 This baseball show that the That the baseball reliquaries put together has brought some epic fans out of the woodwork And I have to say something about this Because about ten years ago when when Beirut got bombed really badly a Lot of people said we have to do something We have to do something So a friend of mine and I serene Balian and I put was trying we're trying to put together an anthology of poems for Beirut And we got like five submissions Okay, what does this have to do with baseball? I Started talking about putting together a baseball poetry reading and a Lot of people instead of saying now we have to do this a lot of people went baseball I'm not a big fan of organized sports. I just don't know. I'm not sure and then I got something like 70 Poems sent to me in the mail. So we're probably going to be doing more than two of these ultimately it is apparently a hugely unifying thing and I kind of thought it was funny now We almost got to start this baseball poetry reading with the shell Silverstein poem, but I decided against it Because I don't really want to make it into a joke. So we're gonna start really easy I do have poems written about other baseball things, but I don't want to suck up all the air Although I'm going to be doing a lot of that tonight So I thought I'd read this which is basically just a love poem to my partner It's called summer invocation and it's not quite a baseball poem Play catch with me Let's drag out the old gloves Mine a mold of decades gone version of this hand Healing percussion of a ball a rhythm a known weight and size play catch with me Sweet polished leather Conjuring afternoons out back with grandma pulling weeds the trend sister sputter of Giants games and then maybe half an hour Of toss and thud her lazy and perfect gesture the ball quick here in the midsummer hill fog Play catch with me and draw the spirits of baseball ghosts whispering possibility singing songs of grace and ungrace Surprise and striving when the day is too perfect for the usual we can fall into a whisper of baseball Float on a memory of baseball or something close Walking past the stories of seal stadium the vibrations catch me in their unfaded spectacle as we drive past Keys are from the airport along the Bay edge where candlestick bird still flock Love me in this year in season Play catch with me. I'm one of those people that my relationship to baseball was watching TV with my dad while he chain smoked cigarettes and drank a coke and flipped through Time magazine and made origami So but I wrote a poem that's Related to a game of color This is about the all Japanese-American Nisei League The difference between Baseball and sumo too bad my grandpa didn't love baseball instead of sumo But no He loved Japanese wrestling so much. He started a sumo club in Stockton Long before fat city or cage wrestling put Stockton on the he-man's map In the 1930s when the FBI was making its lists my grandpa was classified as a potentially dangerous enemy alien Arrested after Pearl Harbor because of religion Buddhism and martial arts Sumo as a martial art Can you imagine the invasion of the giant sumo tori? Coming to sit on us and for speed us huge bowls of ramen on the other side of the family my widowed grandma Could care less about sports Maybe if she had made her son play ball she could have hung on to her farm Like the the Iketas did Cuz Iketas dad was such a baseball fan that he started a Nisei League team in 1931 Those Japanese Americans were so good. They caught the eye of Vard Loomis Who was a star pitcher at Stanford for a while? He coached the team to tournament victory all up and down the West Coast When the Iketas were sent to camp Vard took care of their farm so they could return after the war Today There's no more sumo in Stockton and My grandma's farm is long gone But Iketa farms is still going strong and Vard Loomis Lane runs right alongside so the real American game It used to be that real men didn't eat quiche Real men played baseball and ate apple pie and freedom fries Baseball just hasn't been the same since they let in players from s-hole countries And even J holes that bombed P harbor Now real men Sorry now real men can't eat sushi Or burritos or falafel But we still got the all-american Frank in a bun What do you mean frankfurter is German in hamburger too Also from that P with country run by a C Clean up your language like the commander-in-chief. It's hot dog and burger the US of a is for a holes like me So this poem that I Is all about the what I know about the Negro baseball league and it's called They had their say they never wanted me to take up their space Figuring I should stay in my place Their ballpark was no place for me to be Nor for any dark-skinned savage like me They had made it clear that I was to stay Where boys of my hue were supposed to play They were the hunters I was the prey But I took up the challenge anyway and Though they didn't think that I would dare to play Still I'm not that out of the park that day Little did they think that it would go that way That I'd summon the courage sufficient to play and Though I knew I'd have the devil to pay still As to tall behind the plate that day and Despite all the odds against me that day I threw a no-hitter anyway They didn't think that I could make the play But I ran the bases with uncommon speed that day Robinson Campanella Newcombe Dolby page each in turn head is safe and When finally Given the chance to play They performed with honor and grace that day a Homer a no-hitter superior behind the plate play They accomplished all three in their own way Not for the crowds and attendance that day But for the young men who would follow their way No, not for personal fame nor glory It was for mankind's sake that they wrote their story That they summoned the grace and strength to play and Against all odds succeeded that day Yes They each succeeded in his own way and Gave a gift to humanity that day for once and for all They had their say and Mankind grew a lot that day I won't be the first person to have an existential crisis about baseball Since we moved to San Francisco My brother Dan used to meet me at least once a year to watch the Astros and the Giants play See we were in a win-win situation So we picked our seats way up in the stands right over right field for the view of the Bay For the kayakers who field the Bay balls For the proximity to the craft beer bar and for the sparseness of the crowd up there Because we are respectful and we know that no one else will be happy if the Stroh's win We're respectful. So we play the game that everybody wins My brother's lanky frame easily hides two tall boys in the inside pockets of his camping jacket We're not rich and we can rationalize because cheap beer tastes better when it costs less and somebody lets you sneak it in But we're respectful We play the game that everybody wins so we buy some craft beer for the cup and Refill with delicious swill usually around the second inning we cheer for every hit and Every run and every perfect play either way because we're in a win-win situation Me and Dan can talk for hours and when the cans are empty. I buy you fly a little brother Seagulls circle and Dan swoops into our row with a couple more classy brown beers. This ain't no dome foam Oh, no, and we quietly cheer every time anyone scores or makes a great play For us the Astros and Giants is not so much competition as ballet It's a win-win situation We play by the rules. We root root root for the home team like the song says the new home the old home Then someone Somewhere decided to move the Astros to the American League My brother keeps trying to explain the details and I still can't understand it a fog rolls into my mind a chilly willful ignorance Cold as fingers around cold beer in the cold sun on a cold day where the Astros and the Giants used to play You know, it's just not the same It's just not the same and now they play like the Rangers and the A's and it's like that's just weird like I don't even understand what that means anyway and The Astrodome has its own weather No one escapes Texas stereotypes People always interrogate my lack of Hick accent backward politics and family ranch But they never ask me about baseball. It's not in the stereotypes DNA The Astros are our team the cheap seats where dad liked to sit is in the bleachers way Way out in the depths of left field and in the gray layer of the Astrodome Where nobody liked to sit halfway up the orange rainbow The eighth wonder still wears an internal jersey Layer by layer stadium seats monochromed to match the home team except the gray layer Tickets were cheap or free for school groups scouts and such Maybe because it's failure to orange Dampened your feelings about whatever you were witnessing in the gray layer a grand slam home run earns Some applause and it occurs to you that there won't be a line for the bathroom right now as The pigeons and the grackle swirl and the wispy clouds that always form just before it rains inside Thanks y'all When I first moved here I You know came from the East Coast we're all Oriole fans Drawn up in the East Coast so I didn't have to change colors coming out of yours orange and black just kept the same clothes It was pretty nice and the old sportscaster for the Orioles was John Miller when we were listening and he and I both moved out The same year which was kind of great. So I'd get Get on my bike couldn't really afford anything still can't afford anything But I'd get on the bike and then ride down to the stick For an afternoon game Four bucks sit in the bleachers work on poems watch the home runs kind of awesome One of the best things that happened recently was you know, there's big signs at the ballpark that say like section 202 Two weeks ago, I took them all down at the ballpark and I'm gonna put them all up I really change sponsors or something, but it's something really neat about being in the ballpark By yourself just me and the other guy or just one around the baseball park. We're like, this is our place now It's kind of neat Love the Giants Didn't take long for me to love the Giants coming here so this little ode To Romo to Sergio Romo was a pitcher for the Giants He's now I think he's a ranger or something who know about Tampa Bay Ray. I don't know but Romo's Jersey hangs over the bar in San Francisco Because he was Romo. I mean he's still Romo but yo When he was Romo He was Romo Nobody remembers the red except the internet But he was killing us. In fact, the Reds were killing us Giant killers they were First round of the playoffs and they swept us at home and that guy whoever he was Was a big part of it The Giants flew off to Ohio And no one expecting a return in any meaningful way until next spring Baseball is a trap a game Masquerading is a sport where the best athletes have combinations of skills that don't necessarily Correlate me I can hit I can watch the ball Onto the bat and over the shortstop's head as an adult you're playing slow pitch but still it's a skill and I can catch anything because Probably I won't get out of the way but still The most important part of the game, which makes baseball baseball is You have to be able to throw and you would think is that someone who can hit arm strength hand-eye coordination Should through arm strength and hand-eye coordination be able to throw no I can't throw I'm no Romo The Giants took a game from the Reds and Then somehow gutted out a pitcher's duel to tie the series which left a game five to decide Which was scheduled during the day because I guess nobody thought it would go that far anyway It was overcast on a day when everyone had to work So it wasn't like anyone was home watching the game or in a pub But you could see them walking around Soma staring at their phones walking into traffic into newspaper boxes and into each other I skived off work and Stepped into the tempest to see on the big screen Sergio Romo facing this red this Big red and you were glad that it wasn't a wrestling match or a gladiatorial struggle Because the Reds arms were huge in hand-to-hand combat He could have grabbed Romo by both arms and pulled them both out of the socket and up against this guy Romo our Romo skinny Sergio only had two pitches a fastball and a slider But he can't throw the fastball Because this guy destroys fastballs So Romo throws a slider and the red monster fouls it off He throws another slider and he fouls it off Time and again slider slider time and again foul Foul and He lets some go by the miss the strike zone So now it's a full count three and two and Romo throws another slider and everyone gets nervous Will Romo lose patience will he throw the fastball will this guy crush it into Kentucky or Lake Erie or China? But he keeps it up slider foul slider foul and the world just stops All the street lights in San Francisco turn red Satellites overhead hover instead of orbit the ocean stills forgetting waves and Tides and Romo throws a slider and this guy fouls it off something had to give and in my memory It was a hundred pitches Until the red with the tree trunk arms struck out his bat carving home plate in half But the internet said Jay Bruce that was his name Popped out instead Which might in retrospect seem appropriate It was when sport turned into mind game that any chess master could understand With the implacable Romo Facing the irresistible force No words do it justice no videotape can replace that moment and Romo Romo will grow larger and larger remember when Romo cured cancer Remember when Romo won the Cold War Remember when Romo wrestled a bear and an alligator at the same time No, I Don't remember any of these things either But he did throw a slider and in that place At that time it was the best thing to do and do and do and do and do and do and do and do and do and do and do and do and and thank Lawrence, you know, he's gonna be 99 in a couple of weeks and his eyes are gone And he can't really see very well and Kim Wanted him to appear and then she suggested he had a baseball canto And that's it's really good pole a good political poem, too And uh, so I said I would do it. She asked me and I said of course, I'll do it And so I'll read that and then I'll read my own, well I'll tell you a little about it after I get done with Lawrence, is it okay? It's called the baseball canto and it's in this latest book of his called Greatest Poems. Watching baseball, sitting in the sun, eating popcorn, reading Ezra Pound and wishing one Marachal would hit a hole right through the Anglo-Saxon tradition in the first canto and demolished the barbarian invaders when the San Francisco Giants take the field and everybody stands up to the national anthem with some Irish tenors voice piped over the loudspeakers, all the players struck dead in their places and the white umpires like Irish cops in their black suits and little black caps pressed over their hearts standing straight and still like at some funeral of a Blarney bartender and all facing east as if expecting some great white hope or the founding fathers to appear on the horizon like 1066 or 1776 or all that but Willie Mays appears instead in the bottom of the first and Aurora goes up as he clouds the first one into the sun and takes off like a foot runner from Thebes. The ball is lost in the sun and maidens wail after him but he keeps running through the Anglo-Saxon epic and Tito Fuentes comes up looking like a bullfighter in his tight pants and small painted shoes and the right field bleachers go mad with chicanos and blacks and Brooklyn beer drinkers. Sweet Tito, socket to him sweet Tito and sweet Tito puts his foot in the bucket and smacks one that don't come back at all and flees around the bases like he's escaping from the United Fruit Company as the gringo dollar beats out the pound and sweet Tito beats it out like he's beating out usury out to not to mention fascism and antisemitism and Juan Marichal comes up and the chicanos bleaches go local again as Juan belts the first fastball out of sight and rounds first and keeps going and rounds second and rounds third and keeps going and hits pay dirt to the roars of the grungy populace as some nut presses the backstage panic button for the tape recorded national anthem again to save the situation but it don't stop nobody this time in their revolution round the loaded white bases in this last of the great Anglo-Saxon epics in the Territorio Libre of baseball. Do you need me to read with a microphone to do what you have to do? I have to, okay, all right. Okay, there are certain things that about baseball that I'm very proud of. I'm an old guy, you know, nobody loves me anymore, more, more, more. I'm 84, an old man of 84, 44, but I was at the Yankee stadium when Lou Gehrig made his final speech. My father took pictures of it, said there wasn't a dry eye and 61,000 people. Lou was more beloved in New York than Babe Ruth even because he was from New York and he was the only one of the Yankees at that time who was a college graduate he'd gone to Columbia. On the other hand, having come from a Jewish Italian neighborhood in the Bronx, the family, my family naturally wanted me to vote for the Detroit Tigers because Hank Greenberg was two blocks away. That's where he was born and grown up. I liked Hank Greenberg, but he wasn't the reason that I'm a Detroit Tiger fan. It was a guy who wasn't Jewish, he was a great pitcher at that time, Hal Neuhauser. By way of that, and now here's the gist of this poem, which is a piece of imagination about baseball, it was inspired by a man named Zebulon, Zeb Red, they called him Red, Eton, E-A-T-O-N. I think he was from North Carolina. And at that time in New York, talking about 1945, Joni Jasper's here, we beat the Cubs in the World Series. That's right, he did. In 45, it was known that only one man had ever hit a ball at Yankee Stadium that was hit into the upper deck of left field. That was Jimmy Foxx of Boston. Well, this pitcher named Zebulon Red Eton who was a relief pitcher for Detroit. And I couldn't go to the game that day, it had started to rain and early on and so I decided I'd listen to it on the radio. He was called in to pinch hit in the fifth inning of a game that the Tigers were playing the Yankees at Yankee Stadium. And he's a guy who hit the only other home run that was ever hit into the left field of Yankee Stadium. That's a huge shot, not merely for the length but the height of it is incredible. Anyway, it inspired me to write The Big Gothic D Arcane. It was published by Tisa Walden in Deep Forest Press. This is my only copy though, it was reprinted in the Big Fat Arcane's book of 2006 of a lot of my other long poems. But I'm going to read this now. I'll try this, I wanna get comfortable reading this. Okay, yeah, here it goes. The Big Gothic D Arcane won around my heart, sewn on my uniform, The Big Gothic D. I run from the pen and handed the ball on the mound, warm up. It's always the top of the ninth inning, two are on, there's one out, I see myself as if through a high powered lens in the bleachers, zoom in on myself from behind to put out the fire, the batter at the plate. This is how I've fallen to sleep most nights of my life. My father tongue, baseball. He led me to the Giants, the Yanks, the Black Yankees at the stadium in Jim Crow days when the Yanks were on the road. Though my team was Detroit, the Tigers and the war was raging on. All's different today. Hal Newhauser could work 30 complete games then without need of a reliever. Arms weren't money. He never threw a pitch with nothing on it. Now, 83 year old Zebbeton sits alone in the North Carolina parlor who pitched relief for Detroit in 45, his curve and all forgotten. His father taught him to throw and outside on the porch, his great grandson of five, Zebbeton III, is playing with a friend as I did with Bugsy Benowitz on a Bronx stoop, pitching a pair of dice as I did with my son, David, when he was likewise five years old. Snake eyes, a homa. Three, a triple. Four, a double. Five, a single. Six, a pop out. Seven, a strike out or double play. Eight, a fly out. Nine, a ground out or sacrifice. 10, a line out or triple play if two fives turn up with two or three runners on, 11 a walk and 12 a homer. In the ninth inning with two men on, little Zebb calls for relief. It's a twilight game. Now it's night, the lights are on. Around my heart, sewn on my uniform, in this dream time across space, I enter little Zebb's dice game. The players embodied tall. I can do so, can see myself outside myself. Another jack helping the team. There's a war on, there's always a war on in America. I'm in there to strike out the Yanks who are everywhere now and must be mowed down. I'm a tiger, I got Africa and Asian meat. The Yanks have the money, but weave the hunger too. In sleep, as if dead under sod, I taste my son's tears. My father's, that's itself, the big DJU's. What do be a go as now, be who I overthrew and been overthrown by in the pinch, the clutch, who still ring me up without ringing. Yet I hear every sign from the far deeper in hearing like remembering all the tigers on that 1945 World Series team destining after destining. What a mound, what a swing, what a miss. This hard ball of a sorrow stitched world packed with sisal by poor weeping women. I tell you, baby, in the light of all the killing taking place, I tell you, baby, for all the nothing being pitched in the game, I travel the world over and my gloves still sporting your name. Yeah, it's Twilight Ace and the arced, come on, animal soft. There's a flood of tears inside, but ain't no ararat. Better call for the firemen cause the bases are all jam-packed. Bring on the fire chief before your starter gets blasted. A triple plays needed to get out of this graveyard. Yeah, it's cold, the black blues, thousands of miles away. It's ice cold shoes and the smell of the old world's hay. Only nine whips'll do it or three in a double play. So call if you need me, though my eyes are in old hoot owls. Can't pick my corners, fast balls are losing power. While the yanks go on crowing, we win, we rule, you die. We can cyber cloud digital RBI's. You can't catch up with speed and war together. Murder is a row to dump you dead. Three, only in can, only in can win. Only in can tation, as in no prison or grit streets kicking time out of mind, out of one's mind. And the further in one goes to face, ingenting nothing, striding up to dig in, the more one lets God and let go, the more the sun's the ball and hits the ground. Hell, one hell of an end game strong. You're not simply four, but inside it, burning and bronzing in dark sun. It's the berries all night long, beginning again. That's the call, even with two strikes and a foul tip behind, beginning the other beginning here and now, digging in because it's forbidden to be old. The light on the swing, on the miss, I'm the longing for home. The neck one wants to throttle and simultaneously kiss. The blonde cascade over the diamond, wet after rain. Leaves of that grass, that's your call. You're hot to get in there, show how your curve works, how sizzling your stuff. Now the screwball you developed takes off like a country woman in an untouchable huff. Strike one down the middle, necessary. Strike two's more, a solidarity up yours. Taft heartily standing in. Now just one more and you'll have the jam by the tail. One more and it's three in your home. So you stretch wind all the years before you ever knew your nose. Before and not whole was your father's eye. Before there was the neon spectacle and a bat's heart still could be heard and you pour them into your pitch. And it's an aphos, an arc high over the diamond. A rainbow paché flag as if unfurling from the sky. It's an aphos with wobbly stuff on, which surprise all over it. And the sound of the bat striking nothing but air under it as it crosses home is that hungry breeze. Cleaning the plate of all but nights. Sweet dreams. If I made the crowd name five famous baseball players, almost inevitably he would be one of them, okay? So let's try the experiment. Five famous baseball players. Lou Gehrig, somebody else? Demagio? Mickey Mannell, we didn't get to five. So all of the stories that I know about Mick are not the stories you know about Mick. I am related to him in almost every way you can be related to him without actually being genetically related. And it's gonna sound funny, but my great-uncle Larry married his only sister and this whole parcel of people who are my cousins are genetically related to him. And then on the other side of the family he married somebody who's sort of related to me. It's this huge crazy web because small towns are like that. So I'm gonna tell you a story. It's actually a family story, but I wasn't there, okay? So you know how family stories are, right? There are family stories about the fact that Mick and Whitey Ford and Billy Martin used to come down to Northeastern Oklahoma during the break time to hang out in picture Oklahoma and used to visit my great-grandmother who I knew very, very well. And there is a family story about what happened when Billy Martin spit on her floor. He doesn't come out well in that story. And then there's this story. And I like to tell it when somebody tells a story about how unkind Mick was to somebody who wanted an autograph or something. He was a very nice small town boy, okay? He really was. And he had some problems, but he was still a really nice small town boy. So the three of them, Mick, Whitey and Billy, were coming to pick Marlin up from I think my great-grandmother's house, actually, Marlin being his wife. And they drove by a fire that had started up. And the volunteer fire department of Picture Oklahoma was pouring water on this fire. But they weren't gonna save the woodlot that had caught on fire. They were basically keeping it from spitting sparks and causing a prairie fire, which if you've never seen can be fairly impressive. All they're doing is pouring water on this fire. And they'd been doing it for some time. So as they're driving up to pick Marlin up, they see the cloud and they go, wonder what's going on? Let's go over this way, see what's going on. So they see them just pouring water on this fire. Mick gets out of the car and goes up to the guy who's holding the hose and says, what's the deal? He goes, nothing, we're just, we can't put it out. It's gonna have to burn out, but we're just trying to keep it under control so it doesn't get out of hand. And Mick goes, oh. And he looks at the guy and he goes, you look a little tired, how long have you been doing this? And the guy says, oh, it's been about five hours at this point, it's been a while. And Mick goes, oh. He goes, well, so there's nothing skillful that has to happen here. The guy goes, no, nothing. He goes, well, I'll tell you what. And he pulls out his wallet and he gives him 50 bucks and he says, take all the guys out to breakfast on me. And the three of us will stand here and finish putting out the fire. And I just want you for a moment to picture the look on the face of their coach if he had been there in that moment. So you've got three of the most important players on your team putting out a fire in Northeastern Oklahoma for fun in the off season. That's one of the stories I know about Mick. Base Hall really does bring people together and I was pretty excited about that. I've got to say there are at least four different arcs of San Francisco poetry coming together in this room right now has to happen more often. And it was sort of my intention of a thing that I wanted to do as Laureate this round. So I want to really thank you guys. I know it's really early, right? So here's the plan. There's a baseball installation upstairs on the sixth floor. And it's really, really good. So I say we go upstairs and explore that and think lovely things about the baseball reliquary in Ontario Cannon who made that possible.