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Showing results for April, 2017

April 30, 2017 |

Three Strikes

Anthony Michael Morena

1.  It is 1994 and baseball is on strike so I will not see the first place Yankees advance to the playoffs and win the World Series.

You may doubt that the Yankees would have actually won the

April 29, 2017 | Poetry

WHEN ONE MORNING I WOKE UP MISSING JOEY CARUSO, THE BEST SECONDBASEMAN I EVER PLAYED WITH. I COULDN’T SHAKE IT OFF, THIS MISSING. SO I WROTE THIS POEM

Devin Kelly

It means nothing now but it meant enough then, enough to change a life, to alter the smooth rhythmic turning of the world. 

April 29, 2017 | Fiction

Trading Heroes

Travis Kiger

“So I started collecting baseball cards.” 

April 28, 2017 | Nonfiction

The Big Inning: Game 95 // Ninth Inning, Chicago // The Cubbies Win the Pennant

Brendan Donley

What can be said about this game that hasn’t already been said about Christmas morning? Better than that. The first day of a summer break. Better than that. Evening fireworks on the 4th of July. That, too. Better than all. A graduation, an engagement, a marriage, a festival, a celebration. An outdoor fete to anything.

April 28, 2017 | Poetry

Carl Mays Kills Ray Chapman

Andrew Butler

He doesn’t have any friends and doesn’t want any.

That’s the only way Mays can pitch, 

 

because he doesn’t play the game 

of fraternity formed on summer ballfields. 

April 27, 2017 | Nonfiction

The Big Inning: Game 69 // Seventh Inning, Los Angeles // A Silent Gift, for Vin Scully

Brendan Donley

Vin Scully alone in a broadcast booth, talking by himself, talking to us. Assuring the world that all’s well in Dodgeralia. Calm. Composed. At home, in a park he’ll depart at season’s end. Handpicking his words, off endless branches, branches’ branches, in a deep memory he builds, maintains over many years, keeps polished like a jewel.

April 26, 2017 | Fiction

Swinging

Brendan J. O'Brien

Oscar kisses the child through the hard mesh fence designed for the fans’ protection.  He does not like kissing his boy through hard mesh.   

April 26, 2017 | Poetry

Batter's Box Picture

Josh Kalscheur

Me at my most beautiful. Me locked in. Me sacrifice stance.

April 25, 2017 | Fiction

Peggy Park, August 1992

Bryan Washington

Micah turned pro and the rest of us went regular. 

April 24, 2017 | Nonfiction

He Felt the Crowd Beating in His Heart: Rajai Davis & Game 7 of the 2016 World Series

Jason Koo

It is a game of beautiful pauses, pauses that take up so much of the game’s duration that calling them “pauses” seems inaccurate; the moments of action, rather, are what interrupt the long stretches of inaction.

April 22, 2017 |

Run the Jewels

Sean West

And I had to wonder while I watched the mosh-pits if these kids were even listening.

April 21, 2017 | Nonfiction

Delayed Romance

Aaron Sinner

Ten years removed from my youth baseball experience, I find myself in a car with four baseball-obsessed college buddies, headed toward the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome to see the Minnesota Twins play a mid-September game against the Detroit Tigers. I have no idea why I’m here.

April 21, 2017 | Poetry

Off The Diamond

Zebulon Huset

He could say from experience

that Babe Ruth was an asshole,

but he never said it on the field.

April 20, 2017 | Poetry

Three Poems

David Byron Queen

How fucking weird is the knuckle ball?

April 19, 2017 | Poetry

Nineteen Eighty-Four: After Charles Simic

Kyle Bilinski

That was the year Dave Kingman’s pop fly never came down at the Metrodome
Nineteen players were ejected during the Padres/Braves brawl
Angel Mike Witt threw a perfect game against the

April 18, 2017 | Poetry

Baseball Game in a Small Southern Town

M. A. Istvan Jr.

Before the nasty glances, which I sense to be for me, I shake my downcast head, grin in disappointment, and mutter “Damn.”

April 17, 2017 | Poetry

Another evening down at the ballpark

Scott Ray

While waiting in my car outside your house I counted thirteen wrinkled ticket stubs I’d tucked inside the glovebox after games
to serve as some reminder of the season so far.

April 15, 2017 |

T2: Trainspotting 2

Sean Kilpatrick

Single tear

April 15, 2017 |

Ghost in the Shell

Sean Kilpatrick

PS - Takeshi Kitano is god

April 14, 2017 | Nonfiction

Playing Baseball Mediocrely but Playing Baseball with Pure Joy

Julia Dixon Evans

I wanted to focus on the real victims, unthinkable crimes against them, but I kept coming back to those batting cages, to that uniform in Coach B's house.

April 13, 2017 | Fiction

Diversion

Geo Joseph

While he runs, you think about how long it’s been since you stepped on a baseball field. Your chest fills up with sharp fragments of Little League afternoons, standing in left field praying for something to do and dreading it at the same time

April 13, 2017 | Poetry

Baseball is a Reason

Thomas Locicero

Baseball is, if nothing else, a reason, and so it is everything:

April 10, 2017 | Fiction

Cages

Caleb Michael Sarvis

I used to bring a six pack, pound a beer between tokens, but I’m married now and I have to get home safely.

April 7, 2017 | Fiction

"Wade Boggs"

Jeremy Rice

You look like you just walked out of a punt, pass and kick contest. We gotta make you look sick."

April 6, 2017 | Poetry

Randy Bass

Brian Robert Flynn

I’m thankful for the throwaways. Like the time the Bears lost in extra innings. Randy Bass, pre-Hanshin Tigers Randy Bass, had committed an error on a routine toss to the pitcher at first. It was

April 5, 2017 | Poetry

Two Poems Poorly Translated On Baseball During Wartime

Shane Kowalski

Then something funny happened / after months of imprisonment, / handled like/ animals, less than/ animals, / they started playing baseball.

April 4, 2017 | Nonfiction

Hateball

Bud Smith

I wanted to quit, and was too young to realize that I could just quit anything.

April 3, 2017 |

Self-Portrait as Home Run Ball

John McCarthy

But I see the look on his face, the lawn sprinklers waving back and forth like paper fans, the cicadas and their dim crescendoing dirge, and the panicgrass that the boy runs back through as he realizes what fetching me will cost him.

April 2, 2017 |

Caveat Emptor, Baby

Marta Balcewicz