The Corner
Todd DeStigter
You can always talk about baseball, even to an eight year old girl
You can talk about how Tiger Stadium opened in 1912—two years before Wrigley Field—at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull
About its 440 foot center field wall—the farthest (by far, ever) in the major leagues
And that only four players in history (Harmon Killebrew in ‘62, Frank Howard in ‘68, Cecil Fielder in ‘90 and Mark McGwire in ‘97) have homered over the left field roof
You can talk about Norm Cash’s glove and Al Kaline’s bat and Denny McLain’s 30 wins in ’68 or Gibson’s homer to right in game six of the ’84 series
You can’t really talk about why you and her mom split up and left her home alone after school (That’s a corner you can’t talk your way out of) You can’t talk much about adult things that even now you don’t much understand
But she can talk about how she was the only one in her class who knew that Ty Cobb had a .367 lifetime average and about having her picture taken standing on the base of a street lamp with the stadium walls, looming and massive like the hull of a battleship, in the background
She can talk about hot chocolate at cold May night games
She can talk about how good it felt in terrace reserved with the upper deck leaning over us like a blanket
You can’t talk about lots of things
But you can always talk about baseball.
You can always talk about baseball, even to an eight year old girl
You can talk about how Tiger Stadium opened in 1912—two years before Wrigley Field—at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull
About its 440 foot center field wall—the farthest (by far, ever) in the major leagues
And that only four players in history (Harmon Killebrew in ‘62, Frank Howard in ‘68, Cecil Fielder in ‘90 and Mark McGwire in ‘97) have homered over the left field roof
You can talk about Norm Cash’s glove and Al Kaline’s bat and Denny McLain’s 30 wins in ’68 or Gibson’s homer to right in game six of the ’84 series
You can’t really talk about why you and her mom split up and left her home alone after school (That’s a corner you can’t talk your way out of) You can’t talk much about adult things that even now you don’t much understand
But she can talk about how she was the only one in her class who knew that Ty Cobb had a .367 lifetime average and about having her picture taken standing on the base of a street lamp with the stadium walls, looming and massive like the hull of a battleship, in the background
She can talk about hot chocolate at cold May night games
She can talk about how good it felt in terrace reserved with the upper deck leaning over us like a blanket
You can’t talk about lots of things
But you can always talk about baseball.
posted by Todd DeStigter @ 11:07 AM
1 Comments:
At 1:16 PM,
David Schaafsma said…
Ooh, sweet, Todd! As a lifelong Tiger fan, though one who by virtue of making Chicago his home is now more of a Sox fan/ and secondarily Cubs fan, you bring back memories. I think for one who has gone for decades as we did to a stadium, it is almost unthinkable to go to a new stadium. You talk about it in the present tense, really, or as if it is still there, as it is in our minds, always. I am sure I actually saw (or heard, via Ernie Harwell) Fielder's homer in 90, by the way.
But of course like most of the others in this collection this aint really a baseball poem, or is what the best of baseball poems often are for me: about something else far more important and harder to talk about. I listen to sports talk radio and they talk in a safe, parallel world that we all live in as we pay attention to sports. I like how in spite of (or because of) your saying that baseball is easier to talk about that you do talk in baseball nerd-stat fashion about baseball! Until you get to the hard stuff, the stuff even you couldn't talk about, until you had to. You're just like everyone in that respect, you show us. And then, here in the poem, at least, you go deeper.
Lots of pain in that one image of guilt and anguish, leaving her jome alone. . . and then the sweet moments when you didn't leave her alone, when you were her father, when you talked of baseball and other things, the terrace "blanket" and even the Ty Cobbs stats she knows as a kind of comfort. You can talk about baseball with her, sure, good father that you are, and not the other things, but somehow she knows, I'll bet. Maybe talking baseball with me was my father's way of saying things to me he didn't know how to say.
A love poem for your daughter about the limits of language, of what we can know and say. A keeper for the collection, thanks.
Post a Comment
<< Home