Baseball Poem

Ball Of Bases
A Baseball Poem

by Hank Festa (Los Angeles, CA)

Oh why should the ball of bases be proud?
Like spring trainings silent and fall playoffs loud
A season-saving play, a bad ump call replay
It all belongs to the ages come Judgment Day

The measure of triumph and defeat shall thee grade
By the end of the year it counts when it's played
When the luck of the draw or the stars up above
Can erase the fatalism of the game that we love

The hopeful of eternal optimist mind
The critic, the expert and their pedant kind
The stat and the box score, the fan and the fun
Have no scores left to settle when the home team has won

The hitter who gambles, the gambler who hits
The brass-ringed hill-toppers with the glass-enclosed mitts
The famers, the gamers, the shunned and the whinning
All use the big show for father time's sand mining

The glare of the closer one out away
The stare of the slugger walked in his way
The foul of ball and pine of tar
Protect mortality's cheaters by far

The utility man whose BA is a wash
The role player riding the bench by gosh
The subbed deer-in-the-headlight sigh
Can make history in the blink of an eye

The hero who ran and stole home plate
The goat a dollar short and a day late
Every mastered moment or scenic crime
Has hit or miss a place for all time

So the common man dreams for the chance to lose
To give his life legend short of booze
So the record books balk at those who win
In cahoots with folly to make up for sin

For the watcher and the doer are halves of the same breed
One takes to greatness and the other gives it seed
We worship the same field and toss the same ball
Either with Cracker Jacks or plaques in the Hall

The teams we are rooting, our fathers would root
Through the win or the loss, our loyalty is moot
Wait until next year we'll give them a bye
As long as they win before we die

Each winter off season we confront the bitter frost
Of years and times of our lives lost
Marking the past as an innocent lot
When youth was served but October was not

Forever is a finite stat for winners
Save always for ageless 7th game sinners
Eternity is the trying that plays life's game
Effort is immortality and success is a fickle dame

Thus we know the reason why we'll never have our fill
When you watch the game hope and time stand still
The balls and strikes slow down the clock on the wall
For the chance to substitute winning for the end of it all

Beyond victory is a mindset called loss of hope
With nothing left to look forward to and no reason to cope
If tis but a metaphor for a short life cycle crowd
Then why should the ball of bases be proud?

» Hank Festa's poem, dedicated to the late Steve Bechler, is partially based on verse from "Mortality", by Scotsman William Knox (1789-1825).