(Short Stop Overs)

(Short Stop Overs)

By R. Gerry Fabian

Rogers Hornsby sits in the diner
after eking out a doubleheader win.
His team mates are ribald –
unaware of the impending Armageddon.
Hornsby is flat out pissed off.
He is a Tyrus Raymond Cobb disciple.
Perfection, in his solemn book,
was invented by baseball writers
to describe a situation
that explores relatively easy standards.
The fact that a professional player
can fail two out of three times
and still be considered successful
is a plague he cannot abide.
His knife slices the thick sirloin
with a cold, calculated wrist snap.
Fiery eyes become the juicy blood
of future routine ground balls.
He is hard and angry
and within the confines of the diamond
his attitude deplores his mother
for giving birth as easily as she did.

R. Gerry Fabian is a poet and novelist. He has published four books of his published poems, Parallels, Coming Out Of The Atlantic, Electronic Forecasts and poetry baseball book, Ball On The Mound.

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