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stirred deeply with joy
enthralled with the spirit
we return to Elysian fields
to live autumnal reveries

we prance once more
onto blue sky diamonds
with hometown heroes
to pitch perfect games
knock long grand slams
to honor and embrace
the semblance of siblings,
parents, lovers and friends

life's teammates
our dearest playmates
passed and still here
sustaining our spirit
filling the void of
riven hearts
with nothing more than
a smiling presence,
compliant ear
a warm embrace

keeping a
season of sunshine
alive for one more
golden day

in a resplendent moment
Measy’s youngest son
stood before me
as if it were him
five decades ago

his impish smile,
mischievous eye
and olive skin
wrinkled when
he grinned

your Old Man
was a hell
of a ball player
a great hitter
he always swung down
at the pitch, hitting
nasty line drives

I remember that
summer afternoon
when we first met on
the Washington School
Merry-Go-Round...
Measy just up
from Carolina
he spoke with
a slow Tar Heel drawl
we didn't know what
to make of him
so we made him
our friend

Sifford's Esso, B&D;
and Bulldog teammates
I marveled at his athleticism
but the thing I remember
most was the soft joviality of...

“ ah hoot,
ah hoot.
ah hoot”

his laugh would send
a soft almost *******
shudder through his body

Measy lives in me,
forever in my heart
I embraced young Roy
touched his cheek
a transcendent moment
that spans a half century

At first base
Gail “Peppermint Patty” Q
was scooping up grounders
and not letting anyone past her
without giving them a smile or a hug….
asking each player if their shirt fit right…

the way Gail played
she could start for
the Lady Gaels today...

on the mound
Moons was wearing
a Schmeds shirt
lobbing lollipops to the hitters…..
making sure everyone got on base…

at short Screwball
covering half the ground
he once did..
(never a ss but a classic junk baller,
never threw a pitch that you could hit)
but on this day his heart was filled
overflowing with the karma
of good works and his love for
Rutherford and its favorite
sons and daughters
who have gone on before….

other stars abounded on the field and off…
Noons cracked everyone up
with an endless stand-up routine
Skip walloped a few dingers
BL looked sharp in his Foster Grants
and Andy was looking good
destined for the next cover of GQ….

Coach Way gave a resounding pep talk…
the need to grow up and show up
with an attitude of gratitude will
always make one a winner
regardless of the score

in the stands I heard a hundred stories
about the prowess and foibles of departed friends…

Bay Bay’s HR smash that put Flash Cleaners
into the World Series

A cool Moose bringing the ball across
half court, driving and dumping one off to Head
for the go ahead points against Queen of Peace

Minnow ruling a territory that included Morse Ave,
Wood Street up to Chopper’s House and
half of the Washington School playground

Fic being the smallest Bulldog with the largest heart
ran over linebackers and tackled fullbacks twice his size

Weehawken Joe draining a jumper
from the top of the key to keep it close
at the Union Hill pit…

as the list of the departed was read by Gail, Pat, John and Jimmy
the depth of our loss was only exceeded by the magnitude of love
a caring community extends to one another….
Rutherford is indeed a very special place….

so many caring friends
so many good thoughts
the blessing of friendship
the grace of presence

as I turned to leave
I thought I saw
Nick and Joe
hanging with
Sweet Lou
the hog was
humming
his red bandanna
was flapping
in a rising breeze

Aaron Copland:
Our Town

Righteous Brothers
Unchained Melody

Whitney Houston:
I Will Always Love You

Oakland
Dia De Muertos
2015


Thank you Pat Francke, Jimmy Noonan, Gail Wilhelm Quinn and John Mooney for putting this beautiful event together….

My apologies for not mentioning all the beloved souls so honored at this game…..Know that all are deeply loved and equally missed…..

If anyone has a memory they would like included please add in comments section and it will be incorporated in future versions…..

Also if anyone has a list of the names would like to add that to this….

God Bless
an annual autumn softball game played in my hometown Rutherford NJ...
we gather to honor and remember passed loved ones......
Waiting4TheStop Jul 2016
Floating, my lens is set to soft-focus. Just a sense, an outline.
Held so close. But from the grounders, safely, I am out of reach.
To finally be able to feel secure is sublime.



My freedom, they shall no longer impeach .
Intentions pure .
Settled, I am finally at peace. Lightness I now know.
I have risen and found my cure
(C) 2015
Wk kortas Feb 2018
Once (not that long ago, perhaps, though we likely know better)
The summers were languid, liquid things without end
Each day fully equipped with a high sky,
The blue so all-encompassing, so all consuming,
That lazy fly ***** seemed to disappear
As if God had scooped them up like so many routine grounders.
We played, in a field long since abandoned
To crownvetch and scrub grass,
Twenty one--five points for those *****
The celestial powers had bobbled
And we were able to catch on the fly,
Three points if we took it on the hop,
One if we safely trapped it before it rolled stone dead,
And so our Julys and Augusts fluttered by,
Every bit lazy and aimless as butterflies or knuckleballs,
With the exception of the de riguer tribunals
In which the assembled debated and determined
Where bounce ended and roll began,
Where shoestring catch was reduced to single-point trap.

It all came to an end, of course;
At some point, we crossed a line
(Undelineated but firmly established nonetheless)
Where it was no longer advisable to attempt this at home,
Mere joy no longer an acceptable substitute for proficiency.
Find something else to do, kid, we were told,
And the bats went to the back of the closet,
The gloves and ***** consigned to a spot
(Where we would surely remember to find them)
Behind some canned tuna and Christmas lights,
The fastball blurring by us now,
The field a warren of subdevelopments and cul-de-sacs.

And so you’d forgotten,
Or perhaps just suppressed, the whole notion;
There were, after all, a gaggle of coupon books
With return addresses from an ever-changing confusion of banks,
Sales on pasta and milk, other fees and foundations
Politely requesting ones attention,
So you couldn’t be sure
That it was really the crack of an old thick-handled Adirondack,
Or the comforting thwick of the ball landing squarely
In the pocket of a Wilson A-2000,
Yet when you wandered to the window and peered out,
There they were, looking straight up at you,
Waving their hands like childlike Prosperos
Gesturing to reveal some fairytale glen.  
Come on back, they are saying, and you go down,
Powerless to resist, even if you had wanted to,
Returned instantly, seamlessly to a time and place
Where a shout of I got it! I got it!
Was all the prerequisite or vitae that was required,
And you are unable to bring even mock-edginess to your voice
When you insist I got that cleanly on the hop.  That’s three points.
The Great American Game is back in Florida and Arizona--not that it ever actually left.
R Aug 2013
I always knew I was different.

Although, at the time, I couldn't pinpoint it exactly–
what was I doing that was so contrary
to the behaviour of other young girls?
Surely it wasn't the way I dressed, or the way I looked;
I'd always been self conscious
but even the darkest part of me knew
that on the outside I appeared just the same
as everyone else.

No, it was none of that.

It was my thoughts, my mind, my brain.

It was my inability to form a normal friendship.

Much to my dismay,
it was always the unusual misfits who latched on to me–
with the broken families and the shrunken hearts
and the hole in their soul that I was expected to fix
but I was just as just as cracked as they were
even if I appeared whole on the surface.

And even though I longed to be one of those girls
who belonged to a circle of bubbly friends
that never had to worry about not having enough
people to play grounders or double-dutch,
I continued to clutch on to every bleeding girl
in hopes that something good would come
out of two loners being lonely together.
But the truth was that it wasn't her fault,
nor was it the next strange girl that
followed me one day at recess.
The fault was mine, just like it always was,
because deep down I knew that I was the one
who wanted them.

When I grew older,
I also grew weaker and even meeker
after friendships became broken beyond repair
and the fault was mine, just like it always was,
because I may not have been the one with the
broken family or the strange disease
but instead I suffered from a sickness of the mind
that screamed at me day after day after day.

Then finally one of those days I realized something:
I don't know how to be a friend to these people
because I never learned how to be a friend to myself.
I never learned how to take a compliment
or how to look in the mirror and say
"hey, I actually look nice today."
But my mind taught me many things,
like how to lose 15 pounds in 25 days
and giving up food just so I could weigh
90 pounds and be classified as below average
because hey, I always knew I was different.

But it didn't stop there.

High school came and I worried that I was gay
since I never felt anything when guys looked my way.
And still, to this day, I find myself chuckling
whenever I see a girl bat an eyelash
to a boy across the room
or the perfect couple caressing each other
right outside my third period class.

But I'd be lying if I said that I didn't like boys.
And the truth is that I long for love
but love to me has never been something
you get from making out in the hallways
or two people texting each other
every minute of the day
and thinking "man, this is as good as it gets."

I hadn't realized that before.
And that's why it scared me the first time I kissed a boy
and the second time and even the fiftieth time
without ever feeling anything at all.
I thought maybe I wasn't doing it right,
maybe there was some trick that I didn't know about,
or once again, maybe I just wasn't into boys.

But no.

The truth was that the fault was mine,
just like it always was,
because I decided that love for me
will never be a pretty face
or a kiss in the rain.

Love for me is a tentative smile
with cracked lips and the
faint smell of bile.
It is scars and dusty books and
long periods of silence.
It is two shattered souls with
beaten down hearts that
no longer pulse right.
But beating together as one,
they almost sound...
normal.

And maybe, on the outside,
everything will appear normal.
But I know the truth, and the truth is this:

*I have always been different, and I always will be.
Joel M Frye Mar 2015
America the Beautiful is broken
into variations, reassembled
at fifteen, while your friends played ball, tumbled
after grounders.  Met her, vows were spoken,
children came, a job to feed and shelter.
Insurance, managed risk made up your days
while music filled your nights and underlaid
a counterpoint of art and home.  She felt your
dualistic muse; the age-old tale
of starving artist held no taste for you.
Forty years of working every breath
until the night your muse's heart would fail.
You lived for years with your worst fear come true,
for you had starved your artist to his death.
Charles Ives (1874 - 1954), considered the first true American voice in classical music, creator of the tone cluster...and as an insurance agent, creator of the concept of estate planning.  Another musician who never believed in the myth of the starving artist, and a personal hero.

Every choice has a price to be paid.
Essen Dossev Mar 2017
I find myself thinking of you
with alarming frequency. For instance,
today while folding my laundry,
I caught myself thinking of you
and wondering, as I'm apt to do,
how would you fold your laundry, or
do the dishes? Do you sing
when you’re alone?


I think of you every time
when passing the street corners
where we’ve lingered
on snowy evenings, or the park
where we played grounders
in the summer. I think of you
even in places we've never been together
and a longing rises up in me
to share them with you
one day.

Even now, I am thinking
of how I am thinking of you,
which is really the same thing
as thinking of you, is it not?

And while I'm thinking of you
I think
*wouldn't it be sweet
if you were thinking of me too?
Yenson Apr 2019
Do your worst
Born with a silver spoon
still breezing around in a limo
get all I want and more and a big hard ****
do your worst
none of the lower echelons can compete
under-grounders remain under-grounders
afraid, envious, small and forever jealous and pained
do your worst
Mr E Dec 2019
Have you ever felt like the yellow light of a traffic stop?
Where you exist but only because you are neither
A failure or success story?

Please stand up my fellow middle men
Women who are average
Those who are there

I want to know there are others
Caught in the middle of existence
Whose efforts are good but not great

I feel like lukewarm water
Not too cold and not too hot
A drink that neither satisfies nor dissatisfies

Where are all the other middle grounders?
Because I'm feeling all alone these days
Where are all those caught in purgatory?

Between glory and foggy haze.

— The End —