Baseball was Cancelled

Baseball was Cancelled

(“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Mark 11:24)

Baseball was cancelled today and the breathing grass
had a rest.
It takes nine, they say, and two is simply not enough.
Yet the two did more with their day excused
than the others did at home alone, unused.

I believed longer than I could hold my breath
that my team would grow and run and sweep the
season like Mays or Drysdale. Let me pitch,
an inning, maybe two; right field is lonely,
my glove is new, used only a day or two.

I believed larger than I could vision, revising
data to meet me at the intersection of hope’s
certainty and childish imagination. My speed
and curve, knuckle and slider; were four names
for one pitch inches outside and high.

I read the comics and knew I could become
a caped and super human dressed in primary colors,
seeing behind the lead, taking the lead and knowing
no one teases a kid in bright spandex who

Can also fly.

I heard the radio, watched the black and white,
and my Dodgers rarely let me down. I believed
higher, somewhere over the outfield wall my hits
would land well beyond sightseers cars, on the ground,
found rolling on the sand underneath the slide while I
made the rounds from base one to two, two to three
and home.

I believed it all so well and found I struck out mostly,
pitched silliness costly, and was never picked up for
summer league.

My Lord! Is it possible that, when two show up and
the game is cancelled, my prayers are answered, and
new friends are made sharing bubble gum and baseball cards
in the shade?