Hardball

Hardball

By Robert Savino

It was 1951, his rookie year.
The Yankees won the World Series.
Raschi, Sain and Allie Reynolds pitched.
Yogi was behind the plate.
Joe D, the Mick and the Marine roamed the outfield;
Rizzuto, Martin, Maze and McDougald in the infield.

In 1955, he led infielders in double plays.
The Yankees lost the World Series to Dem Bums.
Whitey, Larsen and Bullet Bob Turley pitched.
Yogi was behind the plate.
Mick, the Marine and Ellie Howard roamed the outfield;
Rizzuto, Martin, Moose and McDougald in the infield.

In 1955, Herb Score was in his rookie year,
a Cleveland Indian All-Star and in ’56
a twenty game winner leading the league in strikeouts.
Then it happened . . . Gil McDougald at bat.
A line drive too fast to field hits Score in the face,
dropping him to the mound in a face full of blood.

The crowd silenced and McDougald became inconsolable.
The next season, Score struggled to find the right motion.
McDougald played backup to Richardson, Kubek & Boyer.

Unlike Thompson’s shot heard ‘round the world,
the diamond sparkled less, the scoreboard less bright,
in the absence of two illustrious stars.

Robert Savino, Suffolk County Poet Laureate 2015-2017, is a native Long Island poet, Board Member at the Walt Whitman Birthplace and Long Island Poetry & Literature Repository Center; and winner of the 2008 Oberon Poetry Prize. Robert is co-editor of two bilingual collections of Italian Americans Poets, No Distance Between Us. His books include fireballs of an illuminated scarecrow, Inside a Turtle Shell and I’m Not the Only One Here. He currently enjoys his role as poetry mentor.