Here’s one of his poems.
A Career
It seems like yesterday
it seems like never
it lasted so long
it went so fast
I practiced my whole life
from day dream days
in social studies
to sandlot games
little league games
backyard games
hardball
tennis ball
whiffle ball
rock ball
early in big league years
it seemed I just had to keep the ball
in play
guys with numbers like
5 and 6 and 20
ran like retrievers
fetched the ball
brought it back
it felt like a riptide
I couldn’t help going with its pull
we were good
we knew it
much gets blurred
wins, losses, races
mostly I had my head down
down in the trenches
I missed stuff
sometimes the shrapnel
but sometimes I looked up
I was lookin up when I took the ball
for the first time my rookie year
from Whitey Herzog
my knees shook
like I was getting married
Lamar Johnson drilled a two hopper
that Frank White snared with a bound to his right
that I never saw in minor leagues
I was lookin up when George Brett hit a Ruthian blast
off a guy who threw as hard as God
Willie Randolph took a called third
why didn’t he swing
it was right there
and we were series bound
I was lookin up when Janie and I had a girl and a boy
a fifty-day strike, Marvin Miller said
“let’s show em our muscle”
I learned to hang wallpaper
change diapers
grow tomatoes
lose golf balls
I was lookin up when it was too quiet
DEA, FBI men hovered
with our team
we looked at each other, suspicious
in the locker room
a long, hot, sweaty, losing summer
I was lookin up when it was a cool night in October
Daryl Motley caught
a lazy fly off Andy Van Slyke’s bat
Kansas City delirious as champs
we poured champagne on sweat-soaked heads
it burned our eyes
we didn’t care
we screamed we sang we laughed
drunk with victory
I was lookin up when Dick Howser told us
he couldn’t manage anymore
go on without him
more to life than baseball
he died that summer
we froze and played like statues
I was lookin up when the mirror showed
a red hat on my head
a different logo
it looked foreign
like in a prism
felt it too
like a defector in a new land
except Whitey was again manager
I was lookin up when I sat at a table with reporters
telling them I quit
telling myself don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry
I didn’t want to break
the unwritten code of big leaguers
It lasted so long
it went so fast
it seems like yesterday
it seems like never