(with apologies to John Berryman)
Baseball, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the bats swing, the balls arc,
we ourselves swing and arc,
and moreover my daddy always told me
Never speak badly of base
ball because it means you’re un-
American. I conclude now I am
un—because I am heavy bored.
Free agency bores me,
player salaries bore me, especially
multi-year contracts. Even Barry Bonds bores
me, with his inevitable usurpation of Henry,
who hammered homers for the sheer joy
of rounding the bases, which bores me,
and somehow the spirit of the Babe
has taken itself and its memory considerably away
into empty stadiums or empty bottles, leaving
behind: me, homerless.