From middle Massachusetts, Bill O’Connell sent us a poem about hardball math to show there are many dimensions to the old ballgame. Bill is a past contributor to the blog and The Lowell Review. His recent book is When We Were All Still Alive (Open Field Press, 2021).

The Geometry of Baseball

Angles, walls, trajectories — the spun white orb

breaking the night sky above the lights —

a moonshot, a streak of contained light

wrapped around a hard center

exploding off the bat, over the Green

Monster, denting a well-paid-for

parked car

on Lansdowne: marked:

he hit it

this far.

Bill O’Connell

4/25