THE BASEBALL MUSIC PROJECT Bob Thompson, conductor ...

Over the infield brown and the smooth greenoutfield,So wonderful underfoot, so right, so perfect,That each of us was a player for a moment,The men my age, and the soldiers and the sailors,Their girls, and the running kids, and the ploddingold men,Taking it easy, the same unhurried tempo,In the mellow light and air, in the mild cool weather,Moving together, moving out together,Oh, this is good, I felt, to be part of this movement,This mood, this music . . .—From Rolfe Humphries’ poem “Night Game”In The Armchair Book of BaseballJohn Thorn, editor6. Time Is of the Essence . . .Time is of the essence.The rhythms break,More varied and subtlethan any kind of dance;Movement speeds upor lags.The ball goes outin sharp and angular drives,or long, slow ones,Comes in againcontrolledand under aim;The players wheel or sprint,race,stoop,slide,halt,Shift imperceptibly to new positions,Watching the signs,according to the batter,The score,the inning.Time is of the essence . . .—From Rolfe Humphries’ poem “Polo Grounds”In Collected Works of Rolfe Humphries7. The Green Fields of the MindIt breaks your heart. It is designed to break yourheart.The game begins in the spring, when everything elsebegins again,and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoonsand evenings,and then as soon as the chill rains come,it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage oftime,to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive,and then just when the days are all twilight, whenyou need it most, it stops.Today . . . it stopped,and summer was gone.Somehow, the summer seemed to slip by faster thistime.Maybe it wasn’t this summer, but all the summersthat . . . slipped by so fast.There comes a time when every summer will havesomething of autumn about it.Whatever the reason, it seemed to me that I wasinvesting more and more in baseball, making thegame do more of the work that keeps time fat andslow and lazy. I was counting on the game’s deeppatterns, three strikes, three outs, three times threeinnings, and its deepest impulse, to go out and back,to leave and to return home, to set the order of theday and to organize the daylight . . .It was the playing of the game in the only place itwill last, the enclosed, green field of the mind. There,in that warm, bright place, what the old poet calledMutability does not so quickly come.—From The Green Fields of the MindA. Bartlett Giamatti8. The Empty Playing FieldAs I look around the empty park, almost Greek inits starkness, I feel an awesome inarticulate lovefor this very stadium and the game it represents. Iam reminded of the story about the baseball fansin Milwaukee, and what they did on a warm fallafternoon, the day after it was announced thatMilwaukee was to have a major league team thenext season. According to the story, 10,000 peoplewent to County Stadium that afternoon and sat in theseats and smiled out at the empty playing field—satin silence, in awe, in wonder, in anticipation, in joy—just knowing that soon the field would come alivewith the chatter of infielders, bright as bird chirps.—From Shoeless JoeW. P. Kinsella9. Baseball’s TimeBaseball’s time is seamless and invisible, a bubblewithin which players move at exactly the same paceand rhythms as all their predecessors. This is the waythe game was played in our youth and in our fathers’youth, and even back then—back in the countrydays—there must have been the same feeling thattime could be stopped.Since baseball is measured only in outs,all you have to do is succeed utterly;keep hitting,keep the rally alive,and you have defeated time.You remain forever young.—From The Summer GameRoger AngellLet’s Keep the Dodgers in BrooklynSay, did you hear the news about what’s happenin’ inBrooklyn?We really got the blues about what’s happenin’ inBrooklyn.It ain’t official yet. We hope official it don’t get,but beware my friend and let me warn ya,they’re thinkin’ a takin’ the Bums to California.Let’s keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn.A house is not a home without some love.Don’t let them leave our premises, L. A. would betheir nemesis,’cause Brooklyn fits the Dodgers like a glove.Mister Walter O’Malley, we always called you “pally,”we stuck with you through thick and thin.But if you take away the Dodgers,guys like Campy, Newk, and Hodges.We ain’t your pal no more the way we been.Say, let’s keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn.A house is not a home without some love.Don’t let them leave our premises, L. A. would betheir nemesis,’cause Brooklyn fits the Dodgers like a glove.We offer our bridges. You can take ’em wid yez.We have a couple we could spare.But we’d all feel so glum, widout the Duke andGilliam.We’d need one left to jump off in despair.What Would Brooklyn Be without the Dodgers?Like a pair of socks that’s holey widout Jackson andCimoli.Like a bed widout a pillow widout Oiskine andFurrillo.Like a ship widout a harbor widout Podres and theBarber.Like the sun when it don’t shine widout Zimmer andLabine.Like the boids widout a bee widout Alston andPeewee,and here I am a poet and I didn’t even know it!26 27