TEDDIE BOY

Nothing can grab this old soldier as much as seeing
Teddie Boy, pilot, warrior, hitter, stealing the thunder
of the All-Star Game, Fenway Park, the year 2000,
and recalling with vivid clarity of a mind-set that can
never move, the day, the hour, the temperature, the way
the sun slashed into a whitened valley in Korea in 1951,
and the artillery’s Forward Observer, in a hole with me,
saying of the Marine flight strafing over us, out in front
of us, bugging down the valley only after every round of
ammunition was spent,“That’s Ted Williams and his gang.”