{"id":31330,"date":"2010-12-26T16:27:13","date_gmt":"2010-12-26T21:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=31330"},"modified":"2015-11-07T08:03:49","modified_gmt":"2015-11-07T13:03:49","slug":"happy-birthday-pudge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=31330","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday, Tonfisk"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Happy 63rd birthday, Carlton Fisk! He was a huge part of my childhood. In our neighborhood baseball games, when we would re-enact Red Sox games, everyone fought to be Carlton Fisk. You know. In THIS moment.<\/a> We would have to take turns re-enacting that one, just to be fair. My sister Jean was a baby at the time and she loved Carlton Fisk and knew all about him. My father would prompt her. It was one of their games that they loved. She never got sick of the repetition. It went like this:<\/p>\n

“Carl ….” my dad would say.
\n“Yastrzemski!” Jean would cry gleefully.
\n“Carl …” my dad would continue.
\n“TONfisk!” Jean would shout, out. of. control with happiness<\/em>.<\/p>\n

She never got sick of the game. Never got sick of the joke.<\/p>\n

Therefore, we, as a family, never called him Pudge. We called him “TONfisk.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\nI came across this poem a couple of years ago in my giant anthology of baseball writing, and was so happy to discover that it existed, and I think it is appropriate to post it today. <\/p>\n

Yes, Bernadette. We loved him too.<\/p>\n

\nCARLTON FISK IS MY IDEAL<\/big>
\nby Bernadette Mayer<\/i><\/p>\n

He wears a beautiful necklace
\nnext to the beautiful skin of his neck
\nunlike the Worthington butcher
\nBradford T. Fisk (butchers always
\nhave a crush on me), who cannot even order veal
\nexcept in whole legs of it.
\nOh the legs of a catcher!
\nCatchers squat in a posture
\nthat is of course inward denying orgasm
\nbut Carlton Fisk, I could
\nmodel a whole attitude to spring
\non him. And he is a leaper!
\nLike Walt Frazier or, better,
\nlike the only white leaper,
\nI forget his name, in the ABA’\u0080\u0099s
\nAll-Star game half-time slam-dunk contest
\nthis year. I think about Carlton Fisk in his
\nmodest home in New Hampshire
\nall the time, I love the sound of his name
\ndenying orgasm. Carlton & I
\nlook out the window at spring\u00e2\u0080\u0099s first
\nnortheaster. He carries a big hero
\nacross the porch of his home to me.
\n(He has no year-round Xmas tree
\nlike Clifford Ray who handles the ball
\nlike a banana). We eat & watch the storm
\nbatter the buds balking on the trees
\n& cover the green of the grass
\nthat my sister thinks is new grass.
\nIt’\u0080\u0099s last year’\u0080\u0099s grass still!
\nAnd still there is no spring training
\nas I write this, March 16, 1976,
\nthe year of the blizzard that sealed our love
\nup in a great mound of orgasmic earth.
\nThe pitcher’s mound is a lighting mound.
\nPudge will see fastballs in the wind,
\nhis mescaline arm extends to the field.
\nHe wears a necklace.
\nHe catches the ball in his teeth!
\nBalls fall with a neat thunk
\nin the upholstery of the leather glove he puts on
\nto caress me, as told to, in the off-season.
\nAll of a sudden he leaps from the couch,
\na real ball has come thru the window
\n& is heading for the penguins on his sweater,
\none of whom has lost his balloon
\nwhich is floating up into the sky!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy 63rd birthday, Carlton Fisk! He was a huge part of my childhood. In our neighborhood baseball games, when we would re-enact Red Sox games, everyone fought to be Carlton Fisk. You know. In THIS moment. We would have to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[2401,25],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31330"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31330"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31347,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31330\/revisions\/31347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}