Odes And Toads: 14 Pindaric Baseball Acrostics

 

Odes And Toads:

 

14 Pindaric Baseball Acrostics

 

 

 

 

Anarchistic, mustachioed, white-shod, swingin’

Team of my boyhood,

Hella representin’ our

Lighthearted Oaktown of summertime sun—

Erupting in cheer at Hatteberg’s shot:

Twenty fucking victories

In a row, doing what no baseball

Club has ever done before or

Since—hiring a genius, that is.

 

 

All our nightmares come true.

‘Nother real estate owner

Giving away millions to aging sluggers with

Elongated careers and neckless wonders.

Los Angeles, you wish, Anaheim.

Scioscia, too, is such an ass.

 

 

Rawhide team of too many colors, it’s

Always a slugfest in Arlington

Never a pitchers’ duel.

Game after game in gale-force winds

Eminent sluggers try to salvage

Rookie pitchers. They always

Swoon in August. It’s just too hot in that endless

parking lot they call a stadium.

 

 

God, what an awful excuse for a team:

International League rejects

And Silicon Valley tech bro fanboys—

Nonetheless losers of more World Series’

Than any other club ever, outclassed

Suburban shills; it used to take a Candlestick in the fog to find ‘em.

 

 

Dodging streetcars in LA?

Oh, dem bums is always blue

Down by the old slaughterhouse.

Goin’ west, where the SoCal sky

Enhances their unis.

Regionalism betrayed, but it’s

Still hard to sing ill of Jackie’s courageous club.

            (‘cept maybe for la Sorda—I hear he’s a jerk.)

 

 

 

Best name in baseball, it

Reminds us of our German heritage and

Eschews Wisconsin’s milk or cheese for a can;

Where Barney slides into a giant mug of it

Every time the home team homers, his

Rear-end surely sore when Hammerin’ Hank

Stepped to the plate there, those last two years.

 

 

Tin stadia were the best

I think, despite (or because of) the noise they made.

Gothic script, too, for yr logo

Engenders Baseball with tradition.

Regardless of agency,

Sometimes better things are best left alone.

 

 

Red, the commie color

Embraced by a machine of short-haired

Decent young men (‘cept for one bad flower) and Nazi-loving Marge

Schott—shame on her.

 

 

Cuddly

Underachieving

Becursed

Southside scourge.

 

 

Riled up over nuttin’

Every goddamned year

“Death to the Yankees!”

So goes the cheer,

Over-obsessed Sox fans:

Xanax and mucho Milwaukee beer.

 

 

Yeah, we had to hear way too much

About old Derek “the klutz” Jeter;

Nothing else seemed to matter for many a year.

Kinda got my goat, the worst fielding shortstop

Ever paraded around like

Elizabeth Taylor in the tabloids.

Statistics don’t lie, Joe Morgan.

 

 

Meet Mookie’s Mets

(Enclitic for Metropolitans),

The other guys in New York,

Suturing the wound of West Coast abandonment.

 

 

Now some say baseball

Actually reflects American history—

This may well be true.

I noticed that when the Expos

Outlived their Canadian welcome, the

Nat’s eschewed to become “Senators” (thrice removed)

And found a suitable national replacement.

Let’s hear it for our millennial Washingtonians; seems they know

“Senator” ’s since become an even dirtier word than...

 

 

 

            9/2015

            Florence

 

 

 

 

P.S.

 

 

Cheer for Chad,

Handiman of the

Athletics, his name so

Damn close to the

Poet who, all those many centuries ago,

Inscribed verses for athletes both

National and Barbarian, in

Demotic verse,

Eternally inspiring

Readers and poetasters alike to misread his e for an A.

 

 

 

4/17/2022

            Florence