Friday, August 18, 2017

IT'S NOT WHETHER YOU WIN OR LOSE

Hate
to break it to you, son

but Baseball
isn't real.

It's a game.
Games are fake.

Sure—a baseball itself
is a thing,
in so much as

you can hold it,
one could hit you
in the face.

And the boys in white cotton,
and the men in black and blue;

all the hot dogs and bubble gum,
all the leather and tobacco
and resin and wood—

those items
are all out there, too.

But the really,
really important stuff? RBI's,
pop flies, sac bunts?

Come
to think of it: home runs—

they just don't exist;

it's a wonder
we can even
discuss this.

Foul and fair
territory
are imaginary,

leagues
are abstractions,
salaries—theoretical.

Even the baselines,
connecting home
to first and third,

which we all think
we see clearly,
are like

the line
on a map
in a schoolbook of yours

separating, say,
Canada from America
and America from Mexico—

quixotic collective fantasies,

only
painted-on.