WEBVTT

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Well, this is a poem about
baseball, fortunately

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or unfortunately.

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I don't know very
much about baseball,

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as you'll be able to
tell from the poem.

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And I'm not even sure I
like baseball that much.

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But I wanted to write a
poem for a friend of mine

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who loves baseball.

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And so I said, well, I'll try.

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And I got interested
in the difference

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between mitts and gloves.

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This is going back.

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This shows how much I don't
know about contemporary baseball

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because I'm sure that in
contemporary baseball,

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every position has its own
specially designed glove.

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But when I was a child,
there was the catcher's mitt

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and there was the
first baseman's mitt.

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And then everybody else
wore the same kind of glove.

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So I wrote about it as if
that was still the case.

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I don't know what the
contemporary case is.

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It's called "Mitts and Gloves."

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And it sort of
takes you takes us

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through the entire
team and talks

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about what can fill this
glove, what can fill the mitt.

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"Mitts and Gloves."

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"The catcher holds a
kangaroo fetus in his.

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The first basemans grips
a portable hair blower.

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But everyone else just
stares into theirs,

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punching a fist
into it, stomped,

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trying to come up with
a proper occupant.

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The pitcher, for example,
thinks a good stout padlock

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would go right in there.

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But the left fielder, perhaps
influenced by his environment,

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opts for a beer can.

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The shortstop, informative about
the ratio of power to size,

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says, transistor,
you know, radio.

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The second baseman however,
he just stands and grins

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and flapjacks his from hand
to hand and back again.

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Second base, dopey as always.

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Alas, cried third baseman,
this void of vacancy,

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pure space beyond our
defiant emptiness.

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Abyss haunted by the kiss
of balls we have not missed.

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O ab-sontz, deh-lease...

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The right fielder is
disgusted at this.

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He like snorts, hawks, spits
into his and curses her.

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Look, heck, my chaw of
tobac fits it perfeck.

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The team goes mum,
cowhided by the rectitude

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of his position, the logic.

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Only the center fielder
who was going back

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while this discussion
was going on,

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putting jets on his cleats to
catch the proverbial long one.

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Does he perhaps
have a suggestion?

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Question mark.

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As for the ball, often midair,
it all dreamily scratches

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its stitches and wonders what
it will look like tomorrow,

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when it wakes up and the
doctor removes his bandages.

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Coda.

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Mitts versus gloves.

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Mitts are white collar,
high tech, specialists, pro,

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and therefore worthier?

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The glove on the
other hand, human,

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and can be worn
interchangeably by all players,

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is dirty, low down, dumb.

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I'm forced to admire
the mitt, but free,

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in theory, to love gloves."

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[APPLAUSE]

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As you can see, I don't
know much about baseball.

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