Homage to Vada Pinson with an Ode to a Connersville Torch
Homage to Vada Pinson with an Ode to a Connersville Torch
After “Homage to Willie Mays” by Larry Levis
Michael Brockley
As a boy, I went to baseball games at Crosley Field once or twice a year. Usually to a double-header with the News-Examiner excursion in late July. I had a crush on Patti Jo Castile then but wouldn’t kiss a girl until the Rascals released their greatest hits during the last summer Vada Pinson played for the Reds. I wrote wretched rhymes I typed on my mother’s Royal. All while crossing out misspelled words with the letter x. I bought Topps baseball cards at Schlichte’s Grocery with my fingers crossed for the most recent Vada Pinson. The best centerfielder in baseball after Willie Mays, according to the Say Hey Kid himself. At the games, sitting beside my best friend, Marty Meehan, I rooted for a Pinson highlight, a combination of power and speed, a triple or a bunt single followed by a delayed steal of second base. He sprinted to first base faster than I imagined I could run in a new pair of Keds. Mercury, the Roman god of messages and tricks, in cleats, smooth and pure as a trumpet riff. Patti Jo never knew about my infatuations, about the schoolboy rhymes I wasted on my mother’s typewriter papers. Patti Jo turned up on a Whereabouts Unknown list for my tenth high school reunion. Vanished into a nation of bellbottom jeans and Civil War reenactments. The Reds traded Pinson to the Cardinals for Bobby Tolan on the cusp of the Big Red Machine’s emergence. Today I keep the centerfielder’s bobblehead on a shelf with the baseball novels I’ve read or intend to read. With my stubborn belief that my idol deserves a Hall of Fame plaque. Patti Jo sat behind me for one day in World History class our sophomore year. Until my mother asked the teacher to seat me in the front row due to frequent ear infections. If we were sitting together today in Kunkel’s Drive-In diner, what tune would Patti Jo, Vada, and I choose from the Wurlitzer?
Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His poems have appeared in Unbroken, The Thieving Magpie, and Last Stanza, and the Indianapolis Anthology. Brockley is a lifelong baseball fan who has, in particular, followed the Cincinnati Reds since his childhood.
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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