Poem written just before turning 50.
Mickey Mantle didn't believe he'd make it to 50,
a book told me.
David told me it was 40, actually.
The Babe only just made it past 50.
The termites have got me, Babe told Connie.
Dad, Steve Carey, Albert Notley Jr. none of them made 50.
Bill Russell just left at 88.
Beulah was mad she wouldn't make 100
when cancer came her way at 94.
I dreamed when she was in hip replacement surgery in 2011
the doc put a little red, white and blue ABA basketball in there
to keep it all together.
Is Claudell Washington really gone, Rickey?
I'll never be older than Phil Niekro.
I'll always be older than Juan Soto.
Come home, Brittney Griner.
Be let go and brought home.
Where's that goddamned bridge, Il Punto?
They say the Bostonians say Bucky Fucking
Dent, a sentence, a poem.
But Judy, our neighbor, who dated Adam the rocker,
whispered, Fucky Dent to me once in the old daze.
Teddy Higuera and Larry Gura, Tippy Martinez
and Scott McGregor, Yankee killers all.
But George Brett was a fucking Balrog,
a demon from the ancient world.
Actually, no, he was Morgoth, the Dark Lord.
Edgar Martinez was the fucking Balrog.
[LAUGHTER]