They built the thing in the wrong **** direction, you know.
The “sun field” being home plate, and come late afternoons
Every pitch a potential life-and-death experience
For hitter and catcher alike
(One young Mets farmhand, in a fit of sheer exasperation,
Actually came to the plate in full catcher’s garb.)
Still, it was—well, at least once a upon a time—just a short hop
From Pittsfield to The Show, and any old timer
Will gladly talk your ear off about how Kenny Brett,
Barely a year out of high school, don’t you know,
Went straight from here to The Impossible Dream
(Though Kenny, so improbably young in all their memories
Is long since dead now, gone like the boom-times
Before GE shut down,
Leaving nothing behind but poisons in the Housantonic.)
That is all memory, though, the park’s fortunes
Fading hand-in-hand with the city’s,
Inhabited by low-level minor league clubs
Where one player a summer
Might get his Crash Davis moment in the sun,
And later indie-league teams with kids and hangers-on,
All barely good enough to dream.
Now there is only a summer league for low-ceiling college kids,
The old wooden grandstand,
Still standing out of some implausible stubbornness
(Last living World War One veteran,
Some local lifer will invariably say, cackling and spitting
Though their ranks thinned each year
By the siren song of trailer parks in Orlando and hip fractures)
Now dotted with a group of locals,
Quirky minor-league aficionados and a cluster of area scouts,
Who, on the odd occasion of something noteworthy on the field,
Will make a show of pulling out a stopwatch or radar gun
(Though they are aware they are here
With the lowest-common-denominator expectations,
Looking for organizational types,
Middle relievers and fifth outfielders to fill out rosters)
But most of the time, they simply huddle together
Talk quietly,speaking in inaudible tones
The words of some dead and inscrutable language.
