A Flick of a Bat

A Flick of a Bat

By Michael Gaspeny

Comerica Park with older son Al,
sun crisping our necks. Hot enough
to fry pigeons panting under the stands.
First-place White Sox pounding our Tigers,
cellar-dwellers. Chicago fan chants,
How low can you go?
 
How much did this trip cost?
I feel every game I ever lost.
The old humiliations never fade.
At Chesapeake Park, a bat rings
Like a hammer on an anvil
and my flat fastball soars
above the flagpole in center
and bobs in the blue bay.
 
White Sox shortstop butchers a grounder.
Our banjo hitter bloops a chalk-nicking single.
Free pass. Triple clears the bases.
A dead, chesty, gruff-lunged friend
from softball days bellows, New life!
We bat around, tie the game.
 
Bottom of ninth: Miggy Cabrera blisters a pitch—
I fly to my feet—right-field, upper-deck,
walk-off rocket ricocheting in the stands.
Braced by joy, I don’t want to leave.
The rest of the day, I see the world
through the ball glancing like a pearl
in the nosebleed seats.
 
At the motel, before we drift to sleep,
Al says, That’s the happiest I’ve ever seen you.
 
I wonder what that says about me.

Michael Gaspeny’s novel Postcard from the Delta is forthcoming from The Livingston Press. He’s the author of The Tyranny of Questions, a novella in verse(Unicorn Press) and the chapbooks Re-Write Men and Vocation. He has won the Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition. When Gaspeny was a sportswriter in Arkansas, Bob Gibson told him, “You can ask all the questions you like, but I’m not answering any of them.” At least the reporter got a brush-off instead of a shave.

Elliot Lin is a college student who spends their free time musing about sports and how they shape or reflect identity. You can find their other baseball-related illustrations here, or on Twitter @hxvphaestion and Tumblr.

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