Christy Mathewson knew something about starting and finishing games back in the day,
“How dear to my heart was the old-fashioned hurler
Who labored all day on the ballpark green,
He did not resemble the up-to-date twirler
Who pitches five innings and ducks from the scene.
The up-to-date twirler, I’m not very strong for;
He has a bad habit of pulling up lame,
And that is the reason I hanker and long for
The pitcher who started and finished the game.
The old-fashioned pitcher, The iron-armed pitcher,
The stout-hearted pitcher, Who finished the game.”
Our St. Louis Sportswriting Author is Unknown to me – and Shall Remain So, Until His True-Hearted Identity is Revealed by Beloved St. Louis Historian Bud Kane of the St Louis Browns Historical Society, the Friend Who Sent me this choice slice of delicious baseball doggerel yesterday. As soon as I get the baseball poet’s actual name from dear Citizen Kane, His identity will be revealed in this column by addendum.
02/18/12: Frank “Bud” Kane finally checked in with the name of our doggerel’s writer. His name alone is enough to elevate the thing to poetry status. “BK” says it was Damon Runyon, the once famous New York short story writer whose characters became the personification of certain on-the-fringe Brooklyn characters and the the central inspiration for the cast and plot line of “Guys and Dolls.” The writer’s character style became the “Runyonesque” description for a limitless, still-going-on parade of literary characters and stories about the shadowy world of street crime and con men in the Big Apple.
Damon Runyon. Wow. No wonder the lines rang so true.
Thanks for filling out the whole picture, BK!
Tags: complete game doggerel
The Pecan Park Eagle 
February 12, 2012 at 1:18 am |
This is a great poem, and a topic which interests me. I would love to see a SABR-type study of how many pitchers from a given era, back in the days, had their careers cut short by arm injuries from over-use compared to how many pitchers go through catastrophic arm injuries in the full-bullpen era. Today, guys get a second chance sometimes through procedures like Tommy John surgery, but it’s the same type injuries which cut careers short before. I know anecdotal things like the great Smokey Joe Wood or even Rex Barney. Larry Dierker will tell you about his young days when his arm was good, and that’s in my lifetime, at least. But I’d love to see a complete and scholarly look at the numbers. Of course, quantifying why a given guy got hurt is pretty tough.
February 12, 2012 at 3:35 am |
Back in the day, they just called it a Sore Arm. Real technical term, but no MRI, no way to see inside and make a diagnosis. Guys all over baseball were pitching with Sore Arms and racking up innings.
Chances are they didn’t tell anybody about the Sore Arm until something was obviously wrong, having trouble getting people out or until it got too painful to continue…
“What’s wrong with Steve?”
“Sore Arm”
“When can he pitch again?”
“When it doesn’t hurt anymore.”