Shortstop Stepping into Fire

Shortstop Stepping into Fire

By Michael Gaspeny

Last regular season game, 1980: Detroit
at Yankee Stadium; meaningless encounter.
But Alan Trammel takes extra infield practice,
Tiger teammates lounging in the dugout. 
A coach lashes hot shots on one hop at his feet.
Using both hands, Tram snags the ball,
strides, and sidearms throws to first.
The space between him and the hop closes.
 
Instead of backing up, he steps knees-bent
into the blurs whizzing at his crotch, 
knowing a bad bounce can inhibit marital bliss
or shatter your teeth. He recalls the scorcher
that struck Kubek’s throat in the ’60 Series,
cursing the Yanks. He might get just three shots
that wicked during a 162-game season, this one
ending in three hours. Still he gloves ball after ball.
 
In my fantasy from the stands, a fireman
wades into spraying flames; a monk edges
toward a creeping tank. You can’t hide
in the field. The ball always finds you.

Michael Gaspeny’s novel Postcard from the Delta will appear next fall from The Livingston Press. His chapbooks include The Tyranny of Questions, a novella in verse(Unicorn Press), Re-Write Men, and Vocation. Gaspeny has won the Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition and the O. Henry Festival Short Story Contest. For hospice service, he has received the North Carolina Governor’s Award for Volunteer Excellence.

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