SPORT LITERATURE
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SPORT LITERATURE
My publications in this area include the following:
"Autumn at Woodland Hills Country Club" (poem). Cape Rock, 15 (Summer 1980), 49.
"Big Apple" (poem). Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, 8 (Spring 1991), 92.
On the death of a high school football star.
"The Day Baseball Was Banned at Brice's Crossroads" (story). Elysian Fields Quarterly, 11 (Hot Stove Issue 1992), 23-28.
A humorous story about the chaos that resulted from a kids' baseball game on the site of a Civil War battle.
"For Dal, on the Fourth of July" (poem). Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine, no. 42 (Fall 1992), 44-45.
"Groundskeepers: Opening Day" (poem). Elysian Fields Quarterly, 12 (Opening Day Issue 1993), 42.
"Half-Court Advantage" (poem). Arete: The Journal of Sport Literature, 5 (Fall 1987), 179-180.
"Homo Agonistes, or, William Faulkner as Sportswriter." Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, 13 (Spring 1996), 13-22.
A treatment of two impressionistic essays Faulkner wrote for Sports Illustrated in 1955: one on a hockey match between the New York Rangers and the Montreal Canadiens and the other on the Kentucky Derby.
Keeping Score: Sports Poems for Every Season. St. Louis: Time Being Books, 2007.
"'Magic Realism': or, The Split-Fingered Fastball of W. P. Kinsella." Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, 9 (Fall 1991), 1-10.
An examination of the blending of fact and fiction in the works of W. P. Kinsella.
"Mr. October" (poem). Elysian Fields Quarterly, 13 (Winter 1994), 34.
Brock, Carew, Boggs,
Yount, Gwynn, Sandberg:
those impressive career numbers
compiled, admirably,
through longevity
may win over our heads,
but never our souls.
We'll give you a pedestal
in the Hall, but not
in our hearts.
No, in real life,
where most of our hits
are dribblers between short and third,
we'd trade any two players
with perfect Roto League stats
for one Reggie Jackson:
Mr. October,
who arrived every season
just in the nick of time
to pull us back from the fall
of the year, when our lives
seemed about to descend forevermore
into acceptance and defeat,
And, with one gigantic swing,
one orgastic explosion of the spirit,
blasted the lights out
in the deepest part of the darkest night,
loosing our dreams from narrow infields
of desire into the seamless, celestial
orbit of the home run.
Year after yearning year
we rode that towering swing
all the way to April.
"On the Death of the Evansville University Basketball Team in a Plane Crash" (poem). Cape Rock, 17 (Summer 1982), 40. Reprinted in Robert J. Higgs, Sports: A Reference Guide (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1982), and David L. Vanderwerken and Spencer K.Wertz, eds., Sport Inside Out: Readings in Literature and Philosophy (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1985).
"Pick and Roll" (poem). Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, 8 (Spring 1991), 14.
Review of God in the Stadium: Sports and Religion in America, by Robert J. Higgs. Southern Quarterly, 34 (Summer 1996), 135-137.
Review of Romancing the Horsehide: Baseball Poems on Players and the Game, by Gene Carney. Nine: A Journal of Baseball History and Social Policy Perspectives, 2 (Spring 1994), 353-354.
"Running: Cape Girardeau, November 1993" (poem). Cape Rock, 30 (Spring 1995), 16-17.
"'The Shadow Beneath the Act': Willie Morris and the Metaphor of Sports." Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, 17 (Fall 1999), 29-37.
"Sports Imagery in Pat Conroy's Novels." Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, 11 (Fall 1993), 49-59.
"Strange Heroes: Reflections of a Demolition Derby." Arete: The Journal of Sport Literature, 2 (Fall 1984), 107-109.
"To an Athlete Dying Old" (poem). Cape Rock, 10 (Summer 1975), 23.
"Trading Deadline" (story). Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, 8 (Spring 1991), 15-20.
A humorous treatment of Rotisserie League baseball.
"The Way to Watch a Football Game" (poem). Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, 19 (Fall 2001), 182.
Win or Win: A Season with Ron Shumate. Cape Girardeau: Southeast Missouri University Foundation, 1992.
A biography of former Southeast Missouri State University men's basketball coach Ron Shumate, with special attention to the university's first season in NCAA Division I competition.