Father and Son

Father and Son

David Arn

As a teenager his pitching could strike out men.
 
Tommy Henrich and a scout for the Yankee organization
came to my grandfather’s northern Ohio house
to see if it was true. He was offered a contract.
 
My grandfather had been gassed in France and would soon
attempt to go back to the Argonne Forest on a day when he
could not find his way to his job a few miles away.
 
My father never boarded the bus to Newark. He was hired in
the pattern shop of the steel foundry to replace my
grandfather.
 
Years later an uncle and I sat around my grandmother’s
enamel table drinking beer, eating peanut butter spread on
thick bread. He told me I should have seen the way my
father handled a baseball.
 
In a box in my grandparents’ dim basement were woolen
Crown Cola uniforms. The shirts, irritable and prickly on my
back, felt as if I was putting on an oversized garment of
destiny. I would grow into these and return the world to
proper functioning.
 
When my father developed dementia, clear days were few.
“Joe Torre was here today,” he said,
“and offered me a million-dollar signing bonus.”
“Where did you put the check?” I asked.
We laughed to the point of tears.
I gave him his pills, held his hand as he drifted off.
 
In the quiet room I sensed a crack in the heart may have
healed. In the late innings calm restored.
 
And yet sometimes on a hot afternoon
when a pitcher crumbles in a close game
I tell myself–
if only Ferdinand and his wife had lived
if only the Army had trucked in more gas masks
if only they had my father on the mound
bases would not be loaded.

David Arn is a singer-songwriter best known for his lyrical style. His music is streamed worldwide and has been featured on NPR stations, BBC Radio, and heard on Delta Airlines commercial flights. He attended Fairfield University and the University of Virginia. He has published short fiction and articles for magazines. “Father and Son” is a prose poem from This Whisper to be published in early 2027. Most of this is true. Yankee outfielder Tommy Heinrich was from his hometown of Massillon, Ohio.

Mark Mosley is a public school 7th grade math teacher. He draws baseball cards when he is not driving his son to baseball or his daughter to gymnastics. His cards can be seen on Twitter @mosley_mark, on Instagram @idrawbaseballcards, and can be purchased at https://idrawbaseballcards.bigcartel.com/

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