It was intra-squad, not a real game,
But teenage boys don’t know the difference;
And to the pitcher who’d just thrown
An adrenaline-powered fastball at my head,
I was a pretender he could intimidate.
When the next pitch nearly took off
The top of my left knee, I knew,
With all the force of a mystical vision,
This talented boy, this ace of the staff,
A senior expected to bloom after showing
Such promise last year, such grit, such
Competitive fire, would fail. I saw it
In his eyes when I got back up; I saw
The momentary hesitation, the confusion.
I knew the next pitch would be right
Down the middle of the plate, and as fast
As all the pride in his body could muster.
And he knew I knew; that was the key.
He didn’t know how, but he knew;
And it scared him, this giant of a boy,
That a stick of a kid he could break
In half in study hall, or a parking lot,
Would stare back at him as I stared back.
You never know who’ll relish the arena;
Who won’t care what he looks like,
As he approaches the game from his side,
Watching you watching him as he steps up.
The pitch was pretty, a beauty of a pitch,
But it depended on my believing what
Had transpired between us the last two.
His arrogance became my coldness;
I’d done this before, and he hadn’t.
The pitch was pretty, a beauty of a pitch,
And a few seconds later it hit a limb
Of a sycamore behind the left field fence.
“You’re going to have a bad year,” I yelled
As I trotted down the first base line,
Even then disliking myself for shouting it;
But something will rip out of you
In those moments, both you and not you;
It's not just triumph. Bullies, sociopaths,
Narcissists—you have to demarcate—
You have to spell out a moment’s meaning
For them, in words they can’t mistake,
Because to them others have no outlines—
Other people are just blurry shapes
At the edges of their self-absorption.
And facts aren’t facts; you have to replace
The voice in their heads with a new voice:
I glued that home run to a voice
That jeered like the voice of his father,
Perhaps, or his mother, or a brother;
A voice that said this is your stupid soul
Flying over the fence after being struck
By the oldest weapon in the world,
A wooden stick.
From Recalcitrant Actors (2021, Dos Madres Press) by James Cummins,
Such a terrific poem from a terrific book!!
Posted by: Denise Duhamel | October 23, 2021 at 07:41 AM
Cummins at the bat: out of the park!
Posted by: David Schloss | October 23, 2021 at 01:25 PM
I second Denise's comment. The whole book is terrific.
Posted by: Angela Ball | October 23, 2021 at 03:02 PM
Jim Cummin's talent, intelligence and way of understanding the world has always wowed me. He "sees" and makes the reader see what he knows, his earned wisdom. He is a poet who deserves many readers and attention. Get his book Recalcitrant Actors. It's brilliant.
Posted by: Sally | October 23, 2021 at 03:16 PM
What the hell, mindful of my grandson's in the park homerun last summer, his team behind by 14, his teammates streaming from their dugout and leaping to hug each other and him for this shared modicum of restored honor, grandson breaking free to scornfully toss his batting helmet against a galvanized meshed wire playground fence and mutter something like, "So there!" Thanks, Jim Cummins!
Posted by: Kennth Rosen | October 23, 2021 at 07:49 PM
Holy cow! Thank you, everyone. I'm overwhelmed.
Posted by: jim cummins | October 23, 2021 at 09:19 PM
James Cummins’s “The Stick” is one of the best poems ever written about baseball and, for that matter, any sport. The seemingly disarming opener, “It was intra-squad, not a real game,” proves to be anything but. The reader already suspects something momentous is about to occur, something probing, transforming, and lasting. The powerful impact of “The Stick” put me in mind of John Updike’s “Ex-Basketball Player,” a poem about a former high-school hoops hero who “never learned a trade, he just sells gas, / Checks oil, and changes flats. Once in a while, / As a gag, he dribbles an inner tube.” Cummins’s poem also reminded me of the exceptional writing in Updike’s “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” his article on Boston Red Sox legend Ted Williams’s last game at Fenway Park that appeared in the October 22, 1960, New Yorker. Even more impressively, “The Stick” conjured for me Richard Ben Cramer’s stunning article “What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?” in the June 1986 Esquire, with its famous lede still being scrutinized in sports journalism curricula. In his poem James Cummins meticulously limns a schoolboy sports duel, built on bettering a bully, and the game-within-the-game psychology: “And he knew I knew: that was the key.” Astonishingly well done, it is a rite-of-passage poem using baseball as male-coded testing. David Lehman deserves all props possible for bringing “The Stick” to our attention or re-attention.
Posted by: Dr. Earle Hitchner | October 25, 2021 at 08:36 AM
Now I'm speechless, a rare occurrence. Thank you, Dr. Hitchner.
Posted by: jim cummins | October 25, 2021 at 01:19 PM
Thank you, Earle, for the compliment and the excellent appreciative comment. I wondr whether you can let us know what Richard Ben Cramer's "famous lede" was in that 1986 article. I read his bioo of Joe DiMaggio and liked it a lot.
Posted by: David Lehman | October 26, 2021 at 11:58 AM
Great poem.
Posted by: Terence Winch | October 27, 2021 at 08:30 AM
Thanks, T.W.
Posted by: jim cummins | October 27, 2021 at 01:29 PM