It’s the time of the year
when baseball experts
come out of the woodwork,
dust off their crystal balls,
and pontificate on
what teams will place where.
They dutifully consult all kinds of metrics
to forecast winners and losers in each division.
But the Gods of Baseball mischievously
have other plans in mind.
They decide who gets hurt,
who has a hot streak,
who has punched his ticket to the show.
How fruitless it is to predict
who will win, who will lose,
who will make the play
that will change the course of one’s life.
Ah, the vagaries, the unknowns
that make it impossible to forecast
the bounces in baseball, the bounces in life.
THE POETRY OF THE GAME