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Famous Baseball Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Baseball poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous baseball poems. These examples illustrate what a famous baseball poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Seeger, Alan
...ed by fevers in Mexico? 
I can't imagine, but this I know -- 
You are impassioned vastly more 
By the news of the daily baseball score 
Than to hear that a dozen countrymen 
Have perished somewhere in Darien, 
That greasers have taken their innocent lives 
And robbed their holdings and raped their wives. 


Not by rough tongues and ready fists 
Can you hope to jilt in the modern lists. 
The armies of a littler folk 
Shall pass you under the victor's yoke, 
Sobeit a na...Read more of this...



by Lehman, David
...fe 
including this one & therefore I shall 
eliminate all ideas from my poems 
which shall consist of cats, rice, rain 
baseball cards, fire escapes, hanging plants 
red brick houses where I shall give up booze 
and organized religion even if it means 
despair is a logical possibility that can't 
be disproved I shall concentrate on the five 
senses and what they half perceive and half 
create, the green street signs with white 
letters on them the body next to mine 
asleep wh...Read more of this...

by Kinnell, Galway
...ing love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies, 
familiar touch of the long-married, 
and he appears - in his baseball pajamas, it happens, 
the neck opening so small 
he has to screw them on, which one day may make him wonder 
about the mental capacity of baseball players - 
and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep, 
his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child. 

In the half darkness we look at each other 
and smile 
...Read more of this...

by Moore, Marianne
...Fanaticism?No.Writing is exciting
and baseball is like writing.
You can never tell with either
how it will go
or what you will do;
generating excitement--
a fever in the victim--
pitcher, catcher, fielder, batter.
Victim in what category?
Owlman watching from the press box?
To whom does it apply?
Who is excited?Might it be I?

It's a pitcher's battle all the way--a duel--
a catcher's, as...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so...Read more of this...



by Tate, James
...riting a single poem.
Extraordinary people who don't hesitate
to cut somebody's heart or skull open.
They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease.
and play a few rounds of golf as if it were nothing.
These same people stroll into a church 
as if that were a natural part of life. 
Investing money is second nature to them. 
They contribute to political campaigns 
that have absolutely no poetry in them 
and promise none for the future.
They sit...Read more of this...

by Taylor, Edward
...riting a single poem.
Extraordinary people who don't hesitate
to cut somebody's heart or skull open.
They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease.
and play a few rounds of golf as if it were nothing.
These same people stroll into a church 
as if that were a natural part of life. 
Investing money is second nature to them. 
They contribute to political campaigns 
that have absolutely no poetry in them 
and promise none for the future.
They sit...Read more of this...

by Webb, Charles
...ew him," I said, and grabbed every cowry

I could find, hogged all the books I could
From Heights Library, wore out the baseball
Diamond dawn to dusk, and—parents in Duluth—
Gorged on bountiful Candy dusk to dawn.

Not until a Committee wrote of my poems,
"Enthusiasm should be tempered,"
Did I change my song. I write now
The way I live: calm and sober, steering

Toward the Golden Mean. The Committee
Was right to withhold funds. I'd have bought
A hundred box tu...Read more of this...

by Riley, James Whitcomb
...em more er less; 
Sapsucks gittin' down to biz, 
Weedin' out the lonesomeness; 
Mr. Bluejay, full o' sass, 
In them baseball clothes o' his, 
Sportin' round the orchad jes' 
Like he owned the premises! 
Sun out in the fields kin sizz, 
But flat on yer back, I guess, 
In the shade's where glory is! 
That's jes' what I'd like to do 
Stiddy fer a year er two! 

Plague! Ef they ain't somepin' in 
Work 'at kind o' goes ag'in' 
My convictions! - 'long about 
Here in June especi...Read more of this...

by Matthews, William
...> He glowered
at me but didn't look as if he thought

bad poems were dangerous, the way some poets do.
If they were baseball executives they'd plot

to destroy sandlots everywhere so that the game
could be saved from children. Of course later

that night he fired his pianist in mid-number
and flurried him from the stand.

"We've suffered a diminuendo in personnel,"
he explained, and the band played on....Read more of this...

by Lux, Thomas
...her side lived mine and me,
across a narrow pasture, often fallow;
a field of fly balls, the best part of childhood
and baseball, but one could not cross his line
and if it did,
as one did in 1956
and another in 1958,
it came back coleslaw -- his lawn mower
ate it up, happy
to cut something, no matter
what the manual said
about foreign objects,
stones, or sticks....Read more of this...

by Dunn, Stephen
...quential light of day,
I called the Humane Society
about Blue, his dog. They took her away

and I readied myself, a baseball bat
inside my door.
That night I hear his wife scream

and I couldn't help it, that pathetic
relief; her again, not me.
It would be years before I'd understand

why victims cling and forgive. I plugged in
the Sleep-Sound and it crashed
like the ocean all the way to sleep.

One afternoon I found him
on the stoop,
a pistol in his hand,...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...his protest
against
everything.

a one man
Freedom March
that never squeezed in
between
the concert reviews and the
baseball
scores.

God, or somebody,
bless
him....Read more of this...

by Field, Edward
...ing brow
Mole on chin, probably will become a wen

It is perfectly obvious that he was not popular at school
No good at baseball, and wet his bed.

His aliases tell his history: Dumbell, Good-for-nothing,
Jewboy, Fieldinsky, Skinny, Fierce Face, Greaseball, Sissy.

Warning: This man is not dangerous, answers to any name
Responds to love, don't call him or he will come....Read more of this...

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