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Spring Training photo

 

i'm in love with the thousand yard stare

deeply towards the worn fold

of the catcher's glove

 

have mercy it's tag and buzz season

which means the temperature must be rising in here

it's finally gonna happen, i've been waiting

forever for the team to make an offseason move

that will return the stove to its hotness

 

the analysts never finish being pessimistic

which is a little bit scandalous, although

mostly they end up being dangerously right

you can see it like a bad weather forecast

 

every year we all like to ask our ceilings

please, are they going to come light us up this year

can we agree that chin music can't be accounted for

in the myth of the first pitch strike

and can we conclude that nobody will ever be

anything like a perfect parabola

 

i never heard anyone say: i always wanted

to grow up to be a statistic

but then the broadcaster claims textbooks

nowadays neglect to break up classical probability

into two parts: there is discrete and continuous

and there has got to be discrete, damn it

 

and the commercial break may as well say

a little less conversation, a little more of –

there is as much determinism in baseball

as there is crying, and how often here

and in life, has anyone ever said

well, that was exactly what i expected

 

i'm in love with the thousand yard stare

deeply towards the worn fold

of the catcher's glove

 

the familiar foreign smell of pine tar

drying like ink on multi-million dollar contracts

we made a lot of mistakes, but maybe

we'll get this one right

muscle mass put on and burned off

in the most ungodly hours of the morning

while looking outside and thinking

 

soon the sprinklers will come on

and we are all going to burn together

under the ruthless bloom of texas sun

it's what we came here for, learning to love

how we melt like lemon chills into bleacher seats

enthusiasm finally clawing its way above

the mendoza line, despite the strange & continued

tributes to the military industrial complex?....

 

the hooking curve, our supplications

against linear regression, and to maintain

a fierce and steadfast opposition against

the inevitable inertia of infield astro turf

april will forever be the cruelest

most beautiful month, and i think

god damnit

 

i'm in god damn love with the thousand yard stare

deeply towards the god damn fold

of the god damn catcher's glove

 

image: Ken Weaver


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