Baseball: A Friends' Delight

Eric Glicker

Striding through the parking lot, lost among a cacophony of cars

Friend and his wife meeting me between two giant catcher's mitts

Cell phone rings; confirming my arrival; destination stadium ahead

All around swarms of folks; happy faces, "the bee's knees"—Baseball!

Angels we have heard on high, eleven tickets in the nosebleed section:

Perched atop right field; tired vendors crawling, melting ice cream…

The Rangers deep-in-the-harta-of-Disney OC take the field of dreams

Mega-state ball teams rolling; Big-Box-Bucks, sold-out crowd of 44,000;

Here goes the pitch, up comes my heart hoping for action—Go Team!

Dance the dance—get down tonight, shoot for the lights, hit it so right;

Make the fans scream, 2002 World Series, this could be our reunion;

Innings come and go; Life: a Series of transitions—fate is our umpire…

Check my messages, guess who foned? IUP folks say wishUWRhere!

Steve, Marjie…a chorus of friends, study in PA, in summer faraway...

Call to thank'em, 4 hours flight, my heart arrives first: Wishing 2Bthere!

Returning-present game…Any body score? Friend Dan signals Zippo

Go to grab some grub; want anything? Hot dog + chips=good times…

Line is long, go down a floor; stadium marketplace—beer and cheer;

Back to the seat, bearing burdens of fast food-guilty for those in need:

The Food Courtesian; "We think; Darfur don't eat"; mankind my brothers

Finally—Vlade Guerrero doubles on the outfield wall—eruptions of joy!

Back in the game: say my name; say my name, "Kotchman's Ribbie…"

We score; High-fiving my friends…Staying in first place another day

Take me out to the ball game, forget my pains, be one with the crowd!

Someone says fireworks shooting up soon...colored skies; soulful music

Whatta show—like the Fourth—we OO and AH; Upper deck's not too bad!

Why does the game gotta end? Doubleheaders are better than one shot,

The Eyes have it! Our voices second "Aye!" A bloggin' we will go!

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Bio: Eric Glicker is a community college instructor in Southern California. He has also been a high school teacher. He is currently working on his PhD. in English Composition and TESOL at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He is the Co-Chair for the Blogs, Wikis and Social Software SIG at the College Composition & Communication Conference. He recently had an article on service-learning published in CATESOL, a peer-reviewed academic journal. Eric has worked with organizations such as the Habitat for Humanity and the American Red Cross.
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The Steal

Todd Wolbers

Signal from shady dugout to first:
Finger-to-elbow-hat-chin-hat-chin-hat-tip-of-nose-eye—
The eye? The EYE! The indicator!—
Knee-and-point the green light
One extra heartbeat
Sidestep to starting block
Set

Thrower eyes The Look with a toss—
Slide back to bag
Reset

Careful shuffle to toe the edge
Lean
Dangling hands with twitching fingers attached
Eyes right then front, left then front.
The discarded hot dog wrapper ballet pauses mid-twirl,
Swiss time ticks and stops
An unfinished breath
Go

Screams scratched out by tearing wind,
Concentration and speed.
Strides catch up
As blockers close in
For the relay
Headfirst hand under
Slide

Tag down dirt sweep
Eyes wait on the dusty scrutiny
Of bloated napoleons.
Safe!

Wrigley Concourse

Patrick Somerville

Down in line in the belly
of the old stadium, waiting for a
pretzel with spiced cheese, it was the fifth inning on a June evening,
a lull, and I saw a young man, overweight,
eyes glazed with hope and beer,
shirt too tight like he thought maybe the
fat might be construed as muscle from a miracle
angle, watch a girl in another line and lean
to his friend and I heard him
say, “I’m actually just going to do it,” and then he
turned his hat around and then he
walked across the concrete to her and then he
started to talk to her and I thought: no, friend,
simple, I have seen love die early like this before:
she is too beautiful for you.

Also, behind me, two friends, one phone rang
and he answered with a boorish “What’s up?” so
close to my neck I felt the wet letters hit my skin. He
talked and closed with “Bye, baby,” and his friend said, cold and grim,
“I know you,” and he said, “What does that mean, Yoda?” and
his friend said, “Why you always be so up on all of them? You
sound corny,” and he said, “It’s always some shit with you. Don’t
ruin my night.” “Man, whatever,” the other said. “Okay, yeah. Whatever.”
The phone rang and again he answered and this time he said, “You
already got it for us, too?” like a happy kid and I felt them depart behind
me like the wind, together.

I left early in the eighth to get home and I missed a
Cubs fan charge the mound and a
comeback and
a comeback, so much, just
so I would not be something. Instead I rode the Brown
Line with tired people in the dark who had not been watching baseball.

Statistics Means Never Having to Say You’re Certain

Danielle Evans

One, the number of times you’ve been on a real
baseball field before tonight, sitting so far up in
the bleachers that with your eyes closed
you hear only the birds and the L rumble
and think this could be the beach, or
Two, the number of men on each team
so beautiful you’d marry them tonight,
no questions asked, or
Three or Four, the number of friends you made
whose names you’ve already forgotten,
or, Five, the number of dollars your friend
overtipped the server, for coming
all the way back to the ninth row
of the last section, to bring more Bud Light.

Sometimes I wish I’d been a mathematician,
the kind of person who could find order
anywhere. Instead, we’ve found a Russian,
an FBI agent, two marines and kid
from Nebraska. While row 8 gets rowdy
with each pitch, I read the television screens
like they are novels, watch the numbers flashing
across the bottom for each batter like they are not
records of the number of times the bat
connected with the ball, or the number of games
won in a season, but a complicated
all encompassing index of value, one that will
tell you not just how fast each man runs, but what it is
he dreams of getting to, at night when he is alone
with his hotel linen.

Maybe the numbers are, in the end,
total values, maybe playing any game
runs the risk of becoming nothing but numbers,
maybe your own life could be reduced to similar
calculus, if anyone cared. A happiness index:
what you are grateful for, minus what you
take for granted, divided by what you want squared.
A lifetime achievement score:
what you have won, divided by what
you deserved. A purity test:
the number of people you’ve loved,
divided by the number of times you said fuck me
and didn’t mean it. A moral aptitude test:
how often you blame Eve minus
how often you blame the serpent, divided by
how often you blame the damned apple—
which, historians say, wasn’t
an apple anyway, but probably a pomegranate,
owing to the climate. Unless, of course,
there really was an Eden
in which case geography is useless,
our maps being charts of only what we’ve known
we’ve lost. Here on this earth someone still
has to lose, take one less mark in the win column
become a slight percentage more mortal,
as soon as the floodlights dim
the rest of us must bleed home slowly,
pass the remains of crushed beer and popcorn,
become the reduction of a crowd to singular
elements of motion, accept the reduction
of ourselves by one night, one less chance
to be anything else.