O EBBETS FIELD!

It had a small room that not too many knew about,
Near the roof, where the Old Man went to compose himself for five minutes
After Cookie busted up Bevens' no-hitter.
A friend said, "He doesn't worry about this. He's seen too many
Like this."
But nothing was ever like this, and the Old Man stayed there alone,
Coming out composed.
Even Sisler, no fan, jumped out of his seat that day
When Miksis carried the mail.
MacPhail painted it red, white and blue in wartime.
Our Dodgers were in the race at the end and blew the first game.
She peered at Branca warming up. "Yez'd
Better win this one,
Ya bum!"
And he did.
But the Phillies (the Phillies!?) won the pennant.
It was where Jackie baited pitchers off first and the
Entire enemy off third.
O Ebbets Field, my Ebbets Field!
One weekday afternoon 2,000 drifted in. "Hit 'em like ya usta,
Jackie!" and he did. "Yea, Jackie!"
Pee Wee stood in the dugout and looked with Gil, Duke and Carl.
"You think that was going in?" It did.
"I didn't," Pee Wee said. They agreed this time Pee Wee missed one.
What does a batting-practice homer count for anyway?
It was where they made a foot-in-the-bucket hitter out of Campy.
The pitchers put him in the dirt.
But nobody
Tangled with him coming home—by desire or design.
There were Zack Wheat and Dazzy, Mungo and Blimp Phelps, Del
Bissonette and Frenchy, Preacher, Dolf, Babe Herman, Ersk,
Red and Gladys and Hilda,
Leo and Charlie and Barney. But the place was
Uncle Robbie's.
Max Carey and the mighty Casey.
Stengel explained the right-field court tennis game to Mantle.
"He looks at me like I'm born 59 and manage the Yankees ever since."
It belonged to Ebbets when baseball was in its infancy, the
McKeevers, Mulveys, Brooklyn Trust, McLaughlin, John L. Smith
And Rickey. Who knows?
It kept lawyers in business.
The steel rotted beneath crumbling concrete, and not too many people knew.
The People's Cherce dwelt here. What's more important?
The first day MacArthur came they score 5 in the bottom of the 9th.
And lose by two.
A big day for the special police.
Here Irving Rudd put his arm around the King of Iraq and explained
The diamond and democracy to him,
More or less.
"Precisely," said the King.
And Rudd clapped a Dodger cap on the royal head to the slow
Dismay of the Regent.
The photographers were faster.
O'Malley, a director, wanted to paint the light towers.
"They're rusting."
"They're not," said John L. Smith.
"Why, then, are they rust-colored?"
O'Malley painted them aluminum.
The rotunda was something.
But inside out for selling tickets.
Which after all.
The Press did little note but long remembers
The snailish elevator. Tommy Holmes walked up and got there first."
Brave men climbed the rotten right-field wire to retrieve
Baseballs.
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Only the dead know Brooklyn.

A remembrance by Alden Clarke

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