Poetry corner: From Frost (Robert) to frosted (Smoltz)
(With apologies to Robert Frost, who once said: “Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.“)
Dumping on Frank at a Moment’s Notice
Whose fault this is I think I know.
The one whose hair gleams white as snow;
He will not hear me creeping up
To give my whistle this shrill blow.
My little pal must think it queer
Having been tossed out on his ear
Without a pitch so much to make
The coldest day of Tom’s career.
He gives his ruffled pride a shake
And asks if there is some mistake.
But no, alas, it is too true;
He was wronged by some suited flake.
My wrath is mighty, dark, and deep;
The name’s Smoltz, and I do not weep.
But on Frank Wren this blame I heap.
But on Frank Wren this blame I heap.
The real thing: Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” which everyone should know by heart, can be found here.)
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73 comments Add your comment
brandon
June 8th, 2009
11:01 am
wow…
Mark Bradley
June 8th, 2009
11:09 am
Speechless, eh?
I don’t blame you, Brandon. Just trying something a little different on the ol’ blog. I’m reasonably sure this will be a one-time-only thing.
Braves Season Ticket Holder
June 8th, 2009
11:12 am
Tomahawks are red,
Baseball is swell.
Frank Wren’s an imbecile
Who should go burn In….
Gman
June 8th, 2009
11:12 am
Loved this.
Man, you’re churning them out at Stephen King’s pace these days. Keep ‘em coming!
BTW, anyone find any irony re ” Mr. born-again” Smoltz’s affair, divorce and quicky marriage then firing back on the Braves for lack of loyalty and class. What a sactimonious blow-hard.
Wondering when the Red Sox are expecting a return on their $5 mil.?
Mark Bradley
June 8th, 2009
11:15 am
Thanks, G-Man.
And I see Season Ticket Holder has gotten in the swing of things. Now let’s see someone take a swing at “The Waste-Land.” Or “Ozymandias.” Or “There Once Was A Man From Nantucket …”
Roland Office
June 8th, 2009
11:24 am
There once was a pitcher from near Nantucket
Whose career was in the bucket
His GM named Wren
Comitted the ultimate sin
Short-circuiting Glavs comeback with a now infamous, “ah ——”
Admittedly lower brow than Frost but really, what did you expect.
Bad Poet
June 8th, 2009
11:26 am
Baseball is fun
I love Kelly Ripa.
The Braves have NO offense,
Except for Our Chippa.
O-Nix
June 8th, 2009
11:31 am
Braves Pitching’s Now Crushed
Just like a Bug.
Will my poem get deleted,
If I call Frank Wren a THUG ?
Gotten any Christmas or Birthday cards from CAL RIPKEN lately, Frank ?
Mark Bradley
June 8th, 2009
11:52 am
OK, folks. You’ve gone and done it. You’ve got my laughing so hard I can’t finish what I’m writing (about the Braves and tomorrow’s draft).
“In Atlanta did Teddy Turner/A Lexus-level ballpark decree …”
Sherman to the sea
June 8th, 2009
11:53 am
Mr. Glavine was great for many a year
then came Mr. Wren who showed no fear.
He did what was right for our Atlanta Braves
and from all the fans he should get nothing but raves.
Mike In Valdosta
June 8th, 2009
11:59 am
I’ve been with the Braves right from the start,
truth be known they’ve stolen my heart,
As for the young guns who’ve withered with age,
I’ll leave my opinion right here on this page,
You and your union believe you as smart,
As for me, I don’t give a fart.
chris from md
June 8th, 2009
12:02 pm
GMan,
I’m familiar with Smoltz’s divorce but what affair are you talking about?
Chris from MD
Navigator
June 8th, 2009
12:12 pm
I’m not a poet and want try to be one, but on the topic of Wren, Smotz, Glavne or anyone else that is no longer a Brave; “Get over it!”. Smoltz has done to Boston what he did with the Braves, take pay and don’t pitch. Glavine did the same, as well as a few others, so get on with it. Frank Wren may be the one that finally relieves us of an over the hill manager, so leave this guy alone.
Mac
June 8th, 2009
12:15 pm
Next time I’d like to see you take on Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Be interested to see who you cast as the albatross.
tr
June 8th, 2009
12:18 pm
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Most poems rhyme
But this one doesn’t
Go Braves
Tattle Tale
June 8th, 2009
12:19 pm
OOOH! OOOOH! Mr. Bradley! O-Nix use that word! In all caps, too!
e.e. sabathia cummings
June 8th, 2009
12:28 pm
a fastball to the eye
will you give you a shiner.
who knew john smoltz
could be such a whiner ?
………
know what else can give you a shiner?
just ask mrs. cox.
Mark Bradley
June 8th, 2009
12:28 pm
Yeah, I know, Tattle Tale. I’m conflicted about it, too. But in this case I’m granting, ahem, poetic license.
“Players, players everywhere, and not a one can hit.” How’s that, Mac?
Mark Bradley
June 8th, 2009
12:31 pm
And e.e. sabathia cummings, your screen name just made me laugh out loud.
NC Braves Fan
June 8th, 2009
12:31 pm
Tommy threw the fastball slow
Wren follows with the hatchet
Smoltz squawks in minors
Mac
June 8th, 2009
12:36 pm
Batting = albatross. You nailed it.
Mark Bradley
June 8th, 2009
12:39 pm
Ooooh! A haiku!
Kudos, NC!
braves70
June 8th, 2009
12:47 pm
With special thanks to Edgar Allen Poe who probably endured an evil year of Frank Wren’s reign as the Orioles GM.
`Be that word our sign of parting, Wren or fiend!’ I shrieked upstarting -
`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of the lies thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! – quit the team I did adore!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form out yon door!’
Quoth the Wren, `Nevermore.’
Nevermore a pennant to win. Nevermore will they make me grin.
The Braves have lost all hope for now whilst we curse that dreaded Chik-Fil-A cow.
But even that cow cannot produce, within me the hatred for that hideous and obtuse,
General Manager from Hades’ shore, whose stupidity has become the stuff of lore.
Ask the hideous beast when he will leave, and Braves fan everywhere can once more believe.
Quoth the Wren, `Nevermore.’
Hillbilly Deluxe
June 8th, 2009
12:49 pm
I’m poetically challenged today so no rhymes from me. I’m not a Braves fan but you folks are going to figure out, Nate McLouth is a gamer.
McLouth of the South
June 8th, 2009
12:50 pm
There once was a boy they called French
Who shoulda never got up off the bench
They called him a stud
He turned into a dud
Now the ballpark is filled with his stench
chemdawg
June 8th, 2009
12:51 pm
it’s five, seven, five
the number of syllables
haiku is abused
McLouth of the South
June 8th, 2009
12:54 pm
Haiku? Hope I can
Bobby Cox does have five fingers
Uses only one
Mark Bradley
June 8th, 2009
12:55 pm
Really good one, Braves70. Bonus points for “Chick-fil-A cow.”
And you’re right, ChemDawg. NC just needed to change “Tommy” to “Tom” in Line 1. Who says blogs aren’t for learnin’?
Jay
June 8th, 2009
12:56 pm
Wow, writer’s block must have been wicked today.
JD
June 8th, 2009
12:59 pm
I’m about to head off to work, and I’m pretty sure e.e. sabbathia cummings is going to keep me chuckling all day whenever I think about it.
Poopy Pants
June 8th, 2009
1:01 pm
and you get paid for this? Can I have your job?
Roswell Ed
June 8th, 2009
1:02 pm
Mark, if you were a tree what kind would you be?
I found the 2004 remark by Michelle Obama when she said the word “whitey” at her church!! Bet you won’t see it on the MSM. Maybe Fox?
libertarianhumor.com
Rolltop
June 8th, 2009
1:05 pm
Smoltzie left Altanta to begin his Sox reign,
but with time on his hand he’s become slightly insane.
What he must remember as Boston’s mad raver,
is that he left the Braves as a starter and not a Glavine saver.
james
June 8th, 2009
1:05 pm
SEPTEMBER is the cruellest month, breeding
no postseason on the dead field…
I will lose my job put in the time to attempt to do this justice…
Mark Bradley
June 8th, 2009
1:09 pm
I only had to ask, and here it is — “The Waste-Land.” (Two lines, anyway.)
Thanks, James. (And when you finish that, take a swing at “The Swan Song of J. Andrew Smoltzie.”)
Dr. (Robert Penn) Warren
June 8th, 2009
1:13 pm
It used to be the Braves were good.
They had some power beneath the hood.
Four phenoms here, a prospect there.
A Native Chief in a tent somewhere.
Now they have just moments past.
They kindle flames that never last.
When all’s said and done from this latest storm.
Glavine’ll be enshrined in a Mets uniform.
PSR
June 8th, 2009
1:15 pm
Braves trade one Tommy
For another, much younger.
It’s Hanson’s turn now.
NC Braves Fan
June 8th, 2009
1:19 pm
Oh me, I missed a my! Thanks for throwing the flag, chemdawg … and for saving the haiku, MB.
Dave
June 8th, 2009
1:26 pm
With apologies to Eddie Murphy.
Dark and lonely on a summer’s night.
Kill Tommy G. Kill Tommy G.
Smoltzie barking. Do he bite?
Kill Tommy G. Kill Tommy G.
Slip in his window. Break his neck.
Then his house I start to wreck.
Got no reason. What the heck?
Kill Tommy G. Kill Tommy G.
C-I-L Tommy G!
Mark Bradley
June 8th, 2009
1:35 pm
If Glavine is enshrined in a Mets uniform, Dr. Warren, I’ll file a grievance.
U.S. Representative Corrine Brown
June 8th, 2009
1:36 pm
One, two, three, fo, five
them the braves don’t take no jive!
Shout out to the gusty play of Percy Harvith and Corch Urvin Myers!
NC Braves Fan
June 8th, 2009
1:43 pm
There once was a greybeard named Glavine
Whose fastball was not worth havin’
Said the man in the tie
With a dollar sign in his eye,
“This million will Nate’s salary be salvin’.
BugKiller
June 8th, 2009
1:44 pm
One Brave pitcher whines
His place in Atlanta gone
One writer opines
Walt Hitman
June 8th, 2009
1:46 pm
He came out of Parkview, they said he’d be great,
But he always looked clueless when he came to the plate.
Our erstwhile Golden Boy turned head case for sure,
In 2009 they started calling him Failcoeur.
Mark Bradley
June 8th, 2009
1:48 pm
We’re tearing it up now, folks. Y’all are poets, and don’t I now know it.
BT
June 8th, 2009
1:50 pm
Kipling’s If could give you some fodder.
Tommy Tu-Tone
June 8th, 2009
2:09 pm
Tom Tommy Tom-
You once skated on ice-
and maybe looked nice.
When you thought the price was not right
You decided to go on strike.
You left the GA Peach, because the price
we could not reach.
You thought it would be better and try to take
a bite out of the big apple, but instead
your arm went snapple.
You got 1 million to rehab-No need to beg, borrow or cry
as you gave it an honest boy scout try.
You will be in the Hall of fame-
and all us true sports fans will say
ain’t that a shame because he got paid
playing a young man’s game!!!
BugKiller
June 8th, 2009
2:10 pm
HE PITCHED A GAME OF BEAUTY
He pitched a game of beauty, on that night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of balls breaking right
Meet in the catcher’s mitt, never high:
Thus Lofton is out, what a sight
Which to the umpire he long denies.
One strike the more, one hit the less,
He pitched about a frantic pace
Lest one more batter make a guess,
Where the ball lightened o’er the plate;
With furrowed brow, glistened with sweat
The Indians, Cleveland’s nine knew their fate.
And on their cheek, tears would allow;
A glimpse, a peek, to emotions spent,
On the man pitching now,
Whose mastery of the mound was eloquent,
Tom Glavine sent all but one below,
His heart and spirit did never relent.
There you go, Mark. Of course, “She Walks in Beauty” is a must know for hitting on the smart girls, haha.
But making it into a poem about Glavine’s HOF Night that October wasn’t too hard.
Mark Bradley
June 8th, 2009
2:13 pm
“Which to the umpire he long denies”: The greatest description of Kenny Lofton ever written.
And “your arm went snapple” is no cosmic slouch, either.
Thanks, folks. Your words are worth a ton. (Wordsworth. Poet. Ha, ha.)
wareagle
June 8th, 2009
2:18 pm
Where Is Ted?
The braves are a mess this day
Seems no one wants to watch them play.
We’ve got to think of something fast,
as every team is kicking our ___.
My grandpa was right when he said,
this ain’t the same team without Ted.
Ron Bailey
June 8th, 2009
2:22 pm
Mrs. Smoot and Mrs. Turnipseed would be proud of you.
Chopper
June 8th, 2009
2:31 pm
Braves Haiku
The Nineties were fun
Glavine, Smoltz, and Maddux aced
Now it is the pits!
LizDawg
June 8th, 2009
2:33 pm
To paraphrase Billy Shakespeare:
Tommy G’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets upon the G-Braves mound,
And then is heard no more. It is a fastball
Told by a union lover, lacking sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Mark Bradley
June 8th, 2009
2:33 pm
Thanks, Ron.
(Mrs. Smoot, you should know, was my Latin and journalism and homeroom teacher at MHS, and also my next-to-next-door neighbor. Mrs. Turnipseed taught me freshman English and, for reasons unclear, seemed to like me.)
Mark Bradley
June 8th, 2009
2:34 pm
And now we’ve gone all Hamlet on here. Nice, LIz.
The Murf
June 8th, 2009
2:38 pm
Been a while since I’ve laughed this hard at work… My cubicle neighbors are getting suspicious
BugKiller
June 8th, 2009
2:39 pm
Mark…
Thanks, about the Lofton thing.
I don’t care what anyone says about the Texiera trade.
Trading Justice and Grissom to Cleveland for the Lofton-rental was the WORST trade in The Genius’s career.
And I say The Genius without sarcasm or malice.
I am on record as the Braves owe the 1990’s to The Genius, and not the idiot manager who wasted October after October because he is the worst tactical manager to ever be given the kind of talent he was given, single-handedly dooming this team which SHOULD have won multiple titles to one, lone championship.
bali
June 8th, 2009
2:43 pm
geez mark think i can smell a Pulitzer in your future………. when are u going to give your first reading
ATLfan15
June 8th, 2009
2:53 pm
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Glavine should go gracefully,
And Smoltz should keep his mouth shut.
This doesn’t rhyme and I don’t care.
By the way, nice poem MB!
Braves Fan....for a while
June 8th, 2009
2:55 pm
There once was a Brave named Francouer,
Many think he should be shown the door.
Instead, Wren let him keep on hitting,
Therefore Cox will just have to keep on spitting.
Francouer’s up with men on base,
Yep, there’s another ground ball to the pitcher.
The fact that he is still a Brave,
always makes me run for the switcher.
Rain, rain, go away…. and take Francouer with you
M Anthony
June 8th, 2009
2:59 pm
Glav got the normal Atlanta sports scene boot.
No class, no thought, just a point made moot.
They saved a few bucks and tried to convince
a city its losing is enough.
Most have been Hall of Famers to be.
While the fans sit and wonder just what they will see.
Dana
June 8th, 2009
3:07 pm
Glavine I knew
This would be your fate
When my 90 yr. old grandma
beat your fastball to the plate
wxwax
June 8th, 2009
3:09 pm
The Big Apple was shiny
And blinding with loot
So Glavine moved his hiney
And left the Braves in the poop
Now the Braves have a shiny
Young pitcher who’s cheap
So they’ve ditched Glavine’s hiney
And he ‘s whining like sheeet
Mark Bradley
June 8th, 2009
3:22 pm
This little exercise might have set a perilous precedent. We might just have to do it again.
What should our next poetic subject be? Matty Ice? Mike Bibby? (Please don’t say Michael Vick. That’s one we’re not tackling, as it were.)
WilliamG
June 8th, 2009
3:38 pm
First there was the curse from the chief
felt by Braves young and old, timid and bold
Some scoffed and said it was beyond belief
But the tribe’s wisest knew it was as told
Then along came Glavine with a new threat to display
Shunned and made to feel small, he put a curse on the ball
Bats curled up and snoozed, and the runs ran away
The park that had been hallowed now became fallowed
The big bosses laughed at the thought of a curse
and said Glavine was old and in need of a nurse
But the truth be told, they just didn’t get the pitcher
Mark Bradley
June 8th, 2009
3:41 pm
We’re here to entertain, Murf. Just a little verse, for better or worse, to get one through the working day.
anotherdawg
June 8th, 2009
3:49 pm
Another column like this would be GREAT – Like many others, I can’t WAIT. Although we have players MOVING – articles like this are actually SOOTHING LOL
Mike In Valdosta
June 8th, 2009
4:04 pm
While much of this prose, smells less like a rose,
It sure has been fun, but now must be done,
But before I go, there is something you should know,
No championships we’d be having, if it were not for Tom Glavine
Butterbean
June 8th, 2009
4:08 pm
That Chipper is handsome,
My girlfriend still raves.
Just be glad Atlanta Spirit,
Doesn’t own the Braves.
BOB HORNER FROST
June 8th, 2009
4:35 pm
BRAVES PITCHING GETS POPPED
LIKE KIDS WITH BALLOONS.
FRANK WREN MAKES THE BRAVES
LOOK LIKE BUFFOONS.
NCBravesFan
June 8th, 2009
7:56 pm
Hardly A Pitcher
Makes the Show
Whose Fastball
Is Slower
Than Sid Bream Slow
BURMA SHAVE
BT
June 8th, 2009
8:53 pm
Hope this is a double switch and Diaz goes into left.
The facts of blog: Three times a day, five days a week | Mark Bradley
July 10th, 2009
2:33 pm
[...] springs to mind. I’ve written a poem, sort of. I’ll try to make lists. There will always be a fairly extensive Bradley’s Buzz — [...]