Touching All the Bases: Poems from Baseball

by Tim Peeler

The catcher cradles a quick leather signal squatting on new spikes waiting for the curve to drop like a head into his basket. From odes to Josh Gibson and Curt Flood to poems about Denny McLain and the anonymous dancing usher at a minor league game, poet Tim Peeler celebrates the overlooked and the standout as he merges the topics of personal and baseball-related rediscovery. A bat is a lost artifact in "Adirondack," while "Writing Baseball Poems in Winter" and "Baseball Archaeologists" deal explicitly with recovery. Several other poems underscore the continued significance of baseball memories, as the poet reconsiders events and people from his adolescence, offering the reader a candid look at his family, coaches and friends, as well as the players he watched, read about or merely imagined.

128 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1999