Though pitching both ends of a doubleheader
proved its aptness in another way,
my nickname, Iron Man, came from working
in a foundry in the offseason
And I earned the nickname in another way as well,
pitching many more years in the minors
and winning almost two hundred games there
after my major league career was over,
a baseball nomad from Newark to Tacoma
and many places in between
Even in the majors I had always
used my head more than my arm to get hitters out,
so lasting that long wasn’t as difficult as it may seem
I owned some of those minor-league teams:
financial success was rare
Once I stopped pitching, in my mid-fifties,
death followed a few years later