Lost poem about a baseball pitcher.

December 11, 2007 2:46 PM

I'm looking for a specific poem about a baseball pitcher.

I read a poem about a baseball pitcher roughly 20 years ago, that I've been trying to locate since. I think it was printed in the New York Times Book Review as a single entry. I had cut it out of the newspaper, but lost it since. Does anyone know of this?

posted by giveandgo to media & arts (6 comments total)

Do you remember anything else about it? Even little bits?
posted by ORthey at 3:17 PM on December 11, 2007

Not much to go on here. Is this poem about an actual person, or is it fiction? It's possibly something by Tom Clark, who's written some poems about baseball, and about former NY Yankee Catfish Hunter and a few others. Most of those poems are in a book called When Things Get Tough on Easy Street: Selected Poems 1963 - 1978, and according to this article about him, he was published in the NYT Book Review twice - once in 1984 and then again in 1987, and also in several other places (scroll down to periodicals). Search the book here if you can remember the subject or any key words.
posted by iconomy at 3:19 PM on December 11, 2007

It's not Mighty Casey is it? There is a pitcher in that poem.
posted by jourman2 at 4:17 PM on December 11, 2007

Okay, it's probably not what you're looking for at all, but I sure do like the lyrics to the Jonathan Richman song "Walter Johnson". Not a poem, and I doubt it was released in the New York Times Book Review, but it did come out in 1985, so about 20 years ago.
posted by polyester.lumberjack at 4:35 PM on December 11, 2007

One more Tom Clark mention - in his book there's a poem called To Bill Lee, which for some reason I feel is the one you're looking for. You can read almost the whole poem in this book called Impossible Dreams: A Red Sox Collection. It would be nice if you came back and commented here.
posted by iconomy at 5:02 PM on December 11, 2007

I am new to MeFi, and am grateful for your help. I tracked down the Tom Clark citations from the NYT, they were reviews he authored. You inspired me to a renewed search, and I'm pretty sure I've found the poem: I think it was "The Pitcher" by Robert Francis, the forth one on this link: http://home.earthlink.net/~sscutchen/baseball/Poetry/index.htm. I'll check to see if it was in the NYT Book Review. It as clever a poem as the one I remember.
posted by giveandgo at 5:40 PM on December 11, 2007