A Tropical Island Called Sports

A Tropical Island Called Sports

Sports as escape

It sure saved this child

As dad hauled me by the nape

Through 18 years, anything but mild

Football ain’t idyllic

Just listen to Brian Billick*

Often compared with war

On the gridiron are mere whores

Brutal, damaging and cold

Few and fewer who play grow old

Helmet, pads and cleats

Half result in defeats

Harsh aggression for play and pay

With many a brain jumbled into hay

Bringing the races together

Like most sports, and the weather

Black white brown yellow

Racism’s harsh gets to mellow

With Title 9 came the chicks

Not quite level, the field almost fixed

Now some beauty with our beast

We mix man and woman from west to east

Golf looks like simply leisure

Play it, you’ll feel the pleasure

And with each ensuing birdie

Like a magic potion, you again feel thirty

On a pitch, a court or a field

To history all must yield

For every man named Joltin’ Joe

Was another one called DiMaggio

Mighty Casey may have whiffed

Or he may simply have gone adrift

But in sports as in life

With good always comes strife

This world I ran to as a kid

Like a blanket over a card table

This young boy ran and hid

Until he was old enough to be able

Thank you sports, I got on through

Not easy, not quick, but true

And I sit now poised to leap

For all I have learned I will keep

(* Brian Billick is the irascible former Super Bowl winning coach of the Baltimore Raves 2002)

(I know I promised...but I lied)