It's October. That means baseball players are casting long shadows across the beautiful outfields of Yankee Stadium and seven other parks as the Major League Playoffs get under way this week. Baseball naturally lends itself to poetry. Maybe that's because the game unfolds so slowly. You have time in between batters, in between pitches, to weave a textured yarn. Literature and film are filled with heartbreaking as well as uplifting baseball stories. Garrison Keillor forgot his glasses, on which he is evidently very dependent, for a baseball game one late afternoon and by the time he described the scene on the stage for A Prairie Home Companion, the game had become a delicious potpourri of sensations. The crack of the bat, the gentle movement of white chess pieces around a smooth expanse of green, the smell of popcorn...
