In honor of the Pittsburgh Pirates making it into the playoffs for the first time in many years I'll re-publish two of my baseball poems. The first about seeing The Great One on my birthday in 1971, the second about the wonderful feeling of baseball on the radio.
This is the Moment
There were at least a thousand different moments that day
August 13th 1971, my thirteenth birthday.
It’s not the long line of baseball fans
on a hot afternoon
winding their way up the ramps
circling Three Rivers Stadium like a python preparing for dinner.
It’s not the grey concrete walkway
speckled and spattered with
chewing gum
cigarette butts
beer stains
and something that might have been food.
Not even the sudden rush of fans pushing together
as the clubhouse door swung open
and like baseball cards come to life,
two Pirates emerged to sign autographs.
It might have been the face
of Roberto Clemente
granite features
with blazing eyes that met my own for an eternal moment
but then
maybe not even that.
It was, however,
the feeling of my feet leaving the floor
and my father’s hands
as he lifted me above the crowd
and his voice
younger than I had ever heard
saying
“There he is!, the great one!”
That was the moment.
That is the moment.
©2011 Kevin Slick
Baseball Radio
Baseball radio
skipping across the thick summer night sky
transistor voices
painting soundscapes in dreams
gathering in a plastic dream catchers with antennas reaching to the stars
There is a static and crackle, the sound of the air itself
that fills the beautiful moments in between
the pause between pitches
when the patterns of voices and noises weave together in a blanket of sound
the bat crack,
the glove smack,
the long ball crowd roar
a tapestry of sound rising and falling like waves on the sea.
And in that aural landscape
in the slow, spacious story telling
memories, like fossils revealed breathe the summer air and live again.
Somewhere Willie is stalking the fly ball from the bat of Vic Wertz,
and somewhere Roberto is firing a cannon shot from right field to nail an
over-confident runner on the way to second,
somewhere Babe is still on deck and the game is still within our grasp
and autumn and winter are a million miles away.
©2011 Kevin Slick