Casey at Christmas

An oldie, but I like to think it's a goodie.

Happy Holidays

 ********************************

Casey at the Pen
Herm Card 1994


The outlook wasn’t brilliant for my poetry that day,
The clock said four to two and I had nothing much to say.
And every time I tried a verse it came out sounding lame,
The more I tried the worse it got, each stanza seemed the same.

A word or two would hit the page, but couldn’t stand the test;
They made no sense, they had no flair-nowhere near my best.
I thought if only Casey, could but get a whack at that,
I’d bet the ranch that I’d be done in twenty minutes flat.

Where was this muse I needed, to get my poem done?
The guy whose inspiration I’ve used for more than one.
I thought if only Casey could stop to help me out,
I’d have the problem conquered, of this there is no doubt.

I tried to paraphrase Shakespeare, and also William Blake,
But the former was a lulu, the latter was a fake.
So there upon my stricken brain, grim melancholy sat,
And there seemed but little chance that Casey could fix that.

But then my dog, the fearsome Nick, let loose a lusty yell,
Reacting as he always does to the ringing of the bell.
It rattled all the windows and echoed through my flat,
And Casey, mighty Casey, arrived, and tipped his hat.

There was ease in Casey’s manner as he stepped into my place
There was pride in Casey’s bearing and a smile upon his face,
And he responded as my cheers recoiled throughout my den,
There was no room for any doubt, ‘twas Casey at the pen.

“Now here’s the problem, sir,” I said, “here’s why you’re at my door,
I need to write a Christmas poem, but not like Clement Moore.
I always write my Christmas ode, with a really clever twist,
To give to all my friends each year some cheer they might have missed.

“But this year nothing’s working-I really feel the fool,
Unable to produce a thing for all the folks at school.
I’d pretty much abandoned hope, given up, but then,
You showed up on my doorstep, you and your mighty pen.”

I saw his face go stern and cold I saw his muscles strain,
I knew that Casey wouldn’t let that rhyme go by again.
“That ain’t my style,” said Casey,” That ain’t the stuff I do.”
He signaled that I take a seat, and then his words just flew.

“First of all I ain’t that guy Casey from Mudville ‘cause I didn’t strike
out in front of the home crowd like he did and send ‘em home crying. I’m
the Casey named Stengel from Kansas City that hit a couple a home runs in
Yankee Stadium that beat these here fellas in 1923 when I played fer them
Giants which was about the last time those local teams did mucha anything
there until the Brooklyns ruined my Christmas in ‘55 when I was there with
Mantle and Berra and I sure didn’t write no poem about that.

“So you think I’m the guy to write a poem about Christmas, but I ain’t and
I’ll tell you this, that Christmas ain’t about no poems and it ain’t about
no stockings, even the red ones from Boston and it ain’t about any of
them things that have price tags cause that’s not what the General Manager
that started this club had in mind.

“Christmas has to do with helpin’ out the other folks on the team and
makin’ room next to you on the bench and not bein’ afraid to sacrifice or pinch hit.                   
And this guy Santa really ain’t the guy either, but, even
though he’s outta shape, I’d use him in relief against the Grinch who can’t
hit the curve down and in.

“What you need to tell your friends, young feller, is just that Christmas
is a time for good cheer and peace and love and all that, but you need to
be able to do it all year if you want to be called up to the Big Club, and
if you work together you got a shot at the Series every year and you don’t
hafta worry about gettin’ sent back down to Toledo for more work and almost
forgotten like that feller Scrooge who had a dickens of a time makin’ his
comeback and then in ‘56 my guy Mantle won the triple crown and...”

And as the “Ol’ Perfesser” rambled on and on and on,
I realized he’d said it all, my need to write was gone.
So all you have to do is figure out just what he said,
And add my “Merry Christmas” when all his lines you’ve read.

And so my poem was finished, my message had been passed,
My Christmas job completed, my work was done at last.
I owed it all to Casey, and his poetic clout,
But when I turned to thank him, Mighty Casey had snuck out.

Dead Solid Perfect

Having just seen  the documentary film Glickman, I found myself reflecting on the influences sports have had on me. I have written about it in these blog entries, but more subtly than I realized.  My years of teaching writing taught me that we often put words on paper that carry our feeling or meaning “in disguise.”

For over thirty years I asked students what a phrase might mean, and they knew very clearly what they wanted to say --  but they hadn’t done it. “That’s what I meant,” is different than having actually written it to convey their intended meaning.

I told them that when they wrote about something I didn’t want to read about that something as much as I wanted to read about how they connected to that something. I didn’t want to know if they won or lost, I wanted to know how they felt about it. If they scored the winning goal or won the math olympics, that was no different than giving up the winning goal or losing the math olympics unless I could, in some way, feel their reaction through their writing.

And for eighth graders (or anyone), that was often a tough task, so to demonstrate the process I usually wrote a poem as they watched and talked them through the process and as we collaborated on the piece their most important task was to understand how I felt about what I was writing…to sense my emotion and the impact of the moment.

So, in thinking about Marty Glickman and how his life unfolded after a painful sport-based event in that life, I recalled this poem and the event it reflects on and the inevitability of life changing and flowing moment to moment, and I understand that from my brief, painful, sport-based moment, sprang the moments and the life that followed

Dead Solid Perfect

In my classroom, in a beautiful 1930s building,

a seven foot  wooden pole serves to open the windows.

I roll it in my hands, stare deep into the grain.

It might be a Louisville Slugger,

Model  D115, 34 inches, 32 ounces,

Syracuse University branded on the barrel.

I stand at the plate,

game tied, two out, bottom of the ninth,

winning run on second, my heart pounding.             

The All-American pitcher, who last year cracked my rib with a fastball, 

throws that same fastball, waist high on the outside,

to the spot where my swing is just right.

The contact

 -- dead solid perfect -- 

the nothingness of a ball hit on the sweet spot,

no sting, no vibration,

just the bat-on-ball sound of wood on leather,

a flawless marriage under the laws of physics.

A white-tailed rocket streaks toward the gap in right

the winning run on the way to the plate,

until the right fielder, at full sprint, dives,

and as leather meets leather,

changes the story,

turns my heroics into his.

I stare into the distance,

everything out of focus,

my perfect moment cut short. 

I rest my hands on my knees, remember        

that my mother would be ashamed if I swore,

that my father would expect me to show some class.

I inhale deeply to slow my heart,

turn toward my spot at third base,

then walk to the front of my classroom.

*****************************
Coda: This was my last college game as a player -- the loss kept us out of the NCAA tournament.

Jackie Robinson Day, April 15, 2013

I was asked to write this poem and read it at the Jackie Robinson, Race, Sport and the American Dream conference, held at LIU Brooklyn in 1997 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's major league debut.  (See my entry, You'll Play Better if You're Clean for more on that.)

 A Railroad Stop in Syracuse

Syracuse –
a stop on the Underground Railroad
for slaves of the mid 1800s South,
escapees from the plantations
that raised a white crop – the cotton they picked,
the symbol of slavery.

They sneaked off,
and on their way north to Canada, and freedom,
they might spend a night hidden in Syracuse.

Jackie Robinson arrived there in 1946
on the train from Montreal where he worked on
Mr. Branch Rickey’s farm,
a farm that also raised a white crop –
white ballplayers –
to send south to Brooklyn.

But Jackie was following the opposite route to escape his slavery,
the slavery of the mid 1900s that kept the black man
off the white man’s land,
off the green grass and rich dirt
of his athletic plantations.

When he left that train from Montreal,
on his ride from slavery,
that white man’s train with its

 black porters and black conductors 

and white engineer,
and stepped into the bright sunlight
and the harsh glare of the public eye
he was no longer just another black man
aspiring to a white man’s job.

He was a man opening a door that could not be closed,

accompanied by every man and woman and child

who had ever ridden that other railroad –

fellow passengers to freedom.

And he was anything but hidden
that first game in Syracuse,
a lone black man
against a white background.

 

 

© 1996

Hermon R. Card

A few quotes to get us in the mood - Baseball 2013

 Some of the best things said by baseball people – Part 1

This is the last pure place where Americans dream. This is the last great arena, the last green arena, where everybody can learn lessons of life.
                            ...(Marcus Giamatti partially quoting his father, Bart Giamatti).

 Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You remain forever young.

                           ...Roger Angell

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.
                           ...A. Bartlett Giamatti

Luck is the residue of design.
                           ...Branch Rickey

You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way round all the time.
                           ...Jim Bouton

There ain’t nothing to being a ballplayer – if you’re a ballplayer.

                            …Honus Wagner

He couldn’t hit a bull in the ass with a banjo.

            …Ted Kleinhans, former Syracuse University baseball coach

Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona.
                        … George Will

Marilyn Monroe, returning from a USO tour in Korea, to her husband, Joe DiMaggio:

 Joe, you’ve  never heard such cheering.

Joe D.: Yes I have.

The secret of successful managing is to keep the five guys who hate you away from the four guys who haven't made up their minds.

                            …Casey Stengel.

If there's a foul ball behind third base, it's the shortstop's play!

             …Peppermint Patty

I'm throwing as hard as I ever did, but the ball is just not getting there as fast.

                        …Lefty Gomez

MICKEY MANTLE
A GREAT TEAMMATE
1931-1996
536 HOME RUNS
WINNER OF THE TRIPLE CROWN 1956
MOST WORLD SERIES HOMERS 18
SELECTED TO ALLSTAR GAME 20 TIMES
WON MVP AWARD 1956, 1957 & 1962
WHO LEFT A LEGACY OF
UNEQUALLED COURAGE

DEDICATED BY THE NEW YORK YANKEES
AUGUST 24, 1996

                        The Mick’s plaque at Yankee Stadium