This Week's Doggerel

The Love Song of J. Alfred Arozarena

James Finn Garner

Jun 13, 2026

June 8, 2026

PCA Makes Giants Look Small

by Dr. Rajesh C. Oza

The wind blows random:
Giants hit seven homers
Then Pete goes yard, twice.

June 8, 2026

by George Yatchisin

“We’ll just keep the camera on sad lonely Kershaw.” – Dan Szymborski, FanGraphs chat

Don’t even turn and look.
Failure will fall as that’s what
gravity asks all of us to do.

Be as great as you are.
It’s far from your fault that
people call it a mere regular season.

And that it’s not enough to
dominate then, take others’ bats
out of their hands like Koufax.

Whose lefty legend will haunt you,
despite him doing it fast,
retiring at a mere 31, your age.

Just a loss, not any loss, another
loss. Meanwhile the snakebit Nats
suddenly have a new narrative.

Clayton, we’re sorry we force
fiction arcs on random stats. So
we’ll all cry with you tears of why.

George Yatchisin is the poet laureate of Santa Barbara.

June 9, 2026

My Dad Spoke to Me in Baseball

by Art DuBois

On a Saturday afternoon,
after returning home after the Army and Undergrad,
I would sit with my sickly and rapidly aging Dad
and watch the Red Flops,
as he often called them in the early ’80s.

We’d watch on the little TV set up in the kitchen.
He’d sit backwards on a chair and chain smoke,
and swear.
I know, an endearing image of the returning adult son and the loving dad.

Baseball was the common thread,
stitched together tight as the baseball itself
that he’d throw to me while playing catch when I was about seven years old,
with him showing off that he was ambidextrous.

And so many times, over the years,
his admonitions,
his advice,
and his love would be stated in baseball.

“Babe Ruth struck out more than a thousand times!
Get back up there!”

“Yeah you’re fast,
But you can’t steal first base!”

“Three strikes you’re out,
unless the catcher drops the ball.
Don’t drop the ball!”

“You’re only as good as your last at bat!”
“Don’t be caught looking!”

And the night before he died,
I swear he looked at me and mumbled
and I swear he said,
“It ain’t over til it’s over”
Yes, my Dad’s last words were from a Yankee.
Go figure.

Art DuBois is a 69-year-old poet from Uxbridge, Mass. He has been published in the Worcester Magazine and Shivering Mouse Art and Poetry Review, and has published a poetry and photography book entitled, Desperate Souls, Hopeful Hearts.

June 10, 2026