Ode to Old Baseball Equipment
Walking the neighborhood, I saw an estate sale,
the kind where the closets and attic have been emptied,
everything sorted, then spread onto sawhorse tables
set up on the lawn. There was a favorite chair,
dishes from family dinners, suits long out of style
but saved for one reason or another, probably graduations
or weddings, and some well-worn hand tools
that kept the family’s house in repair, their car running.
And over on the side was a table with old sports equipment,
a golf set with a club or two missing, some fishing tackle,
and a couple of old ball mitts – a Rawlings, the Stan Musial model,
the one with three fingers (good starter glove) and
a catcher’s mitt, also a Rawlings, the Ed Bailey (top-of-the-line),
both oiled and each holding a scuffed, yellowed ball in its pocket
shaped to someone’s liking. And a 32- inch Jackie Robinson,
thick handle for hitting bleeders when jammed inside.
Did the one who set these relics on the lawn, then
priced them with a stroke of a Sharpie – scrawls
on the webbing of the mitts, on the barrel of the bat –
know anything about the nights when a man
rubbed these mitts with neatsfoot, slapping his fist
into the pocket, tracing his finger along the hairline crack
in the handle of his bat, while the years added up,
along with some regrets, dreaming of summer days,
the fragrance of fresh cut grass before gametime,
the sound of infield chatter, and taste of dirt in his nostrils
when blocking the plate as a runner slides into home,
remembering those moments when the sun is high,
following a pop-up until it disappears into that fiery haze,
then reappears as a luminous line falling into his mitt?