This is the prequel to a poem which I have previously posted on Authorsden.com. It deals with the decline of baseball as out national pastime, with a tip of the hat to the Midwest and of course, the Yankees. I built a newspaper column around this piece in 1998 and it was published in the anthology "Treasured Poems of America" in 1999. This is also part of a collection I would like to e-publish entitled "The Flip Side".

Baseball Belongs

Baseball belongs

to another place, another time,

another season, another rhyme

to radios and black and white,

Dizzy, Peewee and the like.


Of lazy days which just drift by

And ballparks where the sun

must shine, as the Babe hits them

high, far and gone.


To hot dogs, pop and beer

peanuts only found here,

Ballantine blasts for the Mick,

The Man, Gibby and Falstaff.


Grainy pictures and memories

for 40-year-old, 60-year-old

little boys and Bleacher Bums

watching Pete and Mr. Cub.


The National pastime's

past its time and as we

cry for what was sublime

For baseball belongs

to another time.