Baseball is my favorite sport to watch. I don't relate to the players as well now that I've reached the age many of them wash up and retire, but I'll always remember watching games with my father, dating back to before I could talk. Here's one of my first published poems, from Lynx Eye:
First Memory of Watching Baseball with Your Father
Downstairs after church and Star Trek
Saturday nights you watched the Yankees
from the wicker chair with the yellow cushion.
There was a remote, but you liked to
hunker close to the big Zenith,
Open the panel, and push TINT;
turn Reggie's skin from brown to yellow-green
until your father sighed.
You knew the players by number, but
didn't know why they got traded.
Couldn't tell fair from foul,
balls from strikes, but you listened
for Phil Rizzuto's “Holy Cows”.
By the middle innings,
you were back in his lap,
Smelling the plateful of peanut shells,
beer from the bottle in his hand
or maybe his breath.
You took sips, bringing out
the must in the room.
No windows, no clock in the den,
telling time by the inning.
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