This is the first poem I ever had accepted for publication - 2003 - and it's also possibly the least deserving (a lot of competition there), and one of the longest. But it appeared in a baseball magazine - the long defunct
Elysian Fields - and the editors were baseball guys, not poetry guys. As evidence,
look at how it was presented - they screwed up every line break.
The form is an octina, which is a creature I sort of invented. Think of a sestina on steroids.
An Octina for Wally Pipp
This starts with New York Yankee Wally Pipp,
who loved each moment of each baseball game –
the grass and sweat, tobacco juice, the pitch,
the spirits that meant Wally came to play
wherever fist hit glove and ball met bat.
Broad-shouldered, tall, his voice a manly bass,
he wooed true fans from Beantown to St. Lou’,
and thrilled to hear the crowd’s ecstatic bawl
exploding as the umpire called, “PLAY BALL!”
But then a migraine’s grip felled Wally Pipp.
The coach just said,
No need for you to stew.
That big young college kid can start a game
or two. We’ll test the rookie at first base;
see how he does against a big league pitch.
The fact is that he ain’t no acrobat,
and talks just like he’s in some Broadway play –
maybe not the guy you want to play
when the pennant hangs on every ball
but, hey, they say he swings a nasty bat.
The kid dug in—he outweighed Wally Pipp –
bestrode the plate, admired a chest-high pitch,
then rocked his hips, uncocked thick wrists – HALLOO! –
a rocket ship roared wide of second base,
and skied to play a slap-bang crashing game
of tag with empty bleacher seats. The game
became the kid’s – he handled every play
at first as if he’d always owned the base,
each swing just tore the cover off the ball,
and fans began to scream his name,
Big Lou!!
He had the legs, ran bases like a big-assed bat
from second basemen’s hell, crushed every pitch—
a horsehide whip, a battleship, a pip!
And that was all she wrote for Wally Pipp,
who didn’t start another Yankee game.
He shared the bench with washed-up vets whose pitch
to him each day—
that kid needs dirty play;
piss in his shoes and hat, chop up his bat
for firewood—was the bitter rant of base
old men who’d plot a rookie’s Waterloo:
we’ll take him out and get him drunk and ball
some five buck whore—for five bucks more she’ll bawl
to all that it was rape—but Wally Pipp
already knew that greatness lived in Lou,
and wouldn’t play that sick old-timer’s game.
He praised the man who took away his base
and led the cheers for him to slug each pitch;
while tycoons, heartless as a cork-plugged bat,
had Wally quickly sold away, to play
for Cinci’ – small-town Cinci’ – where the play-
by-play announcers peddle hay, and ball-
field summer heat can scorch a wooden bat,
and that became the end of Wally Pipp.
He left to run a bar and grill; would pitch
in nights, and lift a few and talk of Lou –
how sure it was that he would make the Base-
ball Hall of Fame, an All-Star of the game,
the
Iron Horse, who never missed a game
in fourteen years. But rotten calls can play
with life, and Wally found he was off base.
He’d thought for sure that they would name a ball
park after Lou, not a disease – but Lou
fell ill. God’s scorecard marked his last at bat.
When millions mourned him on the final pitch,
the saddest man of all was Wally Pipp.
At every New York game the ghost of Lou
is said to grab a bat and try to play;
smash back a pitch, bring home the men on base,
for baseball fellowship – and Wally Pipp.