Not Tinkers To Evers To Chance

Not Tinkers To Evers To Chance

By Gerard Sarnat

As a kid, summer Shabbeses I’d take the bus
to visit Bubbe and Zeyde in the Fairfax District
where we’d walk to corned beef lunch at Cantors
after which I’d go across the street to Gilmore Park
for an afternoon game between the Hollywood Stars
and their arch crosstown rivals the Los Angeles Angels.
 
I made my spending money for the week at a pay phone
miracle outside the stadium that with just the right
maneuver from a tap to a slam, poured out coins
like a slot machine. Inside, at first my breath
was taken away by the pastoral green, but
after recovering, all I can remember
 
was Jayne Mansfield hanging out
except when the Pacific Coast
League’s primo-est slugger
came to bat. Stout Steve
couldn’t hit the curve
so the journeyman
 
only played a relatively
short time in the majors,
of course mainly with the LA
Angels in the American League.
Sgt. Bilko of the Phil Silvers Show
allegedly got his handle from the icon.
 
But what I remember best about Steve Bilko
was during his brief stay with the Chicago Cubs.
at the original Wrigley Field when the announcer
placed him in what he hoped’d become a famous double
play combination of Ernie Banks and Gene Baker and Steve.
His name for that infamous trio was “Bingo to Bango to Bilko”.

Gerard Sarnat won San Francisco Poetry’s 2020 Contest, the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for handfuls of 2021 and previous Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published including in Buddhist Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Arkansas Review, Hamilton-Stone Review, Northampton Review, New Haven Poetry Institute, Texas Review, Vonnegut Journal, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, Monterey Poetry Review, The Los Angeles Review, and The New York Times as well as by Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Chicago and Columbia presses. He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry is a physician who’s built and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently he is devoting energy/ resources to deal with climate justice, and serves on Climate Action Now’s board. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids plus six grandsons, and is looking forward to future granddaughters. For more, visit his website.