When my father was a little boy,
in the 50s, he would be dragged
to some run-down bungalow colony
high in the Catskills for the summer.
His father, an avid baseball fan,
unlike most of his fellow New Yorkers,
would root for both teams simultaneously.
In the days before 24-hour cable saturation,
my father would lug in two, huge battery-powered
Emerson radios to the screened-in porch,
and listen, with Grandpa, to Mel Allen
and Red Barber calling their respective games.
My father would happily wait for
Mickey or the Duke to smack one outta the park.
‘A Ballantine blast,’ Allen would say.
‘Here’s the pitch, swung on, belted..,’ Barber would answer.
And my father sitting at his father’s knee,
knew the world was safe for another afternoon.
THE POETRY OF THE GAME