May 8, 1957

May 8, 1957

By Bob Meszaros

With my fingertips, I gently trace the make 
and model number seared into the heel; 
        listen 
as the cowhide lacing and the webbing stretch.
 
The fingers of my left hand splayed,
I slip my hand inside the leather glove
and pound the pocket with my other fist.
 
I am twelve years old, today. 
 
Tonight, I’ll wrap my belt around 
the folded glove and cinch a baseball deep 
into the letters of Gil McDougald’s name,
 
to shape the pocket to my hand,
to make his baseball glove my own,
 
while racked with guilt—hour by hour 
the silence closing in—McDougald waits
for Herb Score’s vision to return.*

*On May 7, 1957, McDougald hit a line drive that struck pitcher Herb Score in the right eye. Following the game, McDougald, who was losing his hearing at the time, said that if Score lost sight in his right eye he would quit the game of baseball. Score regained his sight and resumed pitching late in the 1958 season.

Bob Meszaros taught English at Hamden High School in Hamden, Connecticut, for thirty-two years. He retired from high school teaching in June of 1999. During the ’70s and ’80s his poems appeared in a number of literary journals such as En Passant and Voices International. In the year 2000 he began teaching part-time at Quinnipiac University, and he once again began to submit his work for publication. His poems have appeared in The Connecticut Review, Main Street Rag, Tar River Poetry, Concho  River Review, The Courtship of the Winds, The Hungry Chimera, Naugatuck River Review, The Courtship of the Winds and other literary journals. He has fully retired from teaching and is now preoccupied with his poetry and his three grandchildren.