Single-A Ball

This phenomenon

where animals in their infancy

appear to us as adorable

even baby hippos and tarantulas,

perhaps because they haven’t yet

figured out how to tangle with the world;

this held true for the St. Catharines Baby Blue Jays,

Toronto farm team and northernmost 

outpost of the New York-Penn League,

where a third of the starting nine appeared

to shave only on occasion; whose on-field 

play was frustratingly precocious, from 

the gangly shortstop who could haul down

a laser smash deep in the hole with panache  

but then completely forget to hustle

to the cutoff two pitches later, to the pitcher

just arrived from the Dominican, who threw

searing tropical heat, and whose awareness

of the strike zone was on par with his English.

Bundles of limbs and earnestness, 

they didn’t seem to mind sharing 

a practice field with the high school, 

or the grueling school bus hours 

spent on cross-border treks 

to Oneonta and Williamsport. 

They had teal-trimmed uniforms 

and decent meal vouchers, 

and a squinty view down 

the long dark tunnel

toward the Big Show.

My father-in-law Bill

was a casual Baby Jay fan

and I sometimes tagged along

for a matinee when we came visiting.

I adored Bill, who was all the things

my father was not: self-made, engaging, 

forever taking genuine delight 

when my barbarian toddler boys 

invaded his trim bungalow. He’d lost

his own father to consumption 

at the height of the Depression, 

stepping up at age seventeen 

to be man of the house to his mother 

and four little sibs, soon shipping 

out to Labrador lumber camps 

and the wartime Merchant Marine

to keep the household afloat. These days

he often held court at Community Park

with all the retiree season ticket holders

who’d bought the privilege to bolt down

lawn chair seat tops onto their designated

piece of third-baseline bench. I recall

those Canadian June afternoons as forever

balmy, and we’d plop down on our stretch

of bench, pull out our snacks from home,

wait for Bill’s emphysema to subside, 

then do that thing that men from different 

generations often do: sit close, side-by-side,

making a show of interest at the play

unfolding on the field, all the while

fumbling, as awkward as still-moist fawns

struggling up from their knees, to express

without words, just how much

we loved each other. 

Robbie Gamble (he/him) is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in the Indianapolis Review, Post Road, RHINO, Salamander, and The Sun. Robbie divides his time between Boston and Vermont.