Coaching Pitchers

I. Little League

When my only pitcher went wild
against the league's worst team,
I knew we had a cushion, hell, ten runs
at least. Time for a life-lesson. Like Zeus I towered
over him on the mound and poured the positive
into his anguished eyes. Said I wasn't taking him out
no matter what. And he walked the runs
in and in and in. Before the second inning
I should have known nothing would help him
but another sunrise.

                                   I was raised to believe will
could do anything, lift you out of any kind of slump.
The short kid got shorter as the long day waned,
his eleven year old brow crawling with wrinkles.
I was Lear, now, had given my word,
and even my smart-ass centerfielder knew
not to come between the dragon and his wrath.
Trapped in my sovereignty,

                                             I turned to stone
as the runs added up and we lost 29-27 and
the lesson sank in like a dull blade
just above my top vertebra, the one known
as the Atlas.

II. Pony League

When my only pitcher lumbered off the mound
at the perfect bunt and threw late to first,
I saw the other coach's eyes light up.
Next bunt, also perfect, also beat out,
bases loaded.

                         I moved Molasses at third
into concussion range, and still they bunted
straight at the mound past Molasses and later
past my stumbly first baseman, too,
and the runs poured in.

                                       This one, I said, is Fate,
not my incompetence. How can anyone be that slow?
I can see him even now waddling toward the puffball
lolling in the grass, too late, oh my God, again,
too late.

III. Junior Varsity

The leadoff man for the team I'd never heard of
drilled a triple to right center, as did the next guy up.
What are the odds against two pitches and two triples
in the top of the first? Number three lined a mere single,
the cleanup, a double. Where do you get sixteen-year-old bats
like these? I stared at my new black shoes and then at
the tight face of my former shortstop in his mound debut,
only guy on the team who could really play. What have I done
to him. His shoulders sag already, but he wings another strike
and—Hallelujah!—it's dribbled to second where it holograms through Collier's glove
and rolls into right field. Throw to second's
fifteen feet off the ground and nobody's backing up.
Next guy homers. We had no slaughter rule back then,
and I'd die before calling it off. I walked back and forth
to the bench, passing their perfectly uniformed coach
who never tried to catch my eye. His guys were classy,
never jeered, never even smirked. They pitched, they fielded,
they jogged in fast after each inning. They circled my star
dispassionately, their eyes blank as Greek statues'.
Another case of pure bad luck. True, pitchers, quarterbacks,
field goal kickers—I never liked them. Too much relish
on those hotdogs. Maybe Fate, too, is an old lineman,
aching all over even in his youth, and maybe, between us,
we were trying to teach poor Bobby Levinson
how to suffer, how to lose.

Double

Three and a half decades now, and my heart still tightens
because I'm trotting giddy toward checkout
in the Old Gothic Gym, my precious punchcards
fanned like a royal flush—
                                         Ryle, Russell,
Beckett, Kant, Fielding—when they vanish

up into a huge fist stared at by Coach Dole, autocrat
of linebackers and foghorn stupid. How long does it take
to read "PhiILang," "Epistemol," "BritNov,"
"ContemDram," "Aesthetics," and the others?

When his eyelids droop, something with sharp fins
banks in my stomach. My face burns. "Smitty,"
he fogs down at one of the cards, "Can't take this class.
Be late to practice on Wednesdays."
                                                          A ceiling fan
helicopters his head like Vulcan's halo.

My entire aching life holds its stinking breath.
"That's the Senior Seminar in my major," I say.
He pushes those big, empty eyes at me.
"Change your major," he says. "Major in sociology

like Dimmski and Dollard." In this memory I reach up
in silence like Augustine stealing a pear from paganism;
I pluck my cards from the fat fist; I wade through
the heat to the long table near the door.
                                                                 I have bled,
benchpressed, blindsided, wildcatted, wedgebusted,

whacked, crunched, crashed, crapped in my pants at
practice, pissed in fourth quarter huddles, piled on and
been piled up, been All-American stomped and gouged.
I have farted in my own face. I have bounced my brain

against my own skull, have squatted, squashed, broke-down,
bearcrawled, duckwalked, slashed, swooped, and by God
levitated, I have trapped, kicked out, blitzed, and firestormed.
I have forearmed ferocious forever,
                                                        eternally bang-up
butted, have split giant triple teams, lips, chins, supraorbital

ridges, sprinted and wheezed and puked and
puked and sweated and puked for ten fall seasons, year-round training,
seven hellish, heroic springs. Though you zombie the zone
of the well-rung bell, though they stitch you all over

like Shelley's Monster, though you break the breakable,
sprain the sprainable, dislocate the dislocatable, it is best
to keep your swollen mouth shut and play the hand Mars
and Minerva have dealt you. None of the coaches ever spoke
again of my education. In 1970 I came fifteen minutes late

to practice one day a week and slipped on down
the linemen list. But, I told myself, I've still got
Philosophy and British Literature.
                                                         I thought
my double major was my secret, my ace in the hole.