wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

Batters up! This very special baseball program of SELECTED SHORTS includes stories, memoirs, and poems that celebrate the national game, and an interview with radio sports commentator Bill Littlefield, host of NPR’s “It’s Only A Game.”

As a kind of pre-game warm-up, we thought you literary baseball lovers would enjoy hearing a few very brief selections from a remarkable volume of poetry, entitled BASEBALL HAIKU. Each is a perfect miniature, capturing a fleeting but vivid moment in the life that surrounds the playing of the game. The poems’ creators include the collection’s co-editor Cor van den Heuvel, Jack Kerouac--who created the very first American Haiku--Bud Goodrich, Rafael de Gruttola, George Swede, Edward J. Reilly, Michael Fessler, Gerard John Conforti, and a writer with the charming pen name of Arizona Zipper. We invited one of our regular SELECTED SHORTS clean-up hitters, Alec Baldwin, to read a few of these, along with host Isaiah Sheffer.

The program’s first story is T. Corraghessan Boyle’s epic baseball tale in which absolutely anything goes in the dugout and on the field, “THE HECTOR QUESADILLA STORY.” Host Isaiah Sheffer thinks this is the funniest baseball story ever written, and it’s given a winning read by Broadway denizon Jerry Saks, whose staging credits include the musicals “GUYS AND DOLLS” and “ANYTHING GOES.”

From outrageous fiction we move to nostalgic fact, with an excerpt from Lawrence S. Ritter’s evocative book THE GLORY OF THEIR TIMES.” Ritter recalls his own beginnings in baseball’s golden era, before the lively ball, instant replay, and stadium luxury seats. The reader is John Rubinstein.

This baseball special winds up with Fritz Weaver’s memorable reading of a poem by the noted American poet Rolphe Humphries, “Polo Grounds.” The work seems to be memory itself, with the lengthening shadows creeping gradually from the plate, to the mound, to second base, and on into the outfield as the long-time fan watches the afternoons, and the days and the years go by, with each new generation of the boys of summer remaining forever young. The poem is named for the quaint old ballpark where the New York Giants played before they decamped for San Francisco.

A baseball celebration Baseball haiku, read by Alec Baldwin and Isaiah The Hector Quesadilla Story by T.C. Boyle, read by Jerry Zaks The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence S. Ritter, excerpt read by Jonathan Rubinstein Polo Grounds by Rolphe Humphries, read by Fritz Weaver

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit Symphony Space