Eephus (From Box Score) by Kevin Varrone

EEPHUS

(FROM BOX SCORE)

©Kevin Varrone 2012

L R Llittle red leaves textile editions

www.littleredleaves.com

(fr om Box Score)

Kevin Varrone

Eephus6

2

five & a quarter ounces avoirdupois : an eephus ain’t nothin’

: twilight seagulls skreak & skritter of light over the ball-

park falling & failing & or fungoes a nightingale’s pastoral

evasions: light ( when we aren’t watching ) twi- a pleat avoir-

dupois : light the way you enter a church twi- a pleat one

minute the bleachers are empty next minute an old lady

whispering hush fans milling night mulling everything is going

to be going to sleep : octagon a lozenge little island of light lit

& a world outside the scope of light : gemini diamonds time

(a few hectoring distance markers) arcs & stars are forsythia

avoirdupois mr. sutcliffe may we have the lights please

3

when I’m sure there is nothing going on I step inside: the way you

enter history a pastime night baseball a song about the starry

dark : game of pepper boys shagging fungoes or are they seagulls

an unlikely home it’ s not yet night or ash fl uttering over the

park & lights fans milling a smattering of gulls or fungoes avoir-

dupois (an evocation) etymology unclear fr the old french & latin

a populace moves second growth twilight an aftermath & rows

of lights a pastime misspelled fr the old french: aveir to have in the fi nal scene of fi eld of dreams ray kinsella has a catch

in the pre-dark with his father a ghost on a ballfi eld carved from

a cornfi eld as his wife fl ips the lights on over the diamond have

+ peis i.e. weight an eephus : one go two goes fun goes

phils & castor & pollux coming right up

4

sprawlings of fl owers over the left fi eld wall the gulls a raucous

call: eephus misnomer: the night game (going to be going to be

dark) a placebo change of pace to stretch spread out evening

between two rivers the neck : inside the stadium there’s only

stadium & sky light a kind of walled garden: fortifi cation an in-

ward facing plan : time passing is pretty much what baseball is all

about : inch by inch lights come on the dark comes on (like

entering a church) the home manager shall give his batting order

to the umpire in chief in duplicate the visiting manager shall give

his batting order to the umpire in chief in duplicate: may 24th

1935 the philadelphia phillies lost 2-1 to the cincinnati red-

stockings in the fi rst ever major league baseball night game : in

margaret wise brown’s goodnight moon each page the room grows

darker (a pastime) a nocturnal atmosphere sd morris kantor of

his painting baseball at night the ball shall be a sphere the

players of the home team shall take their defensive positions

5

the original layout of philadelphia as advertised in thomas holme’s

portraiture of the city of philadelphia 1683 shows a gridiron bridge

between two rivers: lights come on before it’s dark its four squares

around a center square (it never gets dark) the diagram an inward-

facing plan : if rotated 45 degrees (counter-clockwise) the city

(turning back time) looks like a baseball diamond: gulls avoir-

dupois 4-3 6-3 4-3 : we go to the home fi rst american middle

of one : twins nothing & the phils coming to bat

6

an eephus ain’t nothin’ (an evocation) & that’s what that ball is

fi ve & a quarter to have weight: the city a portraiture like a score-

sheet : a utopian idea of order the game evolved into american

fairytale: when I got drafted by the phillies I sd the who sd jimmy

rollins victorino debutant it is night now when did it become

night that is a pastime that is leading off ball four fans mill

or mull a populace moves : then I took a deep breath rollins sd &

I was like (stolen base) well you never know where your blessings

are gonna come from: (spinning top to short) night (6-3) a need

for shelter (runner advances to third on the play) : the fi eld

at citizens bank park is twenty-three ft below st level : how much

of the game is anticipation & evocation the park a fortifi cation

(single & an rbi) a place where there is meadow plain open land

(triple & an rbi) : the strikezone a frame the gulls (F7) a way

to civilize a landscape a way to keep it in the yard : i.e. sac fl y (rib

eye) taking into possession beforehand : the skyline beyond home

plate he goes down looking (3 runs on 2 hits no errors & none

left on base) we’re through one phils 3 & the twins nothing

7

between innings a meantime (i.e. see interim i.e. in the midst ofthat) in most reckonings the world begins in darkness fr blackness

let there be gulls fungoes lights in wheeling fl ocks you should

enter a ballpark the way you enter a church (bill lee said) : night is the natural time for play for amusement for relaxations ( sd

george cahill owner of a massachusetts fl oodlight manufacturing

company just before ww i ) : insanity (sd einstein) is swinging at

the eephus over & over again & expecting diff erent results : the

refrain of all early attempts at night baseball was that the fi eld wld

be as light as day : citizens bank park was designed facing inward

the infi eld four bases around a center circle the playing fi eld is

twenty-three ft below street level (fans catch a glimpse of green frm

outside the gates) the strike zone an abstract the pitcher’s mound

is a boy’s room (george oppen sd) when we were kids we’d sleep

beneath stars in the country night & there were so many we could

grock the weight of light & weight of sleep & fl ight & we’d hear

my grandfather’s lp microgroove of the shot heard round the world

& how everything was & falling

8

june 18 1682 william penn founded philadelphia : baseball :

a utopian plan for brotherly love ( little eden of inches ) placebo

tremble at the name of the lord : my feet is tired but my soul is

rested sd octavius catto 3 october 1866 (after the fi rst recorded

pythians game at the fairgrounds at 11th & wharton streets south

philadelphia) : it pleases me to stand in silence between innings

philip larkin sd : the box score & what’s outside the scope of the

box score : lines & what’s between the lines : placebo i.e. a

medicine given more to please than to benefi t : in 1945 a throw

by athletics outfi elder hal peck hit a pigeon fl ying over fenway park

harry o’neill of gettysburg pa went behind the plate in the eighth

for his major league christening wrote james iseminger in his

game summary for the inquirer he did not bat & had little to do

behind the plate

9

when asked maurice van robays sd an eephus ain’t nothin’ & tht’s

a nothin’ ball : that ball is outta here harry kalas used to say

in 1974 willie horton hit a ball in the air in foul territory at fenway

park & hit a pigeon: octavius catto played baseball for the fi rst time

at camp william penn 1864 while a member of the philadelphia

national guard (6-3) the diamond shone in a blaze of glory

an early account of night baseball claimed in a 1945 edition of the

sporting news (base on balls) a cartoon depicted an army plane

apparently off course : a baseball soared past the plane & (K) the

pilot sd to the co-pilot we must be over pittsburgh (4-3) tht looks

like a rip sewell blooper pitch

10

the eephus is a quaker pitch elusion sky (F9) is wider than the

lights mr sutcliff e objects moving vertically & horizontally give

our smooth pursuit system particular trouble : oh tht ball hit him

kalas overheard phillies shortsop larry bowa say that ball is outta

here during bp & he liked the sound of the phrase (3-6-3) a good

rolling double consonant can freeze a hitter all that b&w footage

of my dad’s stories about ebbett’s fi eld : on march 24 2001 randy

big unit johnson threw a bully pitch & hit a dove a catch doesn’t

bring anyone together it measures how far apart they are : truett

banks ‘rip’ sewell’s eephus wld reach an apex of twenty-fi ve feet &

proceed as much as two-thirds slower are we home emmett says

on broad st passing the stadium the rise & drop a dying quail

or gull a raucous call eephus dolce far niente : it gives a batter’s

frontbrain a chance to remember & over think (what happens be-

tween innings) a pastime no runs no hits no errors & nothing

that is not there & the nothing that is : at the end of 3 a game

of inches : so much of baseball lyn hejinian sd is spent in a

manner of waiting

11

not enough happens in baseball people say : fans milling the sea-

gulls like advanced calculations piling up history is pretty much

what baseball is all about jimmy rollins sd the game a kind of

saying home plate don’t move satchel paige sd a boy’s team

a kind of religion you should enter the way you enter a church

william penn sd baseball is no more than a turning of us over from

time to eternity the lights a double luster on june 18 1778

british troops abandoned philadelphia deGaule sd there are in

baseball all the means necessary : nostalgia considered a disease a

severe homesickness fr nostos i.e. home + algos pain grief

distress : baseball is a tail light not a headlight martin luther king

sd : a thermometer not a thermostat

12

oct 1867 the pythians baseball club of philadelphia was denied ad-

mission to the pennsylvania association of amateur baseball players

on the basis of race : come boy come & rest it’s in the gap june

18 1682 of citys & towns of concourse beware penn wrote to his

wife if the ball is hit to me what am I going to do with it my dad

used to say ask yourself lights come on as dark comes on when

I was a boy I sometimes played right fi eld where noone hits the ball

I’d pick dandelions & snap their heads before they turned to wishes

after baseball mark fi drych played minor league baseball & drove a

dump truck for a living

13

before the ‘46 all star game ted williams asked rip sewell if he would

throw tht blooper nl manager charlie grimm put sewell in & sd

throw tht blooper pitch & see if you can wake up this crowd sewell

who had been injured in a hunting accident the day the japanese

bombed pearl harbor faced off against williams just home from the

war & williams hit the third consecutive eephus for a three-run

homer a deluxe version of the pitch sewell called a sunday super

dooper blooper it’s the only home run sewell ever gave up on an

eephus in three-hundred-plus big league appearances & he’d told

williams it was coming again & images later showed williams had

run up out of the batter’s box & was therefore in violation of 6.03

of the offi cial rules of baseball which states a batter’s legal posit-

ion shall be with both feet within the batter’s box

14

mr sutcliff e may we have the lights please an inning is a prop-

osition spinoza sd a demonstration of an idea : the strike zone

a theory of relativity ( & when did it become night) baseball is not

a game it’s an argument sd george oppen rounding fi rst like a

country road look three look three a boyhood sitting in the grass

is my favorite part emmett sd abt baseball between innings ron

gardenhire gave his fi nest hour speech the box score & everything

the box score does not remember in the natural roy hobbs sd god

I just love baseball august 1867 octavius catto’s pythians played

the washington mutual in philadelphia : in the stands watching

his son play third base for washington was frederick douglass I love

baseball woody allen sd in zelig he sd you know it doesn’t have

to mean anything the lights the gulls that’ll run the count full

it’s just beautiful to watch

15

the strike zone O of an old tire tied to a tree limb june 18

1682 the box score score card the way we see the game

on paper (4-3) speculation is that the word eephus comes from the

hebrew efes for zero i.e. nothing to remember & let go

that’s pretty much what baseball is all about the lack of action

itself had to be enacted wallace stevens sd a transfer of energy

charles olson called the eephus F7 enter like a church the game

a mass at night the lights make the dark seem less dark let go

16

darkness those evenings of the brain are pretty much what night

baseball is all abt sd emily dickinson the apparition of those faces

in the stands at shibe park a fastball is a bully pitch sd bill lee

those black & white photos throw that zero sewell you only need

two pitches sd warren spahn the one the hitter’s looking for &

the one he’s not april 1971 harry kalas mc’d the opening cere-

monies for philadelphia’s veteran’s stadium may 15 1976 mark

fi drych subbed for a detroit tigers starter who had come down with

avian fl u you shape your ballparks thereafter they shape you sd

winston churchill fi drych threw seven no-hit innings before

winning two to one (a complete game) in one famous photo space-

man bill lee has a butterfl y perched on the tip of his nose only

one who has known force & recognized its limits can throw that

nothing ball sd gandhi here endeth the inning: no runs two

hits no errors & two left on base

17

another game: grass sky green only those who realize tht there

is something in man which is superior to the brute nature in him

(& tht the latter always yields to it) can effectively throw that

blooper pitch game of inches game of measure from home

which is equidistant from the other three bases tht is : fidrych

eephus placebo gulls or fungoes pigeons the dodo : equidistant

a step away from them webster’s dictionary (1879) defines mull

as to work steadily without accomplishing much so much of baseball

& childhood are spent in a manner of waiting mr sutcliffe

may we have the lights please in the final scene of field of dreamsthe camera pans wide to the night sky I have a special power sd

bill lee I’m lefthanded harry o’neill is one of two major league

players to die in service in wwII video footage on youtube clearly

shows ted williams running up at the pitch in the scene we see a

trail of cars coming to the field during his debut mark fidrych

was often seen talking to the ball the drivers of the cars were

instructed to flash their lights on & off please

18

high beams low beams high beams low beams

we thought he was trying to hypnotize us rico carty sd of penn’s

plans for the city of philadelphia running the bases one begins to

comprehend the pattern those black & white renderings of

octavius catto that ‘86 angels playing card photo of donnie moore

once you cross the plate you are home you who by not being here

are here robert creeley wrote of the eephus coogan’s bluff

overlooked coogan’s bowl site of the polo grounds before the new

york giants left for san francisco nothing that is not there &

the nothing that is is pretty much what the eephus is all about sd

wallace stevens mark fi drych was dubbed ‘the bird’ b/c he resembled

the dodo or big bird a passel of pigeons over the neck harry o’neill

caught one inning for the philadelphia a’s we thought he was

trying to hypnotize us carty sd abt the bird who threw back un-

used balls he thght had hits in them

19

for fidrych’s 13th start (v. the twins in minnesota) the home team

released thirteen homing pigeons from the mound before the game

(this was the inspiration for wallace stevens’ famous poem) to

remain substance in the face of transubtantiality is pretty much

wht hitting the eephus is all about (fidrych pitched a complete

game for the win) : some things cannot be explained

by continuance or time or we select our documents to tell our

stories I mean the city the green the way people mill around

between innings (mr sutcliffe may we have the lights please) the

stairway from the bluff down to the bowl remains inning by

inning the light grows grayer & softer one of the most fascinatingdreams one could have is of all this broad fen-land as a great cityplayground wrote a visitor to the neck in the late 1800’s light a

derivative miracle comes on : he got the bat head out hit that one

a country mile how there is no there there now now hush hush

there’s nothing but nothing & give & damn

20

in the evening pinkness of light their bodies gleamed beautifully

wrote a visitor to the neck in philadelphia : night baseball

a bedtime story (twin killing : two birds w/one stone) :we’re losing

light & getting light in return those old photos of men & women

in suits & dresses at the ballpark a neon liberty bell swings &

gongs when the phillies hit a home run the churches of

cooperstown welcome you a sign says on route 80 the game a way

to ready us for sleep in morris kantor’s painting everything is in-

ward-facing nine innings nine parts of speech language

is pretty much what baseball is all about : the game at night how

light finds its targets how kantor’s paiting is an ‘american scene’ &

how everything is lit & light & the world & wilderness a way to

civilize a landscpe

21

power of some sort will go on in games philip larkin sd tht ball is

outta here : evolution & adaptation the unbeauty of small change

: eephus : someday someone’s gonna knock that damn ball down yr

throat eppie miller sd to rip sewell may 8 2008 detroit tigers

pitcher armando galarraga threw something that looked like an ee-

phus to fan david ‘big papi’ ortiz the diamond funnels out an o-

pening field howard smokes one to straight-away center baseball

isn’t a game it’s mythology an argument that is a lozenge lan-

guage of men : if the ball is hit to you what are you going to do

1b F8 bb july 23 1939 harry o’neill caught the bottom of the

8th for the athletics in a 16-3 loss to the detroit tigers watching

the game listening to the game o’neill did not come to bat it

was his only big-league appearance : eephus moonpie eppie miller

once caught a rip sewell blooper pitch while batting he threw it

in the air & hit a line drive back at sewell baseball is baseball

history a bedtime story palimpsest aperire-ovrir-aperture 4-6-3

twin killing (two birds w/one stone) a game of inches defense

holds the ball

22

formed by yarn & wool around a small core : eephus half-way up

the mountain fi eld of dreams is a baseball fantasy ( i.e. mediocre )

in which the main character watches the games from the stands 10

oct 1871 octavius catto was shot dead on philadelphia’s south street

during election day riots I thought harry o’neill came up at the

end of the ‘39 season sd al brancato infielder for the a’s I have

my father’s hands I have my grandfather’s hands sd bill lee june 5

1976 mark fidrych won his second consecutive eleven-inning com-

plete game blind people come to the park just to listen to him

pitch sd reggie jackson abt tom seaver in baseball at night the

painter is watching the game from the stands fi eld of dreams is a

fantasy that never breaks the color line : police your area my dad sd

smoothing the dirt around first base as the sun began to set we

were standing shoulder to shoulder sd private first class james

conte age ninety they got harry he sd they took him out b/c

he was taller it should be a big deal sd brancato ( age 90 ) you’d

think I’d remember something like that rewriting history is

pretty much what baseball is all about yogi berra sd you can

observe a lot by just watching : not less than five nor more than

five & a quarter after school I’d play catch in the street with my

grandfather who had my father’s hands & was dressed like those

b & w photos of fans at ebbett’s field

23

once upon a time during a rain delay at my brother’s little league

game the guys convinced alegio ‘al’ lopez ( who never got in a game

until league rules mandated ) to run the bases in the downpour

everyone was crammed in mr corey’s van he sd don’t do it al but al

gave in he dug in to the box & looked for the pill just him & it &

he faked a long drive big swing felt that ball just give & he knew it

was going a long way in the gap he took off the rain in sheets

tore down the line the fi eld a sea he ran go one they yelled go two

go two go three they yelled three & laughed rolled windows down

& yakked it up look home look home they yelled & al hit third big

big smile big smile big al coming home he dove head fi rst & beat

the tag & al & everyone & I stopped breathing he popped up mud-

drunk high-fi ving sky arms high you’re not getting in my van like

that mr corey yelled so al peeled off his uniform down to skivs &

everyone laughed a nautical slang from ear to ear in the morning it

will look like efes in the box score but al’s the best bedtime story

I’ve got

Kevin Varrone is the author of passyunk lost (Ugly Duckling Presse), id est (Instance

Press), and g-point Almanac, 6/21-9/21 (ixnay press) . He is the recipient of a 2012 Pew

Fellowship in the Arts and lives outside Philadelphia.

This little red leaves textile series chapbook was designed and sewn by Dawn

Pendergast in Houston, Texas.