The Sinkerball Pitcher
They watch me shrug on this rise of earth
and I don’t seem much different than sod, I know.
I’m no rangy king atop the diamond,
but short in height and movement, delicate,
my cap half-white with salt. And yet the grass
with a gentle hiss claims each hitter’s grounder;
I teach the crowd restraint with every out.
This thing I’m doing, pitching, is a way
for me to think, a settling, a going
over things. I claw the resin, bend
my cap, the comforting specifics,
and having shaded the shape of my forehead,
I let my nails pierce the ball, then set,
and send it like a scout, throw by throw,
into its hidden fate, just feet away.
It might find the catcher’s mitt just inches
from the ground, making only a soft pop,
or get sent foul--or loud just past my ears.
It might be sweet. It was sweet back in Georgia,
my fingers wet with soil, handling seeds
on the farm. The spread-out summer light
got even to the hazel, made it glow.
That August was Coors and the hot plastic
of pickups. And I think of the girl I touched
at single-A Modesto, in that light rain
that seemed sent straight from the pea-green sea
to wet the poppies on her dress, to coax my arm
above her head to keep her curls there.
But we just stocked kisses against our end.
That paste of clouds cleared. I got called up.
The angle of my arm (low three-quarter)
puts my signature on throws. Wheeling slow
and sober under the small sky, I pitch,
fall off the mound; fifty feet along,
the ball’s concealed limit appears,
and it dives, and gentles the batter.
– john rauschenberg