The Best American Poetry

Notes on the Final Four (Part Two) [by Dean Smith]

Part 2: Touch

I’m still replaying Grayson Allen’s last second shot against Kansas that would have sent Duke to the Final Four. Last Sunday's game resembled a heavyweight boxing match from start to finish and Allen’s shot teased its way off the front rim to the backboard and around the rim again before harmlessly bouncing out. Off-balance in desperation when he shot the ball, I wondered whether it left his fingertips with enough softness towards the rim. Shooters trade in dodgy concepts such as “streaks” and “touch”—illusory notions used to define their ability to consistently put the ball in the basket by coaches and commentators. In this case, Allen's reputation as a "dirty" player may have worked against him in the celestial realm of the basketball gods. Karma does find its way to the hardwood. 

Kansas won in overtime 85-81 and it was one of the most thrilling games of the last five years. The shooting guards put on a display for both teams—and Kansas hit their three-point shots during the extra time.

Villanova faces Kansas in a clash of the titans tonight. These teams explode from one end of the court to the other. Their “bigs” can shoot three-pointers and everyone fills the lane on the break. Villanova won it all two years ago and they are seasoned. Kansas is also a veteran club but may lack the discipline of the Wildcats. It will also be a battle of interesting names. Villanova has Donte DiVincenzo and Kansas LaGerald Vick and Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk (last name pronounded MAH-KYE-LUKE) Either of these teams can win it all.

Michigan will prevail against upstart Loyola. The Ramblers will battle valiantly and have already achieved the unthinkable. Led by senior guard Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman, Michigan has a date with destiny and they could pull it off. This team is the antithesis of the Fab Five team from the 1990s and reflects the blue-collar character of its coach. John Beilein’s Michigan Wolverines will be in the NCAA Championship with a tall order on its hands in defeating either Villanova or Kansas. I’ll be pulling for Michigan because my dad coached John Beilein at Wheeling College in the early seventies.

“John was a student of the game,” my dad said, “and a pretty good player. He runs a clean program.”

My father possesses an astute basketball mind and is the best pure shooter I’ve ever seen. His shot lifted from his fingertips with a tightly wound backspin and rose perfectly in a medium arc toward the basket splashing through the center of the net almost every time effortlessly. He didn’t shoot the traditional jump shot but a hybrid version that incorporated elements of a set shot with a quick release and only the slightest elevation from the balls of his feet. He idolized Bob Cousy. My first memories are of him playing in pick-up games and coaching at the collegiate level as an assistant for the University of Baltimore. At the end of practice, he’d pick up a ball, twirl it on his index finger and then carefully edge it over the rim into the basket still spinning. 

That’s when I wanted to become a basketball player.

My Irish father, James “Snuffy” Smith knew what he was doing when he suggested that I be named Dean Smith—a compromise designed to placate his Italian father-in-law. Dino Bartoli wanted the first-born grandson to be named after him.  In September of 1963 neither family was ready for a “Dino Smith.” 

It strikes me now that this name choice foreshadowed my father’s desire to become a basketball coach five years later. He had already encountered Dean Smith numerous times within the sports pages of the Baltimore Sun and the News American whenever Maryland played the team from Chapel Hill, NC. The Tar Heel coach was about to begin his third season. 

My father had been the best regional salesman Esso ever had but it was killing him on the inside. He’d won regional sales prizes like a bolt-action deer rifle and he was a natural at sales but basketball was his passion. He’d played point guard for the legendary coach Ed Hargaden at Loyola High School in the early sixties and then the University of Baltimore. 

My parents divorced in 1970.        

When I was eight, my dad left Baltimore to coach at Wheeling College and pursue his dream. I didn’t see him very much but I practiced basketball all the time, hoping to impress him when he’d return. Basketball healed the pain and so did poetry.

I wrote the poem “Head Fake” about the days without him:

…the fundamentals of separation

became the head fake

the spin-move, the jab stab

aggressive, tenacious

when I found the range

to play for him…

I saw my father at Wes Unseld's basketball camp in the summers. Wes played for the Baltimore Bullets. At six-feet seven, Wes played an aggressive but small center position. And yet he defended the seven-footer Kareem Abdul-Jabaar with the greatest hook shot in the history of the game better than anyone. Wes confessed his secret to us campers that he stepped on Kareem's feet. Wes could barely dunk the ball but he could grab a rebound off the backboard, turn in mid air and heave an outlet pass over his head the length of the court to hit the opposite backboard. Just before lights out, he'd stop by to tuck me in at camp.

Dad returned to Baltimore in 1976 to coach the Johns Hopkins Blue Jays. For the first time, my brother and I traveled with the team on bus trips, ate box lunches, sat on the bench and alerted my dad and head coach Gary Rupert when there were seven minutes left on the half-time clock. They made it into the Division III NCAA tournament that year.

In 1979, my stepfather was transferred to Chicago for a better job and I left my dad and relatives back in Baltimore. Back then, it took a village to raise two boys and my mom and stepfather made a good team as did my dad and his wife. All four of my parents brought strength and sacrifice to us on a daily basis.  

Snuffy went on to coach with J.D. Barnett and Tubby Smith at Virginia Commonwealth University. Those teams made it into the NCAA tournament. The game was beginning to change and my father opted for a more stable career in business. Also, my brother and I were headed to college. He’s still in touch with John Beilein and Tubby Smith.

The last four teams standing are rostered with players who have stayed in school and not the “one-and-done” types who opt for the big money of the NBA after one season—often never realizing their potential.

Dad and I will be watching on Monday night and speaking at half time. My lifelong basketball journey has involved seeking out and getting to know my father.  Selected for publication in the inaugural issue of Open City by editor and basketball junkie Thomas Beller, "Head Fake" ends with the following lines:

Basketball is love

It takes a soft touch

from long range

and lots of practice.

"Notes on the Final Four" [by Dean Smith]

Part 1: The Cavalier Curse

The first week of the NCAA basketball tournament is my favorite time of the year. I’ve always been addicted to the possibility of a Cinderella story and this year I found myself in a precarious position. I’d just watched the University of Virginia win the ACC tournament in Brooklyn and enjoy what was arguably the best regular season in the school’s history along with a number one ranking for the home stretch of the season.

I’d managed to resist the temptation of wishing for a Final Four appearance or even a championship for my alma mater for the entire season. As a Virginia fan, I knew better. My team’s modus operandi involved squeezing the life out of the opposition with a boa constrictor-like defense and a methodical offense predicated on screens and passing to drain the shot clock. Michigan, Kansas, and Villanova all had talented teams that could adjust their tempo--accelerating or de-accelerating--to match their opponent's style. We only had one gear and in a tournament that could be a liability. Those teams emerged as the first three of my Final Four teams. I then violated all of my rules of bracket selection and went with my heart--penciling Virginia into the championship position of my office pool. I even went as far as to wear a Virginia sweatshirt to work. I'm now convinced these behaviors helped disturb the universe. 

On Tuesday of that week, I learned the Cavaliers would be without DeAndre Hunter, a redshirt freshman who had become an “X” factor for the team. Amidst a collection of players who fit Coach Tony Bennet’s system of defense and ball control, Hunter took games over with his athleticism. He single-handedly silenced 27,000 Syracuse fans in early February with a 15-point outburst that defined the margin of victory.

When I received the news of Hunter’s broken hand, I immediately thought of the Cavalier Curse. I served as an usher during seven-foot four center Ralph Sampson’s illustrious tenure at UVA and remembered in 1984 when guard Othell Wilson injured his foot, dashing all hope of a national championship that year. My namesake, Dean Smith tortured the Cavaliers as well back then--shortening games with his four corners offense. When I attended UVA, Coach Holland's dog shared my name. (How I was named and my basketball lineage will be the subject of another basketball post). I've learned to cultivate as much irony as possible in life. 

Back to the curse. In 1990, the Virginia football team incurred a costly personnel infraction with their number one ranking on the line against Georgia Tech and had a touchdown nullified for too many men on the field.  The touchdown would have allowed them to win by four points instead of losing by three. Also, one of their top receivers had fallen down a stairwell in a construction site the night before to end his career.

There had already been enough mishaps over the years. Surely, this year was going to be different.

Top seed Virginia faced the 16^thseed UMBC in the first round. I cringed. The games makers were definitely messing with my mind.

Unlike most of the nation, I knew the University of Maryland Baltimore County Retrievers basketball program well. I’d been a ball boy along with my brother for its early basketball teams and had spent several hundred hours in its gym. My father Snuffy Smith was an assistant coach for the UMBC Retrievers in the late 1970s. He recruited scrappy local players that would earn the school their first ever appearance in an NCAA tournament. Dad coached under Billy Jones—the first African American player to start in the ACC for Maryland. 

Division II basketball in Baltimore during those days was blood sport and neighborhood bragging rights were often at stake. The Baltimore area produced tremendous basketball talent and the rivalries and personalities were every bit as interesting as Lefty Driesell’s Terrapin squad in College Park. Marvin “The Human Eraser” Webster dominated for Morgan State, Brian “Gumby” Matthews played like NBA star Bobby Dandridge for Towson State and Ronald Smith roamed the middle for the University of Baltimore and often arrived at the gym in a long mink coat. Riding the team bus and sitting at the end of the bench, my brother and I were mesmerized by these characters. 

This year’s UMBC team was coached by Ryan Odom, son of Dave Odom who coached at Virginia during my undergraduate days in Charlottesville. Leading Wake Forest to seven straight NCAA appearances, Dave was a cerebral tactician who undoubtedly had shared thoughts with his son about how to dismantle the top seed and number one ranked team in the tournament. Ryan's pedigree was enough to cause alarm. 

Tied 21-21 at the half, UMBC spread the floor in the second and quickly established a 12-point lead. Unheralded point guard K.J. Maura penetrated the Virginia defense and dished to his teammates Joe Sherburne and Jarius Lyles. They hit their shots--each one stabbing the bull and dulling its senses. Panic set in on the Virginia sideline. For the first time in the history of the tournament, a number one seed lost to a sixteenth. Virginia had finished the season 31-2--but records meant nothing. Everybody in the big dance starts 0-0. 

Writing in the Southern Reviewin 1991, John T. Irwin described a Cavalier as someone “equally adept at penning a witty sonnet or making a dashing cavalry charge.”  Unfortunately, Virginia struggled with finding any kind of form let alone a sonnet against the Retrievers. They missed shots, defensive assignments, and failed to mount any kind of cavalry charge. UMBC obliterated Bennet’s impenetrable “pack-line” defensive fortress. The Retrievers trounced the Cavaliers by twenty points in the most embarrassing loss in tournament history.

"You guys and dad were on the ground floor of the program," my stepmother texted me. 

It was bittersweet. 

So much for the utility of being a soldier and a poet—only the University of Virginia could play its best season ever and suffer one of the worst losses in any sport. It may have been Thomas Jefferson who started the curse with this quote:

Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind.

The Loyola Ramblers now fill the hole in my bracket. I did get my Cinderella story after all. To add even more irony, I played basketball for the Loyola Ramblers in high school outside Chicago. 

 

 

 

Wild Thing [by Dean Smith]

I will be forever nineteen driving a white Impala convertible down the Pacific Coast Highway...– Wild Thing, Campbell McGrath

The Baltimore Orioles’ season ended abruptly on Tuesday night with a walk-off three-run homer by Blue Jay Edwin Encarnacion in a Wildcard playoff game. The orange-and-black hot air balloon of the Orioles soared across the heavens through the All-Star break, clubbing round-trippers at a record pace only to descend slowly back to earth through a hole in the Toronto SkyDome roof, collapsing in a rumpled swath of canvas on the infield.

Thirty–three years ago, the Orioles last appeared in a World Series. I left my poetry workshop co-taught by Charles Wright and Gregory Orr, borrowed a friend’s metallic blue Volkswagen Beetle and drove three hours from the University of Virginia to Memorial Stadium to watch Mike Boddicker defeat the Phillies 4-1 in the second game. The Orioles won the series.

On the brink of the World Series in 1997, we lost an excruciating game to the Cleveland Indians at Camden Yards with Tony Fernandez lining a solo shot into the right field bleachers to end our season in extra innings. A chilling rain fell upon the city and fourteen losing seasons followed.

Last week, I stayed close to the radio and monitored every game and score that affected the Orioles making it to the postseason. The Orioles were fighting for a consolation prize known as a Wildcard berth and faced a steep challenge playing both the Blue Jays and the Yankees away to end the season. The Rodgers Centre in Toronto has been a horrific experience for the better part of a decade and 161st Street in the Bronx is where would-be playoff teams go to die.

After taking two of three from the Jays, the Birds battled the elements in the first game against the Yankees launching two home runs in one inning for the eleventh time this season into a driving sideways rain to win 8-1. They were in control in the second game on Saturday, leading 3-2 entering the seventh. Manager Buck Showalter had walked a tightrope with his starter Wade Miley through six innings, one of the best outings from the veteran hurler since joining the O’s. Tyler Austin homered and tied the game. Leaving Miley in was criticized by the media and it ultimately led to the Orioles ending up in Toronto for the one-game playoff on Tuesday.

The criticism was nothing like the media storm he has faced in the last few days for not using his closer Zach Britton on Tuesday night.

Buck rarely uses his closer in a tie game. Yet he had called Britton's number during an extra inning game in Toronto on July 31^st of this year in the same situation and the Orioles won. Britton’s untouchable 2016 season has propelled him into contention for a Cy Young award. In 47 appearances, he delivered 47 saves – a major league record. This time Showalter and Britton both watched Ubaldo Jimenez serve up a three run dinger.

Campbell McGrath’s poem “Wild Thing” is, on one level, about a former closer who played for the Cubs and Phillies named Mitch Williams. It’s also about the “inexorable closer” of death. It's one of my favorite poems of his from the book American Noise.

Look, out in the bullpen, he’s warming up:

The main man, the big guy, the stopper, the ace…

…he’s coming in to face you, he’s making his way slowly across the grass.

The inexorable closer is coming, believe me,

it isn’t Mitch Williams.

As the innings rolled by after the Blue Jays tied the game 2-2 in the fifth, I felt a sense of impending doom. The Orioles couldn't salvage a hit after the sixth inning. They lunged and flailed and were impatient. Sluggers Machado, Davis and Jones looked hapless as the innings wore on. Buck knows his hitters and what they are capable of. It was life or death, feast or famine, hit or miss for the offense this season, no in-between. Pitched away all night, they weren’t looking to hit to the opposite field. The home-run machine was off-balance, anxious, and ineffective.

Death came in the form of Blue Jays pitcher Francisco Liriano who was settling in for the long haul. Buck countered with his best available option to play a certain kind of long game – more a testimony to the lack of quality starting pitching than anything else. As flawed as the Orioles are, it may have been his greatest managing job ever to lead them this far.

Ubaldo’s first pitch was wild and high. Gravity was upon them, the balloon’s gondola appearing in the center of the retractable roof. Jimenez looked fatigued. In one season, he had gone from goat to hero to goat again—and likely now, gone for good.

Two days removed, I look at Buck's decision as a kind of euthanasia--a way to end the pain and suffering. I've watched baseball for forty-five years and know what a World Series contender looks like. These Orioles are not there yet. There are too many intangibles in baseball to catch lightning in a bottle. That is, unless you have a Madison Bumgarner. Maybe now the Birds will finally obtain the starting pitching they’ve needed for at least three years and Zach Britton will make his way slowly across the grass for something bigger than a one game playoff.

Part IV: Nibblers and Snow Cones [by Dean Smith]

Oriole starter Wade Miley took the loss Sunday against the Yankees. Since joining the O’s a few weeks ago, his name has been nibbling at the edges of my consciousness.

I’d seen him pitch in person once before.

On April 26^th, 2015, Miley started for the Boston Red Sox. It was the day after a riot swept through downtown Baltimore and included the destruction of a police car and widespread acts of vandalism. Peaceful demonstrations in response to the death of Freddie Gray suddenly spiraled out of control. Just before the game, protesters clashed with Red Sox and Oriole fans alike a short distance from the gates of the ballpark.

I attended that Sunday afternoon game believing the Orioles had lost the night before. The coverage on WJZ had been preempted by the riot and the Birds were behind by a run entering the tenth. Amidst the swirl of helicopters and sirens, the Orioles tied the score. David Lough then drilled a liner into the right field seats to win the game. Still, a newscaster reported that dejected O’s fans were filing toward the parking garages. Baseball was the last thing on anyone’s mind as the camera from above tracked a mob smashing storefronts.

A day after the melee, Oriole bats thrashed Miley and the Red Sox 18-7.

***

Now an Oriole, Miley lost 5-2 to the Yankees. He was picked up at the trade deadline to bolster the starting rotation and pitched better than previous outings but not well enough for the win. Now their only left-handed starter, Miley is a low-risk acquisition brought in to eat innings before the bullpen takes over.

The Yankees capitalized on Miley’s walks in the first to jump out to a 3-0 lead. He nibbled and painted the corners and his curve fooled some hitters but it wasn’t enough. He lasted longer than the game I saw more than a year ago.

The Yankees never looked back and the Orioles squandered a host of chances to score. New York veteran Chase Headley, reduced to a limited role in the youth movement drove in two runs along with teammate Austin Romine. They waited for Miley to throw strikes. Yankee pitcher Joel Pineda craftily escaped several jams with a nasty slider that dipped under Oriole bats. Still eyeing a trip to the postseason, Manager Joe Girardi said it was the most important game of the year for his team. Girardi is masterfully giving experience to his young players and milking the veterans to keep their postseason aspirations alive.

Miley is 1-4 since joining the team. There are a number of issues related to his acquisition that are vexing to the average Orioles fan. We’ve known since before last season that the pitching staff needed an upgrade. Pitching talent has left Baltimore in recent years. Eduardo Rodriguez was traded for relief specialist Andrew Miller in 2014. He came within a few outs of pitching a no-hitter on Sunday for the Red Sox. Cy Young winner Jake Arrieta now pitches for the Cubs – and that one doesn’t sting quite as much because Jake was floundering in Baltimore and needed a change of scenery away from the threshing machine of the AL East. Wei-Yin Chen and Miguel Gonzalez left before the season and you wonder whether the team would now be better off with them.

General Manager Dan Duquette has done brilliant things but Miley hasn’t been one of them thus far. Throw in free-agent acquisition Ubaldo Jimenez whose delivery often resembles a jockey rearing a horse onto its hind legs and tachycardia-inducing Yovani Gallardo and there are nights when it’s better not to listen at all. These pitchers continuously peck at the strike zone and everyone in the park fidgets and bites their nails.

Just as I wrote that sentence, Jimenez finished two-hitting the Tampa Bay Rays this afternoon. The Yankees toppled the Blue Jays and the Orioles crept closer to the division lead. The baseball gods are listening.

***      

Baltimore writer and former Sun reporter Rafael Alvarez predicted months ago that the division would go down to the final weekend. He claims Buck Showalter’s incessant tinkering and fine-tuning is worth twenty wins a year. Alvarez mostly penned Season Two of The Wire (Frank Sobotka and the Baltimore docks) and has written tantalizingly beautiful stories about his beloved Crabtown including the book, Orlo and Leini. His latest collection is Tales from the Holyland.

After that Sunday game in 2015, my eight year-old son Quinn and I drove over to Little Italy for dinner. We parked and he wouldn’t get out of the car. He was afraid of the riots. I told him they were over. He stayed there for five minutes.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

My hometown had terrified him.

I didn’t know that the next day would be one of the darkest in the city’s history. It was manager Buck Showalter who later put things into perspective. He told the media that he’d never faced the challenges of being a black person in America. He understood the emotion but he couldn't comment because he didn't know what living their lives was like. He went on to say that he wanted the Orioles to be a rallying cry for the city in everything the team did—not just baseball. You understood clearly in that moment that Showalter was far more than a baseball coach. 

Over Labor Day weekend across the city, nineteen people were shot. The 2016 Orioles are doing everything in their power to make a positive statement. 

Rafael Alvarez writes:

Sports radio shows this season have frequently accepted calls blaming a winning team's current poor attendance on the rioting of April 2015 which led to the unprecedented sight of a ballgame being played in a stadium empty of fans. A pennant this year--not just a wild card win or a league championship playoff--would make all that moot as quickly as it takes a Mark “Trumbo Jumbo” to leave the Yard. A 2016 pennant for the Baltimore Orioles would be a gift from the baseball gods to one of the greatest sports cities in America.

A city I will always love.

***

Tonight, the Yankees held off a furious comeback by the division-leading Blue Jays and the Orioles beat the Rays, 11-2. Manny Machado belted a towering grand slam to deep centerfield in the droll jai alai stadium in Tampa Bay. 

Down 7-5 in the ninth, the Blue Jays loaded the bases in the Bronx with one out and the Yankees behemoth of a closer, Dellin Betances couldn't finish the job. He induced a grounder from Justin Upton and couldn't cover first base in time. The Jays were within one. Girard replaced Betances--despite the pitcher waving his manager back to the dugout. Blake Parker came in and fooled the dangerous Kevin Pillar with a change-up for strike three. He almost a allowed a run to score on a wild pitch but Gary Sanchez somehow kept the overthrown slider that bounced in the left-handed hitter's batter's box from going past him. Parker then faced Justin Smoak who hit a deep drive to left field. Brett Gardner, the soul and grit of this Bomber team raced back to the wall and jumped up to make a snow cone catch to save the game. 

"The greatest win of the year!" yelled announcer Michael Kay. 

The Orioles are one game out. The Red Sox are leading the Padres and could be tied with Toronto by the end of the night. The Yankees are hanging in there only four and a half games back. 

The race is on.  

 

Dean Smith

Part II: Home Run [by Dean Smith]

The Orioles took Wee Willie Keeler’s advice last night and “hit them where they aint.”

Adam Jones lifted a seeing-eye RBI single to centerfield that broke a scoreless tie and four home runs took care of the rest in an 8-0 victory. The win boosted their record to 44-24 at Camden Yards. The Orioles have dismantled the opposition at home this year as through they were using mallets and shell crackers at a crab feast.

The Birds ended the game in the second inning. They struck quickly and surgically unleashing a cannonade of home runs to stun the visiting New Yorkers and take a six run lead. In the third Manny Machado homered to make it 8-0 where it stayed. The Yanks managed two hits.

Even though I could watch the game on cable, I listened. The sudden explosions of Oriole home runs, coming in bunches and the frenzied voices of Joe Angell and Fred Manfra slicing into the silence and breaking up the mundane reportage have made this season unique and exhilarating. I held my daughter Julia’s arm.

“Listen sweetheart, there it goes,” I said.

“Is that the Ravens?” She looked up from her anime.

Home runs taught me to read. I discovered a whole range of exciting verbs in the Baltimore Sun when I seven and mesmerized by Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson and Boog Powell who regularly “clouted,” “crushed,” “demolished,” “socked,” “clobbered,” and “whacked” balls out of the park. Though I love pitcher’s duels and abhor statistics, the home run is the most exciting event in sports.

Marianne Moore wrote in the poem Baseball & Writing, “the massive run need not be everything.” The Orioles have hit 213 homers. The Major League record is 264 by the 1997 Seattle Mariners. The home run, the tater, the big fly, the dinger, the moon shot, the jack, the big fly, and the souvenir—whatever you call them--the 2016 Birds can't live without them. 

Orioles’ radio announcer Jim Hunter called Manny Machado’s third inning round-tripper “a majestic blast.” The ball traveled high above the stadium before landing deep into the left field bleachers. You can see it here in the 4^th spot.

Campbell McGrath has a “majestic” description of an Eddie Murray home run in Captalist Poem #25:

And when Eddie swings at 1-1 pitch we know it’s gone before the ball rockets off his bat in a tremendous arc, moving slowly and even gently through the air, perfectly visible, stage-lit against the deep green of the grass, the right fielder not moving, just turning his head to watch it go, and it’s like the perfect arc of youth…

That’s just the overture in the greatest description of a home run I’ve ever seen in print. There are 250 more words that follow before the ball lands in the bullpen. That took place in Memorial Stadium. McGrath’s Capitalism is a grand slam of a book—please bring it back in print.

Roger Angell wrote eloquently about Memorial Stadium but Camden Yards is a poet’s ballpark. Its sightlines lines are pristine and breathtaking. The piece de resistance is the longest and narrowest warehouse in the United States, a vestige of the Baltimore & Ohio railroad that looks on its south end like the face of locomotive and defines right field. On Eutaw Street looking north, still within the confines, the Bromo Seltzer tower looms and for a second you are in a foreign city. George Herman Ruth, Sr. owned a saloon now covered by centerfield and where the young Babe hurled stones at police officers landing him in Brother Matthias’ care at St. Mary’s Industrial for Boys. Edgar Allen Poe also lived in the neighborhood and I imagine them both commiserating in eaves of the left field bleachers. Eddie Poe and the Babe holding court with the ghosts of ushers and beer men.

Even with a big lead, I still watched the game until the final out—keeping tabs on the Blue Jays, Tigers, and Red Sox.

The American League East is another slugfest this year. I’m not a Toronto fan and have never been going back to their beginnings in those robin’s egg colored space suits—all the way back to when Alfredo Griffin played shortstop. They lost in Tampa Bay. The Sox obliterated the A’s. With Betts, Bradley, Jr., and Bogaerts driving the offense and a solid pitching staff with David Price, they may take just the division.

The Yanks are at bay for the moment. The Orioles gained a game on the Blue Jays but stayed tied with the Tigers who beat Kansas City.

I know one thing. The Orioles will keep swinging for the fences.

Part III: Pitcher's Duel [by Dean Smith]

The essence of the rivalry between the Orioles and the Yankees revealed itself last night. Tense, cerebral, nail-biting, four-hour pitching duels have defined their contests over the past three decades. Add managers Buck Showalter and Joe Girardi into the mix, two of the game's great tacticians and you're in for a satisfying nine course movable feast.

In a season of decent outings and little to show as far as wins for their efforts, C.C. Sabathia and Kevin Gausman hurled gems last night and the game turned on three plays. 

In the 4th, the Yankees loaded the bases with one out. With the count full, Gausman uncorked a mid-80s splitter that dove to the bottom of the strike zone. Starlin Castro couldn't hold up and swung at ball four. The game hung in the balance and Castro had the chance to alter it. Brian McCann hit a fly ball to deep center for the final out. 

In the bottom of the inning, an error by the rookie right fielder Aaron Judge on a Chris Davis single allowed Mark Trumbo to score from second base. 

Sabathia brilliantly worked the edges last night. He relies on location to confuse the hitters -- extending them little-by-little into his zones. He mixes speeds and locations and then sneaks fastballs by hitters. It's difficult to pick up the ball because of his mammoth presence and his ability to hide the pill. He has great success against Baltimore but he made one mistake. In the fifth with two out, Sabathia left a ball up and in the middle of the plate for Adam Jones, who connected for his 26th home run. 

Writers often talk about persona. Pitchers are no different. Since losing his Kent Tekulve spectacles and growing a goatee, Kevin Gausman is on a streak of nineteen scoreless innings. He no longer grooves ninety-five mile an hour fastballs down the middle of the plate. His ball bends and darts as it reaches the hitter. 

Both teams played solid defense and O's third baseman Manny Machado once again flashed his prowess on a ball hit by Brett Gardner. Orioles closer Zach Britton notched his 42nd consecutive save in preserving the win.

This series is the exact opposite of what happened last week in New York when the Yanks took the first two games. American League East teams spend so much time trying to beat each other, they often lose touch with the rest of baseball where the Cubs, Giants, Dodgers, Rangers, Mets and Nationals lie in wait. 

The Orioles gained a game in the Wildcard hunt and crept closer to the division leading Blue Jays.  

Only 30,000 fans showed up last night and much has been written including this screed by Thom Loverro in the Washington Times as to why fans aren't going to Oriole games this year. Was it last year's riots that led to the first Major League baseball game ever in any empty stadium? Are the Orioles bad marketers? Are tickets too expensive? It made me recall a moment in Fenway Park during the 1990 playoffs when the Red Sox pulled Roger Clemens after six innings and a one-run lead. Fans headed for the exits. They knew how bad their bullpen was.

There were enough people there for me to hear the boos directed at Mark Teixeira, the Severna Park native and Mt. St. Joe grad who spurned the Orioles offer in 2009. That's now lasted seven years. It's a fickle city--a place where former Oriole pitcher turned Yankee Mike Mussina is referred to as Judas on message boards.  

The last two nights, Oriole pitching has shutout the Yankees. Going back to last Sunday's game, the Yankees haven't scored a run against the Orioles in 27 innings. The last time that happened to the Bombers was in 1973. Oriole starters have been untouchable. The lack of off season moves in the pitching department is a sore spot with O's fans but it's being dealt with.

According to some, Baltimore has always been "a football town with a baseball problem." Legendary manager Earl Weaver was jealous of the city's love for the Colts. Take the poet Moira Egan who hails from Baltimore. Moira and I were born in the same hospital only months apart. Our fathers ran the streets of West Baltimore together during the late '50s. She happens to be in town this weekend from Rome, Italy--attending a wedding and partaking in crab feasts.

"I'm more of a football gal, but when I home, I get the O's report every morning," she writes.

She once told me a story about her grandfather Ed Egan who attended St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys a couple of years after Babe Ruth. He somehow ended up with one of Babe's baseball bats. 

"He needed an axe handle, so he took that bat and made one."

That's Baltimore.

 

Dean Smith 

Part I: Off Day [by Dean Smith]

Back and forth, back and forth--

my one point of rest

is the orange and black

Orioles swinging nest!

An off day in a pennant race is torture. Last evening, I paced the room mumbling lines from Robert Lowell poems. There is only insomnia now. After leading the division for most of the season, the Baltimore Orioles are tied for the second wildcard spot and fading.

It’s not our year. This mantra has a calming influence. The team has been assembled like a Long Island slow-pitch softball team in a perpetual home run derby. Mark Trumbo, Manny Machado, Adam Jones, Jonathan Schoop and Chris Davis have clubbed 152 home runs combined --but that's the only offensive weapon the team possesses here of late. The defense and bullpen are solid but the Orioles starting pitching has flown south too early. They've lost their ace, Chris Tillman to the disabled list. The seasons rests on the shoulders of his supporting cast. 

I’ve been an Oriole fan since I was old enough to crawl. I watched the O’s dismantle the Dodgers in 1966 on my father’s knee at Memorial Stadium. I wept alone in the apartment clubhouse as Met fans spilled onto the field in ’69. In ‘70, my dad took me out of school in a blue blazer and knee socks (e.g. John-John attire) to Memorial Stadium on the day that Dave McNally hit the only World Series grand slam in the history of baseball, destroying the will of the Big Red Machine. I can still see the ball going over the left field wall. 

A few years later, my first lines of poetry appeared on a poster in the left field bleachers: Yankees Beware/Here Comes Paul Blair.

I’ve spent a lifetime in Birdland—including an ear tuned to nearly every game during 14 consecutive losing seasons with one exception. In the summer of 2001, I began dating my wife Christina and stopped listening in July.

“You hid the baseball obsession well,” she told me after the wedding.

I rode the rails to the Bronx in 2012 to watch C. C. Sabathia hold my team at arms length in the deciding game of the playoffs. The largest human being on a pitching mound that I’ve ever seen, his pants rippling in the wind, he stood there like an installation in Monument Park.

I sat in the icy rain warming myself with an oozing tranche of Nathan’s cheese fries until Curtis Granderson ended the Orioles season by sending a ball just inside the right field foul pole. Even in victory, the new Yankee Stadium was as quiet as a Forest Hills tennis court.

The Yankee fans knew it wasn’t their year.

Now I listen to Oriole games under the under starlit skies of Western New York. We haven’t won a World Series since 1983. We were also close in 1979 but the Pirates and Willie Stargell denied us. Poet Campbell McGrath had followed the O’s that year observing in Capitalism Poem #25:

…the crowd hums with energy, excited but not all that nervous, certain of victory, because this is the magic summer of 1979 and fate is on the side of Baltimore.

The recharged Bronx Bombers are coming to Camden Yards for a Labor Day weekend series that begins tonight. Last weekend, they bludgeoned the O’s, 29-7 in the first two games in New York. The Orioles thankfully salvaged the Sunday finale.

New York showcased an arsenal of young sluggers including their latest phenom Gary Sanchez. His name sounds like he could be a poet. He’s already accomplished a Ruthian feat that no other player in major league history can lay claim to—not Mantle, Ruth, or Henry Aaron. He hit homeruns in 11 of his first 23 major league games and three against the Orioles.

That’s right, the six-foot two, two hundred and twenty pound poet Gary Sanchez.

The Yankee’s are morphing into the future before our eyes. They’ve gone from an aging and moribund franchise in decline to an energized, playoff-contending ball club. There hasn't been a youth movement like this since Buck Showalter was their manager.  They’re only two and a half games behind the O’s. After 23 straight winning seasons, the Yanks define failure as not winning the World Series.

They always scare me. 

The Orioles are just trying to stay alive. Orioles skipper,  Buck Showalter is the key to keeping us in the playoff hunt. He manages his team during the course of a season like a poet revising a 162-line poem. He tinkers and tweaks and sometimes sleeps in his office. This Ogden Nash poem hangs on a wall there.

 

You Can't Kill an Oriole

 

Wee Willie Keeler

Runs through the town,

All along Charles Street,

In his nightgown.

Belling like a hound dog,

Gathering the pack:

Hey, Wilbert Robinson,

The Orioles are back!

Hey, Hughie Jennings!

Hey, John McGraw!

I got fire in my eye

And tobacco in my jaw!

Hughie, hold my halo.

I'm sick of being a saint:

Got to teach youngsters

To hit 'em where they ain't.

 

I can’t wait to hear the words, “Play Ball!”

 

Dean Smith is a poet, sportswriter and director of Cornell University Press. He grew up in Baltimore and learned to catch fly balls by mimicking centerfielder Paul Blair. He's written about baseball and poetry here.  His book of poems American Boy was published by Washington Writer's Publishing House in 2000. He also published Never Easy, Never Pretty about the Baltimore Ravens Super Bowl season with Temple University Press in 2013. He is a regular contributor to PressBox Magazine and is a poetry editor for The Baltimore Review.