Baseball Poem

THERE WAS A BALL GAME SOMEWHERE 

   by Tim Peeler

Before video parlors, PCs and
Nintendo, on our ragged bicycles
We scrambled to one house or the other—
Hefners, Peelers, then the Swansons who moved
In the neighborhood, sometimes the Coffeys
From church, or the Swansons' friends from their church -
For the really big affairs with full teams,
Baseball games with football scores. Out in the heat
Most of the day, just breaking for lunchtime—
Easy pitches and little guys taking
Big cuts, ghost runners and no catcher, weird
Rules like ground rule doubles for balls driven
Into the short cow pasture fence in left
Or how to play a pop fly that rolled off
The eight-sided parsonage roof or smacked
The huge oak trees in center field or the
Maple in right-center.
Barefoot sometimes, always in shorts only,
Crew cuts and popsicle stains on our mouths—
Before Play Station and VCRs there
Was a baseball game somewhere in dust and
Sweltering heat, a game to be played by
 Our rules only. 

--- with the permission of the author, from his
book of baseball poetry:
“Waiting for Godot's First Pitch”
   More Poems from Baseball
available from Amazon or direct from the publisher at: www.mcfarlandpub.com