Barasch Tosses First Poem of Baseball Season

4/10/2015

William Howard Taft, 1910: Courtesy White House Historical Society

(This being the season of Passover and Easter and Opening Day, a time of rejuvenation of body and soul and spirit and good writing about sport, I am sharing the Charles Barasch poem about the first President to throw out the first ball on opening day.)

William Taft’s Dream

The players liked my ceremonial
pitch, so when Walter Johnson’s arm
gives out, he points, beckons me
from the stands. I hand my suitcoat
to Helen, remove my tie
and cuff links, roll up my sleeves.
An usher opens a gate, and when I step
onto the grass, for a moment
I’m confused, the crowd’s roar
surrounds me and I feel weightless,
as if lifted by an ocean surge. I’m afraid
I’ve gone down with the Titanic, but
then an urgent chant,“Big Bill,” shakes
the stadium. I wave to the throng
and ascend the mound.

Cobb has never seen pitches like mine,
the first two race past him
faster than Barney Oldfield,
and he swings over a drop-pitch,
my hummingbird. Frank Merriwell strikes out too,
and then it’s Booker T. Washington’s turn,
but W.E.B. DuBois pinch-hits, shoves him aside.
He glares as I wind up and uncoil
like a cobra, and now the pitch buzzes in
like an army airplane. He swings
and the ball sails into the sky, but I sprint
across the outfield and snag it.

Helen comes out of the dugout.
I ask her if I can stay and play baseball,
but she says no, I have to be president.
I throw my glove on the ground and follow her home.

--Charles Barasch

(Poem originally published in “Dreams of the Presidents,” by North Atlantic Books -- 43 poems, each a president’s dream. Many of Barasch's other baseball poems are in the anthology, “Baseball, I Gave You All the Best Years of My Life,” also published by North Atlantic Books.
(Barasch and I played softball a few times back on Long Island; now he teaches and writes poetry in Vermont. Two years ago, into his 60s, he played hardball against Bill Lee. Yes, that Bill Lee.
"Luckily, he threw me a fastball; his curveball is impossible for me. I blooped it over the shortstop but the left fielder, playing me appropriately shallow, caught it."
So many baseball memories end with documentable failure which is why it is such a wonderful sport for writing or reading.)

bruce

4/11/2015 03:03:49 am

George,

enjoyed this. just finished the kearns Goodwin's double bio on taft and teddy.

also, I just read your islanders' piece. we just touched on this topic recently. Nystrom was one of the favourites of any era. by the way, I covered tonelli's first junior b game in, I believe, 1972. he played for Milton against streetsville as a 15 year old minor midget aged player. streetsville, part of Mississauga now, was a flyers' like goon team. they whacked him around all game. can't believe it was 43 years ago. think my memories are right....just google tonelli. think I got it.....

George Vecsey

4/11/2015 04:43:42 am

http://www.cihlhockey.net/the-cihl-officially-welcomes-the-milton-battle-arts-cobras-into-the-league/

Bruce, John is from Milton...and now there is a JT Sports Centre there.

One of your fellow Canucistanis (Lee) made a nice reference in the Comments on nytimes.com.

My daughter Laura is covering the WWC in Canada in June. I was telling her that it would still be light after night matches in Edmonton. I remember the SC finals in 1984, when the Isles were deposed...people celebrating in daylight.
GV

bruce

4/11/2015 05:44:17 am

George,

knew he was from Milton. forgotten the centre--impressive use of 're' for centre George--was named after him. NSA has probably caught that. might be a long visit thru customs when you return home to the states next time. socialist tendencies. Edmonton is 53+N latitude so very late sunsets. we're a bit past 43N where I am and the latest sunset is a few minutes after 9. not sure which WWC acronym is appropriate.

George Vecsey

4/11/2015 06:17:00 am

Women's World Cup.
I used to point out to NYT style purists that Centre Court is a real place with a real name at Wimbledon. No use.
best
GV

Ed Martin

4/13/2015 12:28:32 pm

As Doris Kearne could tell readers, or for that matter Sandy Koufax or even the late Dixie Walker, Rockville Centre is spelled the correct way.

Ed Martin

4/13/2015 12:33:16 pm

She might prefer, however, I spell her name right--Kearns Goodwin.

George Vecsey

4/13/2015 02:19:49 pm

Ed, good point. For that matter, I had a grand time in 1971 writing about he 50th anniv. of the great college FB game between Harvard and Centre College of KY -- the Praying Colonels. Good and lovely little school, SE of Louisville. GV

bruce

4/11/2015 06:35:00 am

i'm the same way. for example, I spell pearl harboUr pearl harbor because that's the way it's actually spelled. there are some spellings that I don't understand. why do we say rome in English instead of roma? it's straightforward and not difficult to pronounce. Napoli, Milano etc. Firenze might be difficult for some so Florence or venezia for venice might make sense, but rome, naples??

George Vecsey

4/11/2015 07:20:13 am

I understand consistency. We saw FC Napoli plays in Naples. OK.
I mean, British press says "Chelsea were the better side." We saw "was." I get that. But Centre Court is an actual name. Royal National Theatre. etc.
You're right, though. My seditious talk will get me in trouble with the authorities.
GV

Altenir Silva

4/14/2015 05:22:34 am

Dear George,

Talking about baseball, I enjoyed hearing John Sterling shouting about Brian McCann (Yankees): "McCann... MacCann can!". Pretty good!

Best - Altenir Silva (from Brazil)

George Vecsey

4/14/2015 05:32:13 am

Altenir, with your good ear for English and John Sterling, here's what John called last night for the grand slam:
"Stephen Drew! How do you do?"

I bet we could Google it....

Best,
George

Altenir Silva

4/14/2015 06:20:03 am

Dear George,

I googled it and found others catchphrases of Mr. Sterling.

"Chris Young... younger than springtime! Chris... forever young!" - for Chris Young
"Stephen Drew! How do you do!" - for Stephen Drew
"You can bank on Chase. Headley is deadly!" - for Chase Headley
"Jacoby Ellsburies it! A jack by Jacoby!" - for Jacoby Ellsbury
"John Ryan sends one flyin'!" - for John Ryan Murphy
"Oh McCann can, yes McCann can!" - for Brian McCann
"Un correazo by Beltran!" - for Carlos Beltran, (Translation: "A belt by Beltran!")
(http://www.pinstripealley.com/2015/1/18/7555091/yankees-2015-new-john-sterling-home-run-calls-didi-gregorius-garrett-jones)

This year I hope to hear many "An A-bomb from A-Rod!".

Best - Altenir

George Vecsey

4/14/2015 08:51:25 am

Dear Altenir: The morning radio newscasters on WINS and WCBS like to imitate John Sterling...and did the other day with his first A-Bomb chant.
He is a piece of work.
George

Josh Rubin

4/14/2015 11:14:55 am

My dad's been quiet lately in these comments, so I thought I would intrude twice in one week. I hope no one minds. I was just thinking that any discussion of baseball and poetry ought to make mention of Phil Rizzuto.

http://blog.syracuse.com/newstracker/2007/08/the_poetry_of_phil_rizzuto.html

Gene Palumbo

4/15/2015 08:46:38 am

Fellow blog readers: it’s time for all of us to lean on George with a non-negotiable demand: from now one, he must alert us immediately when he publishes a column in the Times. I hadn’t checked recently, and just now saw that he had one last Thursday:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/11/sports/hockey/transcendent-islanders-moments-at-the-nassau-coliseum.html

Transcendent Islanders Moments at the Nassau Coliseum

I am working up a rush of nostalgia during the Islanders’ final spring at Nassau Coliseum. The Isles, who clinched a postseason berth Thursday, play their last regular-season game at the Coliseum on Saturday against the Columbus Blue Jackets.

There were so many great times in that squat, prosaic arena near the bright lights of Hempstead Turnpike.

I say the Islanders were the best team I ever covered because they had so many stars who delivered with Canadian-Swedish-suburban modesty. And they won four straight Stanley Cups from 1980 through 1983. Somehow I narrowed my favorite moments to five. . . .

George Vecsey

4/15/2015 09:51:43 am

Gene, sorry, I misunderstood, I thought you added a comment on the NYT site. Thanks for caring. I thought about tweeting about it, but didn't have the psychic energy. Gracias, amigo, GV

Alan Rubin link

4/19/2015 01:29:44 pm

The Roosevelt-Taft double bio was a remarkable read on many levels. In addition to adding to my understanding of both men, it introduced me to Ida Tarbell and the “muckrakers”.

Ida wrote for McClure’s Magazine, where she did a comprehensive expose of John D. Rockefeller. I ended up reading a book about her.

I grew up listening to Mel Allen (White Owl Wallops and Ballantine Blasts) and later Scooter’s Holy Cow’s. They were always colorful and you had a good sense of the game.

I started listening to John Sterling’s sports talk show driving home after work. I finally gave up on him and began listening to books on tape.

Josh--nice find on the Rizzuto poetry.

Yogi and Scooter were my two favorite players. It made sense that they were close friends since both had game smarts and common sense.

When Yogi dropped a foul tip that would have been the last out of Alli Reynold’s no hitter, he walked to the mound and broke baseball tradition by saying, “don’t worry, you will still get your no hitter.” It was a perfect way to break the tension.

I was sitting behind home plate looking directly down the third base line when DiMaggio and Rizzuto executed a beautiful suicide steal. As soon as Joe broke, Phil squared away waiting for the pitch. He later said that if you are going to bunt, don’t try to fool the other teams with a last second move. Proper technique was more important than surprise.

Phil and Yogi had an impact on my young baseball career. I was a bad ball hitter like Yogi and often bunted like Phil, committing early. My coaches never appreciated my comments that if it was good enough for Phil and Yogi, it was good enough for me.

George Vecsey

4/19/2015 02:48:06 pm

Alan, did you know that Rizzuto had a special bunt signal for the NYT photog, Ernie Sisto, in the days when photogs were on the field? That way, Ernie had his Graphlex pointed at the Scooter. GV

Comments are closed.

QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Barasch Tosses First Poem of Baseball Season

Categories

Buy the Book