Right off the Bat: Baseball Ballads

A lively collection of comic and nostalgic poems that celebrate and lampoon the sport through short ballads and verse. The pieces sketch players, pitchers, umpires, managers, and ardent fans, alternate playful rhymes with homespun anecdotes, regional speech, and mock-heroic tone, and range from sentimental reminiscence about childhood pickup games to satirical jabs at professional leagues, contracts, and spectators. Interspersed with illustrated vignettes, the verses use timing, wordplay, and rhythm to evoke the sport’s rituals, rivalries, superstitions, and the everyday pleasures and frustrations of playing, watching, and loving the game.