure.
Analysis
of Baseball
It’s about Ball fits
the ball, mitt, but
the bat, not all
and the
mitt. the time.
Ball hits Sometimes
bat, or it ball gets hit
hits mitt. (pow) when bat
Bat doesn’t meets it,
hit ball, and sails
bat meets
it. to a place
Ball
bounces where mitt
off bat,
flies has to quit
air, or
thuds in disgrace.
ground
(dud) That’s about
or it the bases
fits mitt. loaded,
about 40,000
Bat waits fans exploded.
for ball
to mate. It’s about
Ball hates the ball,
to take
bat’s the bat,
bait. Ball the mitt,
flirts,
bat’s the bases
late, don’t and the fans.
keep the
date. It’s
done
Ball goes
in on a diamond,
(thwack) to
mitt, and
for fun.
and goes
out It’s about
(thwack)
back home,
and it’s
to mitt. about run
—May Swenson
No comments:
Post a Comment