Elysian Fields Quarterly - The Baseball Review

Idaho Proficiency Testing Program, Spring 1984

Assignment: Think of a game you know how to play well. You might select an indoor, outdoor, board, card and dice, video, or some other kind of game. Pick one game and describe and explain it to someone your own age who has never played it.

Find an open field
a bat, a ball
and a few friends.
Make two teams.
Check out the angle
of the sun. Notice
how it splits the grass
into eternities of summers
especially
if morning dew remains.
Pick up trash—
paper bags, newspapers—
for bases, three of them
and a piece of cardboard
for home plate.
The pitcher is king of the mound.
The shortstop is queen of the infield.
The batter waits
notices now the outfield
fanning out before him
green to blue
the sky itself no limit.
Now is the time.
Put the moon up there
where it belongs.
—EFQ

LYNN RIGNEY SCHOTT teaches English and creative writing at Kettle Falls High School in eastern Washington. Her father, Bill Rigney, was a major league infielder and manager. Her poems have appeared in Elysian Fields Quarterly, The New Yorker, Cutbank, Idaho English Journal, a number of baseball anthologies, and other publications.