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John F McCullagh Oct 2012
Jackie Robinson is exalted
as the first Black man to play,
but far fewer fans remember Glenn Burke,
the first ballplayer openly gay.

Like Jackie, he played for the Dodgers-
(different coast and a different time.)
Glenn came up to the Majors
In the summer of 79’

Burke was strong and tall and fast
And some teammates called him “ King Kong”
Though he roomed with Reggie Smith on the road
most nights Reggie Smith slept alone.

Burke befriended Young Tommy Lasorda
which was why he was traded away.
Old Lasorda couldn’t deal with the rumors,
Nor acknowledge his own son was gay.

Glenn Burke rode the pines while in Oakland
Billy Martin never gave him much chance
When Burke injured his leg in Spring Training
That ended his time at the dance.

He drifted, his playing days over,
He used, he stole and did time.
An accident left him a *******
Unprotected *** ended his line.

No shock was the A.I.D.s diagnosis-
His sister had long known he was gay.
When she took him in he was dying
when all others turned him away.

Sandy Alderson, with the Athletics,
took pity on Burke in despair.
The team paid for his A.I.D.S. medication
and covered the cost of his care.

Sad is the fate of the Athlete unsung,
dying apart from his team.
Glenn Burke showed that a gay man could play,
That a Gay Athlete also can dream.

Glenn Burke passed a long time ago
But his story deserves to be told.
He said when your suffering, dying of A.I.D.S.
Even days in the summer are cold.
( Glenn Burke was a fourth outfielder for the Dodgers and the Oakland Athletics in 1979-1981. He was also a star basketball player while in High School. Like Martina Navratilova, he acknowledged his homosexuality while still playing.
Glenn Burke's number will never be retired and there will never be a "Glenn Burke Day". I thought his story was an interesting piece of Americana that deserved to be told.)
LET it go on; let the love of this hour be poured out till all the answers are made, the last dollar spent and the last blood gone.
  
Time runs with an ax and a hammer, time slides down the hallways with a pass-key and a master-key, and time gets by, time wins.
  
Let the love of this hour go on; let all the oaths and children and people of this love be clean as a washed stone under a waterfall in the sun.
  
Time is a young man with ballplayer legs, time runs a winning race against life and the clocks, time tickles with rust and spots.
  
Let love go on; the heartbeats are measured out with a measuring glass, so many apiece to gamble with, to use and spend and reckon; let love go on.
Max Reinhart Oct 2012
There's a room somewhere,
locked fast behind an unassuming door
looming grey-brown at the end of a
misshapen corridor.

Inside, the relics of a time lost in time
to time.

A mitt, engraved with the counterfeit signature
of a ballplayer whose name once rang a bell,
smelling of adolescent sweat,
still dusted with sandlot crumbs,
a reminder of those ground *****
that sped by too fast to field,
those fly ***** just out of reach,
suspended in a June twilight
lost to time.

Ribbons and awards and certificates,
signed by leaders of puny regimes
paved and repaved over,
proof of a world before this,
an era of (now) perceived achievement,
legitimized, glorified by Old English type
printed on recyclable stock paper.

Ticket stubs from blockbuster flops,
receipts of a linear plotline:
Drama, comedy, a budding romance -
Temporarily amusing on such a spacious screen
but ultimately unfulfilling;
the plot peters towards the end.

Lost in time the boy cries out
with no one left to answer but the man
who, as quietly as he entered it,
exits the room,
as always, leaving the door just ajar,
enough to muffle the shrieks of a little boy
chasing an invisible horizon.
Barton D Smock Jul 2014
get yourself hired
being sad
for my wife.

that you’ll report
to no one
is our
secret.

I’m horrible with nicknames.

I’m horrible with a mammoth
white dog
not called

snow-fort.

send balled-up
paper
animals and planes
into a felled
by father

flooded
treehouse.

get yourself on video
being sad, or taking
a ball
from a ballplayer.

be my wife
in spirit, be

grief and the cloak
grief

is not.

get thee to silent
fireworks
above a tipped
canoe.
Phil Lindsey Feb 2015
“If  I could only paint,” the despondent poet said,
“If  I could only paint, I would surely knock’em dead.
Like Rembrandt or Picasso, like Whistler or Van Gogh.
I’d open up a gallery, and everyone  would see
The pictures that I’d painted and they would envy me!”

“If I could write a novel,” the painter empathized.
“If I could write a novel, then I’d have realized,
My dream to be like Hemingway, Faulkner or Thoreau.
I’d be in all the book stores, my books would be top shelf,
And I would finally know that I’d made something of myself.”

“If I could hit a baseball,” the author next agreed,
“If I could hit a baseball, I’d be in the major league.
I’d hit home runs like Willie Mays, and run like Shoeless Joe.
The fans would come to all the parks to see me lead the team,
The kids would want my autograph, and all the crowd would scream.”

“If I was smart,” the ballplayer said, “And studied law in school,”
“Then I could be the President, and I’d make all the rules.
I’d be as great as Washington, FDR, and Honest Abe.
I would meet with foreign diplomats, and help the world find peace,
All America would know my name; Play ‘Hail to the Chief’”

“If I could write a poem,” the President bowed his head,
“If I could write a poem, my ego would be fed.
I’d describe the beauty of a flower, and the winds that softly blow;
I’d keep my poems in a journal, let no one ever see,
And be content in knowing that I had done it just for me.”
pwl 3/7/03
Wk kortas Jul 2020
It is, in its own fashion, a ballpark—there are dugouts,
(Though more kin to lean-tos if the truth be told)
A fence with advertisements, though its paint is cracked and faded,
And some of those firms testifying
To being tops in collars and canned foods
Have long since changed names or flat-out gone under,
But a ballpark nonetheless, and if you squint your eyes
Or find some other convenient method of self-delusion,
You can convince yourself it is a rather fine thing,
Happily oblivious to the fact that the infield
Is all bumps and tiny moraines
Covered with crownvetch and chickweed masquerading as grass,
The outfield rife with bark scorpions
Who frequently wander inside the lines.
Milling about this somewhat-short-of-pastoral greenish patch,
Wearing uniforms of a reasonable homogeny,
Is a curious, potentially combustible group of men:
Honest-to-goodness big leaguers whose off-field proclivities
Led Judge Landis to excuse them further participation,
Rope-muscled miners from Bisbee,
Carbide-lamp helmets tucked under their arms,
Callow boys taking a chance on this decidedly last-chance town,
One or two others with tangibly acute reasons
For staying in close proximity to the Mexican border.
Holding court in the midst of this collection
Is a man whose face was not visited by the smallpox
As much as it was wrapped up in its full embrace;
It’s old Charlie Comiskey who should be in jail, he grumbles
Man has more money’n he’ll ever need,
Hell, more than Stoneham or Ruppert.
No reason in the world he couldn’t pay his boys a fair wage,
But he treated ‘em like dogs, and if you starve it long enough,
Why, even the most loyal dog will turn on a man,
Ain’t that right boys
?, and a pair of his listeners,
Men named Chick and Swede
Who know of Comiskey’s parsimony first-hand,
Grimly nod their heads in agreement.
The speaker pauses for a moment, and as he does
He produces, seemingly from nowhere, a hip flask
(Brought forth like a seasoned magician
Pulling flowers from some gauzy handkerchief,
Or a card sharp finding an extra king in the very air itself)
And takes a long draught before continuing.
Look, I love this game--hell, no man loves it more
But it’s still just a **** game,
Just entertainment, like a circus or a rodeo.
Maybe we a took a few liberties with a game here and there,
But, you know, I knew folks who’d see the same Broadway show
Three, maybe even four times;
They knew how it would turn out, I reckon,
But it didn’t keep them from spending four bucks a ticket.
Well, what’s a ballplayer but an entertainer?
We still put on a good show, and no one gets hurt,
But because it’s a ballgame, you’d think we’d spit on the cross
.
With this, the circle breaks up, and men head to spots on the field
To field lazy fungoes and toss the ball around the infield,
And most of the on-lookers soon head back toward town
(Perhaps back to work at one of the smelters,
Their stacks blowing forlorn clouds into otherwise endless skies,
Or maybe to one of the sad houses on the far side of town
Where haunted-eyed Mexican ****** mechanically light candles
In supplication to saints whose efficacy they’ve come to doubt)
But the stragglers who stay behind are treated to the first baseman
Make a marvelous, almost magical, pickup of a short-hop throw
With the easy nonchalant brilliance which at one time
Brought hundreds, no thousands, of men to their feet in disbelief,
And as he sweeps his glove upward, he laughs
(Though with just a touch of restraint, a trace of the rehearsed)
And says See, boys? Once you are big league,
You are always big league
.
alifeissixtofiveunlessyoujiggletheodds

— The End —