Randy Johnson Sings Baseball Rhapsody

 

Is this ball field life?  Is this Iowa?

Caught in a downdraft, no escape from Tucson, Arizona.

Open your eyes, bird, look to the pitcher and see—

I’m not a slow boy, slinging this four-seam.

 

Because it’s 102, the radar shows,

little high, little low.

Any way the wind blows,

doesn’t really matter to me, to me.

 

Mama, just killed a bird.

Put a fastball to his trunk, threw my heater

now he’s sunk.

Mama, flight had just begun,

but now he’s gone; I’ve blown him all away.

 

Mama, never meant to make the fans spill their Cokes.

If I don’t start next game, it’s only spring training.

Carry on, carry on.  Since this game doesn’t really matter.

 

Too sad, that bird’s time had come.

Sends shivers down my spine, not sure I’ll

make it the full nine.

Goodbye, everybody, I’ve got to go mourn that dove.

Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth.

I won’t lie.

I wish that pitch had taken down Babe Ruth.

 

Scaramouche, do the Fandango,

strike one-two-three, fist pumping

Galileo Figaro, would have been magnifico!

 

© 2025 Jennifer Wagner

 

Day 17

For Shay’s Word Garden

On March 24, 2001, one of baseball’s greatest pitchers, Randy Johnson, accidentally struck and killed a bird (a mourning dove) when it darted in front of his fastball during a spring training game in Tucson, AZ.  The speed of the pitch was not recorded but was estimated to be around 100 mph.  His fastest pitch on record was clocked at 102mph.

No birds were harmed in the making of this spin-on-Bohemian-Rhapsody poem, of course.