According to Chris Rock,
basketball and football are “cool,”
and baseball decidedly is not.
The sport I grew up with
is now an old man’s game,
played and watched by old white men.
Baseball is old-fashioned, he argues,
and has as much buzz
as the green field it’s played on.
May I suggest that, perhaps,
he and the sports he champions
are too fast, too frenetic,
governed by a clock to the exact second.
I have little to do with acrobatic dunks,
and end zone dances that are
physically impossible for me.
I am perfectly comfortable with the
leisurely, even rural pace of nine innings.
Baseball may be uncool for urban hip-hop life today,
but I will vote with my remote,
and occasional ticket purchase,
for the slow, unhurried dance ballet
that is the game I love.
THE POETRY OF THE GAME