This Week's Doggerel
Special Poet Laureate edition!
Hello, Bardballers! Earlier this year I realized that, over 18 seasons, we have been fortunate enough to publish 6 poet laureates. Real honest-to-god poets hired to laureate their respective domains! (While I like to think of myself as the poet laureate of groin injuries, I refrain from dropping this in polite conversation to impress culture vultures.)
Bardball’s first poet laureate was George Bowering, an accomplished writer and teacher who in 2002 was appointed the first Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada. His poem “Ferris Fain” came over the transom one day (BTW, send your own doggerel to bardball@gmail.com), and I decided to research the credentials of this Fain-atic. I was gobsmacked that Bardball had landed on the radar of someone like George. It was the first sure sign that the Norton Anthology was going to have some competition.
Below are the contributions from our poets laureate, in chronological order. Please enjoy them while I travel with my wife to ancient cities and exotic cultures this week.
November 3, 2011
Ferris Fain
by George Bowering
I’ll never see his like again,
My favourite hitter, Ferris Fain.
In London, Amsterdam and Paris,
They talk of nothing else but Ferris.
He always managed to amaze,
This handsome batsman of the A’s.
March 19, 2013
Tipping a Few with Klu
by George Bowering
Once I had a dozen brewsky
with my buddy Ted Kluszewski
Then I got completely urban
with my buddy Pedro Bourbon
Next I had a jug of rum
with my buddy big Mike Lum
But I never used the spike
with my buddy Ozark Ike.
May 21, 2014
The Good Old Days
by Dick Flavin
Whenever I need a good cry
I stop and think
Of when the Sox were on the rocks
And how they’d stink
I’d take some glee from misery
I confess
And what is worse, I miss the curse
And the stress
I see Billy Buckner bending
And all our hopes are ending.
The ball is rolling through
His legs before our gaze.
And that horrible truth
When we learned they sold Ruth
Those were the good old days.
I see Bucky Dent of all guys
The weakest of the small guys
That cheesy little homer
Floating through the haze.
And my heart is at risk
They forgot to sign Fisk
Those were the good old days.
I know it’s not pretty to wallow in pity
There’s nothing of value one can gain.
Then all of a sudden I see Don Buddin
And again I’m awash in wondrous pain
(Is everybody crying?)
I see Grady Little snoring
While Yankee runs are scoring
Pedro’s out of gas
But in the game he stays
And there’s Slaughter’s mad dash
Another late season crash
Those were the good old days
Oh I’d complain and I’d beef
But I miss the grief
Of those good old days.
Boston broadcaster Dick Flavin was considered the Poet Laureate of the Boston Red Sox, as well as their public address announcer.
October 15, 2014
Cubs Lose!
by Jim U-Boat
In honor of the 106th anniversary Tuesday of the last Cubs World Series victory.
Before you all blow
Your hard-worked-for dough
On dumb, next-year-we’ll-win theories,
I’ll remind you again
Of how long it’s been
Since the Cubs have won the World Series.
It’s 106 years!
And oceans of tears
Since Cub players were rightly called greats.
We’re now 10 decades hence,
Nineteen presidents
From our country of 47 states.
There were no CDs,
TVs, or LPs;
Eight years before stainless steel;
Reagan hadn’t been born
Of Illinois corn;
A score before the New Deal.
When the Cubs last decided
Without being chided
To win (back then they were ready),
The White House’s star
Was not FDR —
It was his ol’ cousin Teddy.
Cub fans should wean
Themselves off a team
That’s “0-for” since 1908,
But these masochists
Will always exist
While others, in turn, celebrate.
Jim U-Boat is the unofficial poet laureate of Calumet City, Illinois. He is also the executive director of the Center for Inquiry-West.
November 5, 2014
Hope of the Hot Stove League
by George Bowering
My fantasy team
gets worse and worser.
I hope I get to
draft Max Scherzer.
March 22, 2018
Fantasy Owner’s Lament
by George Bowering
Pardon me for all the bitching,
But how come I get such lousy pitching?
Every year I become a mourner
For my crappy luck at the hot corner.
My other infielders are doing fine,
If you’re a fan of the Mendoza Line.
I wish I could draft all over again,
Starting with good old Ferris Fain.
June 27, 2018
Baseball Couplet
by Donald Hall
When the tall puffy
Figure wearing number
nine starts
late for the fly ball,
laboring forward
like a lame truckhorse
startled by a gartersnake,
–this old fellow
whose body we remember
as sleek and nervous as a filly’s–
and barely catches it
in his glove’s
tip, we rise and applaud weeping:
On a green field we observe the ruin
of even the bravest
body, as Odysseus
wept to glimpse
among the shades the shadow
of Achilles.
Donald Hall was a writer, editor, literary critic and U.S. Poet Laureate in 2006.
September 19, 2022
Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt
By David Bottoms
On the rough diamond,
the hand-cut field below the dog lot and barn,
we rehearsed the strict technique
of bunting. I watched from the infield,
the mound, the backstop
as your left hand climbed the bat, your legs
and shoulders squared toward the pitcher.
You could drop it like a seed
down either base line. I admired your style,
but not enough to take my eyes off the bank
that served as our center-field fence.
Years passed, three leagues of organized ball,
no few lives. I could homer
into the left-field lot of Carmichael Motors,
and still you stressed the same technique,
the crouch and spring, the lead arm absorbing
just enough impact. That whole tiresome pitch
about basics never changing,
and I never learned what you were laying down.
Like a hand brushed across the bill of a cap,
let this be the sign
I’m getting a grip on the sacrifice.
David Bottoms was the Poet Laureate of Georgia from 2000 to 2012, as well as a professor and novelist.
February 28, 2025
Asked for a Happy Memory of Her Father, She Remembers Wrigley Field
by Beth Ann Fennelly
His drinking was different in sunshine,
as if it couldn’t be bad. Sudden, manic,
he swung into a laugh, bought me
two ice creams, said One for each hand.
Half the hot game I licked Good Humor
running down wrists. My bird mother earlier,
packing my pockets with sun block,
had hopped her warning: Be careful.
So, pinned between his knees, I held
his Old Style in both hands
while he streaked the cream on my cheeks
and slurred, My little Indian princess.
Home run: the hairy necks of men in front
jumped up, thighs torn from gummy green bleachers
to join the violent scramble. Father
held me close and said, Be careful,
be careful. But why should I be full of care
with his thick arms circling my shoulders,
with a high smiling sun, like a home run,
in the upper right-hand corner of the sky?
Beth Ann Fennelly recently served as the poet laureate of Mississippi and teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Mississippi, where she is a four-time teaching award winner. This poem appeared in her book, Open House. www.bethannfennelly.com
