Boston's Turn

The pitching is in disarray, the ace is all worn out.
The bullpen, as it's been all year, is riddled, still, with doubt...
The best reliever on the team, the guy who got them here,
Had better be a starter in a day or so. I fear

The guys who play the outfield slots have yet to change their style...
They watch the ball roll past them, think about it for a while,
And, as we sit, appalled...as on those horrors we full sup,
They wait until the ball stops rolling. Then they pick it up...

To say this is a team with flaws is understatement, but
It is a team with hitting, too, a ballclub which a glut
Of slugging has bailed out a time or two or sixty eight.
It is, as well, a team that took advantage when, of late,

The Oakland players ran the bases like a bunch of clowns,
And several A's stood in a daze as called third strikes went down.
So, if the Yankees play like Oakland's hapless, helpless bunch,
And if Joe Torre, in the ninth, decides to think of lunch

Instead of changing pitchers or which hitter next should hit,
The Red Sox might just win again, and that would make a bit
Of joy for denizens of Mudville, also known as Boston...
A city that John Lardner said is easy to get lost in,

And lost is how folks here have felt for eighty five long years
As they have watched the Yankees celebrate, and through the tears
They've dreamed of one bright season, one great fall that wouldn't fall,
But would, instead, on thund'rous bats and pitching, lift them all

Up to a place they haven't seen, and that their fathers missed --
A loss that has left some resigned, and others really, uh, miffed --
But winning would change everything, or so they must believe.
And who can blame them? Or blame us, if ourselves we deceive
In clinging to delusion, goofy, mad, but harmless. Leave

Us to our dumb illusion that, should Boston's Red Sox win
A new age marked by harmony and good sense would begin,
And war would cease, as would injustice. Poverty would end,
And enemies of yore would greet each other, friend to friend.

And if that stuff is nuts, and if it wouldn't go like that
If Boston rode to glory on the fate of every bat
That Manny swings and Nomar swings and Pedro breaks in two,
Well, what the heck, it still may ring quite loudly and quite true

That after all the years through which Sox fans could only yearn...

It might, at last, this time around, be Boston's long-due turn.