As a person of limited substance, I have always been drawn to both light verse and baseball. In the first grade we were asked to recite a poem in front of the class. Amidst various renditions of Roses are Red , Jack and Jill , and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star , I offered up Ogden Nash's Lineup for Yesterday: An ABC of Baseball Immortals -- all 26 stanzas and 104 lines. In this popular poem - first published by SPORT Magazine in 1949 and seen HERE - I had discovered the masterful confluence of my two prime interests. I was hooked young.and never lost my love for this unique work. In fact, more than 50 years removed from that classroom, I still recite it to myself when I need to pass time waiting for the water to boil or the timer on the microwave to run its course. With that in mind - and desperately avoiding whatever task actually needed to be done - I attempted an homage to Mr. Nash with a modern "Lineup" comprised of the ...
When my father passed away, my mother asked me to write a tribute to him. Doing so was extraordinarily cathartic and helped me through a difficult time. Despite that, it was not an easy decision to do the same thing upon my mother’s passing. Where my father had the overblown traits of a fictional character, she was far more nuanced and I was concerned that I might not see my Mom the same way my siblings had. Because of that, I drafted a tribute and asked my sister Joan to edit and enhance my thoughts. The result of that process is what follows. This small passage was extremely painful to compose. I had the time to more leisurely craft Arthur’s tribute and I’d catch myself laughing aloud as I recounted the stories of his life. More to the point, that experience was made easier by my mother’s presence, her guidance, her suggestions and her appreciation for the finished product. This time I shed tears through every page...