I'm Ogden Nash

[Benjamin Grimm]

This isn't exactly rap on the level of George Foster, but here some classic baseball poetry:

Lineup for Yesterday
by Ogden Nash


A is for Alex
The great Alexander;
More Goose eggs he pitched
Than a popular gander.

B is for Bresnahan
Back of the plate;
The Cubs were his love,
and McGraw his hate.

C is for Cobb,
Who grew spikes and not corn,
And made all the basemen
Wish they weren't born.

D is for Dean,
The grammatical Diz,
When they asked, Who's the tops?
Said correctly, I is.

E is for Evers,
His jaw in advance;
Never afraid
To Tinker with Chance.

F is for Fordham
And Frankie and Frisch;
I wish he were back
With the Giants, I wish.

G is for Gehrig,
The Pride of the Stadium;
His record pure gold,
His courage, pure radium.

H is for Hornsby;
When pitching to Rog,
The pitcher would pitch,
Then the pitcher would dodge.

I is for Me,
Not a hard-hitting man,
But an outstanding all-time
Incurable fan.

J is for Johnson
The Big Train in his prime
Was so fast he could throw
Three strikes at a time.

K is for Keeler,
As fresh as green paint,
The fastest and mostest
To hit where they ain't.

L is for Lajoie
Whom Clevelanders love,
Napolean himself,
With glue in his glove.

M is for Matty,
Who carried a charm
In the form of an extra
brain in his arm.

N is for Newsom,
Bobo's favorite kin.
You ask how he's here,
He talked himself in.

O is for Ott
Of the restless right foot.
When he leaned on the pellet,
The pellet stayed put.

P is for Plank,
The arm of the A's;
When he tangled with Matty
Games lasted for days.

Q is for Don Quixote
Cornelius Mack;
Neither Yankees nor years
Can halt his attack.

R is for Ruth.
To tell you the truth,
There's just no more to be said,
Just R is for Ruth.

S is for Speaker,
Swift center-field tender,
When the ball saw him coming,
It yelled, "I surrender."

T is for Terry
The Giant from Memphis
Whose .400 average
You can't overemphis.

U would be 'Ubell
if Carl were a cockney;
We say Hubbell and Baseball
Like Football and Rockne.

V is for Vance
The Dodger's very own Dazzy;
None of his rivals
Could throw as fast as he.

W is for Wagner,
The bowlegged beauty;
Short was closed to all traffic
With Honus on duty.

X is the first
of two x's in Foxx
Who was right behind Ruth
with his powerful soxx.

Y is for Young
The magnificent Cy;
People battled against him,
But I never knew why.

Z is for Zenith
The summit of fame.
These men are up there.
These men are the game.

We should do this for the Mets!

Here's how it will work:

We start with the letter A. (It's the first letter of the alphabet.)

Submit a four-line entry, in the spirit of Ogden Nash, for the letter A.

If your A player has already been covered, go ahead and submit another for that same player.

If you think you can improve on something that someone else has previously submitted, go ahead and submit your version.

When A seems exhausted, we can move to B. (We can always come back to previous letters, too.)

Maybe, if this works out, we'll all have collaborated on a kick-ass Ogden Nash style poem about the Mets.

I'll kick things off with this humble submission:

A, Agbayani
But we call him Benny
His homer off Frisco
Brought pleasure to many

[Willets Point]

]E is for Evers, His jaw in advance; Never afraid To Tinker with Chance.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[A Boy Named Seo]

B is for Benson
Our quiet 'Ace in the Hole'
Brought his fastball from Pittsburgh
Pulled his wife off the pole

or

B is for Bell
Derek parked his yacht in the sound
Went from fast start, to slumping,
to 'Operation Shutdown'

[Benjamin Grimm]

I like those.

But are we already done with A?

[Willets Point]

A is for Ashburn,
An old vet from Philly,
Shouted "Yo La Tengo,"
But still got knocked silly.

[A Boy Named Seo]

Edit: Sorry, I'm not good with rules.

A is Alfonzo
Dashing in thirteen
Had 6 hits against Houston
One of the 10 best Avi'd seen

[Guest Edgy DC]

C is for Carter
Who could play through an ache
I think his smile was real
But hs curls wre all fake

[Willets Point]

C is for cookie, that's good enough for me.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Seo just comes off the DL in mid-season form.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

A is for Anderson
A pinch-hitting shark
Whose big celebration
Was inside-the-park

[Valadius]

Come on now, which "A" means the most to all of you?

A is for Agee
The Miracle Man
Whose diving catches
Thrilled many a fan.

[metirish]

A is for Astacio
Torn labrum had he
Still had a one hitter
But could not save Bobby V.

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

Work on your metrics.

[Willets Point]

Get metrics-ized!

[seawolf17]

This has been a great posting day. Everyone's bringing their "A" game today. Nice job, everyone.

[A Boy Named Seo]

A is for Allen
They say he'd drink til he's wrecked
Got shipped to St. Louie
For an 8-ball-whacked Mex

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

You people are killing me. My head has done eleven 360s from the fractured scansion already.

I know Ogden Nash. I've read Ogden Nash. You, sirs, are no Ogden Nashes.

[A Boy Named Seo]

I don't know what a fractured scansion is.

I try to make rhymes. Rhymes make me giggle.

[Guest sharpie]

A is for Aase
Alphabetically first
Who's homer to Randolph
Was '89's worst.

[Willets Point]

Bret Sabermetric wrote: You people are killing me. My head has done eleven 360s from the fractured scansion already. I know Ogden Nash. I've read Ogden Nash. You, sirs, are no Ogden Nashes.

All you do is criticize. You'd think you were an English professor or something. Oh wait....

[Frayed Knot]

A is for Alomar
both father and son
the pop never hit
and his kid was plain done

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

A Boy Named Seo wrote: I don't know what a fractured scansion is. I try to make rhymes. Rhymes make me giggle.

If you don't mind, ABNS, I'll tell you. Wrecked and Mex don't rhyme. Mex rhymes with Wrex (or wrecks or rex) and Wrecked rhymes with Mecked, which doesn't happen to be a word.

But the scansion problems come in when you've got a line with two feet (two beats, two stresses, whatever terminology you want to use) such as


"They say he'd drink til he's wrecked"

--there's no way, with seven syllables you're going to be able to find only two stresses in that line, so you're going to hurry it, swallow some syllables, or find some other false way to squeeze seven syllables into only two feet of room. That makes the line scan wrong.

An easy solution would be to re-word:

"who'd drink til he's wrecked."

Now it's still a little screwy, because your tenses are now off (it should be "who'd drink til he was wrecked," but that's too many syllable for a two foot line again). If you changed it to "who'd drink until wrecked," slipping that elided syllable back in in front of the 'til," which you cut in the first place to eliminate a not-strictly-necessary syllable from a too-crowded line, you'd be ok, though the diction now sounds a little arch for the subject matter.

Then you'd work on straightening out the rhyme, and other stuff.

Sorry if I'm coming off like a pedantic bore, but just try to imagine someone doing what you do for a living, only without any training or experience, and imagine how you'd react to their first few attempts. If the Old Mole, who's more skilled than I am as a versifier, shows up, maybe hecan conduct a short seminar on principles of verse.

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

Look at Frayed Knot's quatrain, for an extended example. He's got filler all over the place. Several syllables can easily be cut, making the whole thing a lot smoother. Instead of

A is for Alomar
both father and son
the pop never hit
and his kid was plain done

we cut most of the introductory syllables, which are mainly redundant anyway, and we get

A is for Alomar,
father and son.
Pop never hit
and his kid was plain done

which is closer to sounding like Nash, only Nash had a certain wit, as well, which is much harder to replicate.

So if I can offer a further editorial amendment to FK's fine first draft, I'd create a little parallelism:

A is for Alomar,
father and son.
Pop had no pop
and his kid had no fun.

This is maybe 15% or 20% of a full-powered Nash quatrain, but we're starting to get there.

Just tell me to STFU and I'll stop. I really don't want to go tedious on your asses, but I'm gearing up for my first creative writing class next week.

[Willets Point]

Bret Sabermetric wrote: Just tell me to STFU and I'll stop.

Oh sure we tell you to STFU and they you'll go on one of your 'I'm persecuted because I'm not a Mets fan" tirades. I'm not falling for that.

OE: Kee droppin th fina letter i th word I writ latel. Tha annoy m!

[Valadius]

Actually, Sal did a damn good job with the Alomar quatrain. Bravo.

[A Boy Named Seo]

That's good stuff, Sal. I didn't know any of that. And I've honestly never seen Ogden Nash's show, either (the one with Don Johnson, right?). Yes, I'm fucking around, but I don't know Ogden Nash, either. I've never been much of a scholar.

You'll probably still cringe with my upcoming fractured Bonilla verse, but I'll pay attention to it now, anyway, and try to give it less feet. But your last post (where you explained it) was a lot more helpful than your previous one (where you just said your head was spinning). Pedantic maybe (I looked it up), but not a bore.

[Guest OlerudOwned]

C is for Castro
Backstop Plan-B
His bat has been clutch
but damn he's ugly

[Vic Sage]

I am one that
knows what's to be
But the Miracle Mets
made me doubt what Aase

I was Kurt with Abbott
and sold Jack and Aker
Kurt's skills proved him false
and Jack's deed?
Even faker.

Mex sure covered lots of turf
so we sure got our Allensworth

Sandy said: "Bert, you Alo-marred your reputation
when you gave the ump a demonstration
of your skilled expectoration

There's been manny an Alexander
but most have been a good deal grander

Aguilera and Anderson pulled off a neat trick
by getting their moms to name them both Rick

Sayonari Agbayani
off to Japan
to make more monnie

Acevedo, time to go
Juan time's enough to see the show

Hi, A-G
U-R-2 me
all that I still C-U-B
in my mind's I
the king of "D"

to be continued...

[Valadius]

B is for Backman
Hard-nosed as hell
Rarely went deep
But played the game well.

[Benjamin Grimm]

]Just tell me to STFU and I'll stop.

I found it interesting.

I'm no literary scholar either, but I've always liked Ogden Nash, especially that poem.

If you want to take any of our verses and make them more Nashified, I say get out your red pen and start Nashing.