Baseball
Rent from DeepDyve- Baseball
A love carved across my face,a scar above my left eyewhere the bat split skin from bone.A clean blow, nothing like the jagged mapthe nurse’s needle made in closing it.I was the only kid at the Topeka Public Libraryasking for books about the Black Sox Scandal,begging the other kids to grab batswhen they preferred football.Like the oversize glasses I wore,I’d been lifted from another era.My family didn’t own a television,so I’d lay awake at night listeningto Fred and Denny call the gameson the radio. In the dark, I could smellthe wet grass, chalk, and dust,see the pitcher framed by floodlights.I loved baseball as I rarely loved anything else,loved baseball even when it did not love me back.
After the impact, my friends stood over me,their summer-dark faces blanched.That night I dreamed I was stepping to the plate. [End Page 83]
Israel Wasserstein is a lecturer in English at Washburn University. His first poetry collection is This Ecstasy They Call Damnation. His poetry and prose have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Blue Mesa Review, Flint Hills Review, and elsewhere. He will be thrilled to talk at length about baseball and distance running if you let him.
