Dear Major League Blackout
Dear Major League Blackout
By Avery Gregurich
don’t even ask. it’s not heaven. here we cannot bear live
witness to six teams in five states that are not this one, no
team to call our own, no cable to pay as mine. but who will
see all your empty seats? your odometer hot dogs? i nominate
myself to serve as spokesperson for a new collective bargaining
agreement. from now on, you cannot come to dyersville to live, to
trot costner out to throw a pitch from a movie most forgot was
ever filmed, then kill the lights on us in the surrounding zip codes.
i had to get the recap from my boss who in each arm carried his son
and his dad’s ashes through the rows in right. until you remove this
nightly cloud, major league blackout, you have left me no choice but
to take my radio that sara rescued from the all-proceeds-go-to-charity-
thrift store where she gets yelled at, bungee-strap it to similarly rescued
bicycle, put the book of bly’s greatest hits in the bottle holder, and pedal
up to the empty field where some former poet here painted “big dreams”
above the scoreboard. i’ve dialed up eight hundred a.m. and now i’m
acting out the call. i got a kombucha bottle on the mound hot enough
to spew strawberry. my baserunners vary, placeholders snagged from the
parking lot that i toss with little accuracy towards the appropriate bag. i’m
lucky it has turned out to be a pitcher’s duel. this cannot be what you want,
major league blackout! i haven’t heard an advertisement all game, too busy
clearing the basepaths of errant runners between innings. at this distance, my
behavior cannot be reconciled easily by the passing audience on the highway.
they are just like you, dearly clinging to many blue umpires when it has been
clear for some time that a replay is in order. it is getting late and i don’t know
where these lights turn on because i did not grow up here. please major league
blackout, don’t leave me alone with this radio on this field in this darkness.
there’s a runner on and i have to know how this all ends up.
Winner of the 2024 E. Ethelbert Miller Poetry Prize.
Avery Gregurich is a writer living and working in Marengo, Iowa. He was raised next to the Mississippi River, and has never strayed too far from it.
Andy Lattimer is a gay guy who lives in Southern California. He makes comics, most of which are about baseball. You can read them on his website, andylattimer.com
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