I am eleven years old and
on the orange shag living room carpet, sorting
my first baseball cards. I do not yet know
that baseball cards come in years, that next year's
will be different, that there were cards last year
I have not seen.  These serious, numbered cards require
arrangement, each player lost if not
connected to the others. From stacking and considering, I pause
and look at the face of Paul Lindblad, a middle reliever
on the local team, a team that has won championships
but will not win again with these players, a team packed with stars
of which Lindblad is not one. Above his name and the team name
in bars of the team’s green and yellow, the pitcher
looks worried, the brim of his cap
casting a shadow that separates from the rest of his face
his eyes, in a lopsided squint.
                                                      More than forty years later,
I will lie in bed remembering this moment. I will have spent
much of the previous day looking at my collection
for the first time in many years. The Lindblad card
will not have been among the cards I looked at.
                                                                                      I
will go online and find this worried face. I will learn
that when Lindblad retires in two years
he will be seventh on the list of most appearances
by a left-handed pitcher. Already he has pitched
in the first no-hitter thrown by more than two pitchers,
set a record among pitchers for consecutive error-free games,
and been the last man to pitch to Willie Mays. I will
learn more about him that morning fourteen years
after he has passed away from Alzheimer's than
I have ever known, certainly more than I know now,
sitting on this orange shag carpet, pausing to look at a face,
unaware that there is anything memorable about this moment.

Max Gutmann


If you have any thoughts about this poem,  Max Gutmann would like to hear them