It is opening day for baseball! Here is a poem I wrote a few weeks ago, but saved for today.
One summer, when I was between
The ages of seven and ten,
I can't pinpoint it any closer than that,
My older brother and I were taken
By my grandparents,
The only set I had,
On a vacation trip from Colorado
To the West Coast.
Here are the highlights
That I can recall...
We stopped for an hour
At the National Dinosaur Park
And looked at the bones of beasts
Trapped in walls of rock
Laid down 70 million years ago.
In Salt Lake City,
In some café
Not far from the Tabernacle,
My grandmother Mary
Related that she, and thus I,
Was a descendant of
The Founder of the Mormon Religion,
Joseph Smith.
Crossing the Nevada desert
I was cranky, overheated
Maybe getting sick,
And probably insufferable,
Stuck in a hot car
Made before air conditioning
Was a necessity,
Not allowed to roll down the window
And wanting to go home.
And then we were in Yosemite
Driving through a tunnel
In a giant tree!
We got a cabin to sleep in
And that night stood by
A park ranger pointing
Toward a distant cliff from where
Burning logs were falling
Making a firefall.
But we didn't do any hiking
'Cause we had to get moving on
To our real destination --
Grandpa's Mecca --
San Francisco,
Home of the Giants!
Grandpa loved baseball
And I think that the moment
The first transistor radio
With an earplug
Came on the market,
Grandpa got one
And put it into his breast pocket
Where it remained
During baseball season
So he could listen to a game
Wherever he was.
This was back in the early 1960's
Long before Colorado had its own
Major League Team – The Rockies,
So to have a home town team
Grandpa had to pick from
Pirates or Yankees
Orioles or Dodgers
Tigers or Cubs
Cardinals or Senators...
And somehow chose the Giants
As his favorite.
We went to a night game
At Candlestick Park
And Grandpa knew what he was doing,
He had brought an army blanket
And along with my light jacket
And sitting between my brother and Grandpa
I managed to stay warm
In the wintry clime of
A San Francisco summer night
Where we sat in the bleachers
Behind center field.
What stands out from
My first ever game in person
Is seeing Willie Mays running towards
The center field wall reaching up
With his glove and over his shoulder
Catching a fly ball,
The third out in the top of the ninth.
The game was still tied when
The bottom of the ninth ended
And it took four more innings
Before Willie Mays came up to bat
And launched a home run
Into the right field seats
Winning the game for the Giants.
I am sure there was more
To that trip after that
Before my brother Jon and I
Were returned to our parents,
But I can't recall those details.
You might ask if, during this trip,
I grew closer to my grandparents?
Not really, they were distant folks,
Or more likely
I was a distant child,
And as for my brother,
The near four years difference
In the timing of our births,
Was a gap rarely bridged.
But there was one relationship strengthened
During that childhood road trip
And that was my bond
With the Nation's Pastime
Baseball!
Carl Scott Harker ©2021
I would love to read some of your baseball memories in the comments, if you care to share.
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My latest collection of poetry — poems written between late April to Late October, 2020, is now available and you can find it on Amazon here: Above Us Only Sky.
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