It’s that time of year. Baseball season has started. The air is getting warmer. The grass is getting greener. The Boston Red Sox have already had a successful series against the dreaded New York Yankees. Readers of Tangled Roots have often asked me why baseball figures so largely in the book. Well, there are artistic reasons that any American will understand. Baseball may not be the the most watched or most played game in the US, but when it comes to the American psyche, it is definitely America’s favourite pastime. There is poetry in that game, in the way it is languid and deliberate, in the way it makes time stand still while pulses race. It is a game of history. A game for statistics nerds. A game where people who look overweight and lazy can still be athletes. It is the ultimate game to bridge generations. And it is the only game that could even come close to making the fragmented family in Tangled Roots whole.

But between you and me, that’s not why I spent so much time and energy writing about it. I may sometimes call myself a poet, but writing about Little League baseball and then about the Red Sox’ first World Series win in over 80 years was a way for me to write a bit of a love poem to my husband: he who has spent nearly 30 years listening to my fears, supporting my quixotic artistic ventures, going to every concert and reading, believing always that I was, well, talented. D loves baseball. His passion for the Red Sox is blind and abiding. But what he really loves, what he really believes in, is the power that baseball has to change young lives. D is one of the Commissioners of London Baseball, a Little League organization that allows over 650 London kids, from 5 t0 13, play the game. Through baseball he teaches them patience, pride, humility, teamwork and self-belief. Baseball brings out the best in him, and although I tease him about it constantly, and complain when he spends his entire weekend up at Wormwood Scrubs (the fields behind the famous prison) instead of at home with me, I’m very proud of what he does up there with all those kids, and how he lets those kids remind him of who he really is.

So, that’s why I wrote, and will probably continue to write, about baseball, because whenever I do, I think of D and know that this is the very least I can do to show him how I feel.

Now here’s a poem I wrote about baseball quite a while ago. I hadn’t looked at it since it was published back in 2004. It’s been kind of fun to drag it out and revisit it. Enjoy, and Happy May Day!

Peanuts and Sugar Cane
after a photograph of
Presidents Carter and Castro (courtesy of Reuters)

A newspaper clipping
tacked on this plastered wall
almost melts away with the years.

Two old men, familiar faces,
wrinkles around their eyes,
hair a shadowed shade of grey.

Two baseball caps, contrasting colors,
despite the black-and-white.
You can imagine them — blue vs red.

Brims touch.
Fingers poke in defiance.
Yet, they are smiling.

Is it the baseball and
memories of faraway youth?
Or do they smile because

they are together, arguing rules,
straining muscle for muscle,
kicking dirt and pounding leather?

They are enemies, after all.
Their countries hate each other
with long generations of distrust.

A backdrop to my youth,
their threats gave nightmares.
I wake from dreams of incoming missiles, still.

But this photo stays forever on my office wall.
When I see it in the morning, I smile.
For what would baseball be without

peanuts and crackerjacks,
or two old farmers shouting
“play ball”?