An unexpected choice and a good one as well; Marianne Moore had the skill to find similarities between such an introspective sedantary activity as writing and a team sport as public and extroverted as baseball. Her unusual line lengths and quirky rhyme schemes give you the sense that anything might happen at any moment, and she does rather well keeping the dimensions of her comparisons within reach of the reader's imagination; nothing here is epic or epoch shaking, but there is passion, drama, duels, conflicts, things to be attained, virtues to be lived up to, all in the sense that it is the game that matters because the rules of the game are what unites us in spirit and keeps us going. Moore, perhaps, wanted to extend the egalitarian nature of b-ball to the communities where we live; there would certainly nothing more American than that.

I like this poem by poet Tom Clark, a tribute"

The Great One
Tom Clark

So long Roberto Clemente

you have joined the immortals

who've been bodysnatched

by the Bermuda Triangle

When your plane went down

it forced tears out of grown men

all over the hemisphere

Al Oliver and

even Willie Stargell cried

You had a quiet

pissed-off pride

that made your countrymen

look up to you

even if you weren't

taller than they are

No matter how many times

Manny Sanguillen

dove for your body

the sun kept going down

on his inability to find it

I just hope those Martians realize

they are claiming the rights to

far and away the greatest rightfielder

of all time