قراءة كتاب Right off the Bat: Baseball Ballads

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‏اللغة: English

Right off the Bat: Baseball Ballads

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المؤلف:

Kirk William Frederick

دار النشر: Project Gutenberg

الصفحة رقم: 2

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The Old Rooter 71 “If” 73

Right Off the Bat

JOHN BOURBON, PITCHER

They tell me that Matty can pitch like a fiend,
But many long years before Matty was weaned
I was pitching to players, and good players, too,
Mike Kelley and Rusie and all the old crew.
Red Sockalexis, the Indian star,
Breitenstein, Clancy, McGill and McGarr.
Matty a pitcher? Well, yes, he may be,
But where in the world is a pitcher like me?

My name is John Bourbon, I’m old, and yet young;
I cannot keep track of the victims I’ve stung.
I’ve studied their weaknesses, humored their whims,
Muddled their eyesight and weakened their limbs,
Bloated their faces and dammed up their veins,
Rusted their joints and beclouded their brains.
Matty a pitcher? Well, yes, he may be,
But where in the world is a pitcher like me?

I have pitched to the stars of our national game,
I have pitched them to ruin and pitched them to shame.
They laughed when they faced me, so proud of their strength,
Not knowing, poor fools, I would get them at length.
I have pitched men off pinnacles scaled in long years.
I have pitched those they loved into oceans of tears.
Matty a pitcher? Well, yes, he may be,
But where in the world is a pitcher like me?

SUNDAY BASEBALL

The East Side Slashers were playing the Terrors,
Piling up hits, assists and errors;
Far from their stuffy tenement homes
That cluster thicker than honeycombs,
They ran the bases like busy bees,
Fanned by the Hudson’s cooling breeze.

Mrs. Hamilton-Marshall-Gray,
Coming from church, chanced to pass that way.
She saw the frolicking urchins there,
Their shrill cries splitting the Sabbath air.
“Mercy!” she murmured, “this must stop!”
Then promptly proceeded to call a cop;
And the cop swooped down on the luckless boys,
Stopping their frivolous Sunday joys.

Mrs. Hamilton-Marshall-Gray
Spoke to her coachman and drove away
Through beautiful parks, o’er shady roads,
Past splashing fountains and rich abodes.
Reaching her home, she was heard to say
“How awful to break the Sabbath day!”

The Slashers and Terrors, side by side,
Started their stifling subway ride
Down through the city, ever down
To the warping walls of Tenement Town.
Reaching their homes, the troublesome tots
Crept away to their shabby cots
And dreamed of the grass and the droning bees,
The pure, cool air and the waving trees,
And how they had played their baseball game
Till the Beautiful Christian Lady came.

THE BIG LEAGUE

You want to play in the Big League, boy?
I guess that you will some day,
For you’ve shown the speed the managers need
And the lightning brain (the managers’ creed),
And the heart that will bid you stay.

But when you go to the Big League, boy,
And play on the Big League grounds,
As the seasons roll you will pay the toll
From your fresh young nerves and your clean young soul,
Till your pulse less buoyantly bounds.

And you’ll learn strange things in the Big League, boy,
The cream of the good and bad;
You will come to know, in that shifting show,
The things that I learned in the long ago
When I, too, was a careless lad.

For I came to play in the Big League, boy,
And I played my string to the end.
To eyes divine where the white lights shine
I mumbled toasts over bubbling wine—
And finished minus a friend.

You want to play in the Big League, boy?
I guess that you will, some day,
And this is the prayer of an old-time player—
None was stronger and none was gayer—
God help you along your way.

THE BALLAD OF THE MINOR LEAGUER

He came here in the early Spring with all the tryout mob,
Striving to bat like Wagner and to slide (spikes first) like Cobb.
Some of the vets cried, “Bonehead!” Others remarked, “Poor zob!”

Modest as Spring’s arbutus, calm as an April dawn,
He asked for no advances though his ticker was in pawn;
He learned the law from Jawn McGraw but never called him “Jawn.”

He graced the bench until July, leading the simple life—
He wouldn’t touch a cocktail once to please a schoolmate’s wife;
The slightest hint of a “creme de mint” would cut him like a knife.

The village smith that stood beneath the spreading chestnut tree
Had nothing on this youngster in the dodging of a spree.
Others could tipple if they would—not for Recruit McGee.

Thus did the minor leaguer seek for affluence and fame—
Virtue’s its own reward at times, but oft it pulls up lame.
Now he has went back to the place from which he once had came!

BALLADE OF A SUBSTITUTE

I’ve been here nearly a season now,
Watching the regulars, day after day;
I wish some wizard would tell me how
To break right into the game and stay.
It isn’t as if I were some thick jay,
Like a lot of those clumsy “Class B” flivvers,
But I’m glued to the bench so hard that, say—
The seat of my pants is full of slivers.

McGill is a terrible lobbygow,

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