What is wrong with this country?
Why do we elevate our sports heroes,
let them ride the train to the mountain top,
there to collect their prizes in gold, cash,
and endorsements, only to bring them
crashing down back to earth?
Who remembers heroes of past years,
in baseball, basketball, tennis,
and any other sport you can think of?
You would have to look the winners up.
And to add insult to such glorification,
we now manufacture new contests
to raise our athletes even higher.
I can’t believe I just wasted
three hours of my life watching
the Home Run Derby from Seattle
– as dull as a batting cage warmup.
The NBA has a new tourney inside
the regularly scheduled season,
another attempt to raise the
pantheon of the gods even higher.
The question becomes – how many
sports victories are really that
important or necessary in the
running marathon of history?
THE POETRY OF THE GAME