A Stadium Address

A Stadium Address

By Jessica Gregg

Photo by Keith Allison from Hanover, MD, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons, adapted by Scott Bolohan

Baseball is aware of the allegations
            and unseals this arguendo:
 
Respect and good faith—an
otherwise perfect record of reasonable
expectation—have no relevance, as alleged.
 
We punish witnesses, effectively
deciding they are a non-party,
collateral contradicted, potentially adverse.
 
They err on the side of caution
dismissing
  denying
            repleading our integrity.
 
It’s exceeding unfair, our frivolous
misconduct. Our dismissal.
Yet they remain.
 
And affirm.
 
Such presumption! A clear error—
and an extremely weak one.
 
Revealed, we release the non-party,
at our discretion, as irrelevant
and uninvolved in this exercise.
 
Disclosed, but barely mentioned.
 
Source: “The Yankees Letter Should Remain Under Seal,”
Major League Baseball brief filed in U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Second Circuit, Sept. 16, 2020; pages 63-68.

Jessica Gregg is a Baltimore-based poet whose work has appeared in The Under Review, Delmarva Review, and Broadkill Review, among other publications. She also is a board member of Yellow Arrow Publishing, which aims to increase literary opportunities for women writers. She is the mother of two young adults, a lifelong Orioles fan, and a veteran spectator of many a Sunday travel league doubleheader.

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