What Damn Season Are We In?!

When is football season? Now that my beloved Amazing Bob is gone, I don’t know. Why is this important? It’s not really. I’m just remembering late August days when I’d come inside to find him engrossed in a game that was NOT baseball. I’d begin my annual rant.

It’s still baseball season dammit! Why are these steroidal freaks on TV now? It's not fucking time yet! Hell’s bells, it’s 85º out. You can’t play football in hot weather – it’s got to be played when the leaves begin to change color and there’s a crispness to the air. BASEBALL. It’s baseball season! Dammit!

And then, my beautiful TAB would smile that beautiful, transcendent smile of his  – enjoying the theatrics as I faux-stormed upstairs to read.

Officially, football begins on begin on Thursday, September 8, 2016 but pre-season games have already happened.

On Thursday, August 11, the Saints lost to the Pats 22 –34
On my birthday, August 18th, the Bears lost to the Pats 22 – 23

TAB would be happy about this. Me? I don’t care for football but I mentioned that already.

Baseball season isn’t officially over until Sunday, October 2, 2016. So there.

From The Amazing Bob:

Beautiful Catch
While playing left field last week
I made an elegant, leaping, last second catch;
The ball slapped securely into my glove,
But my timing was off: I made the catch
About 20 years to late.
I crashed to the grass like a tranquilized giraffe.
My knee is healing slowly.
The pain remains like a string around my finger,
reminds me that even amateur athletes
must age gracefully
or pay Father Time
Leg-breaker rates.
8/92

Baseball isn’t a life and death matter but the Red Sox are.
~ Mike Barnicle

Here are two other recently found poems of TAB’s.

Several Ways of Saying Different Things
I.
Being married was like taking a foreign language course
that I never passed, never completed, never quite understood,
“What time is it?”

“The pen of my aunt is on the table.”
“If you really loved me you…”
Fill in the blank
II.
I was like one of those characters in the Wizard of Oz
looking for my soul
but not really sure I had one.
Dorothy never showed up
so I did the dishes every day.
III.
My parents never had food fights:
They ate, cleaned their plates
then threw the dishes at each other.
IV.
My wife couldn’t get what she wanted from me
So she turned to food.
The food ate her.
V.
It took nearly fifty years but I’m learning to take nourishment.
I never knew it could taste this good
2/91

Just FYI, the wife in the poem above is TAB’s first one. Not me…just so’s ya know.

Italian Countess (for Donna)
She’s a tough Italian Countess though some folks don’t know her name;
She’s a real committed artist; you can see her joy and pain.
She could’ve lived in Paris hangin’ out with Jean Paul Satre
But went instead to Pittsburgh learning how to do her art.
She settled down in Boston, got a condo and a cat;
Don’t treat her like a yokel ‘cause she’ll tell you where it’s at.
Plays baseball when she wants to, likes to get inside my head;
She’ll cook for me on Sundays – or I’ll cook for her instead.
I love the way she giggles; drives me crazy when she cries;
She plays classics on her flute; got the most delicious thighs.
I love it when she’s playful, adore her when she’s wise.
Spent a lot of time adrift in the magic of her eyes.
She’s a sweet Italian Countess; Lord, I dig her style in bed.
She’s good for me like music, like a loaf of home-baked bread.
We’re learning how to argue, how to share and when to trust;
Learned to pick out shades of grey, and I’ll want her till I’m dust.
7/90

This is my 56th day without The Amazing Bob. Life without him is a thin, pale, molto sad, dull thing and, boyhowdy, that’s a colossal understatement.