The Pecan Park Eagle

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!