by Jason Koo
You can’t. And because you can’t, make sure
To watch the game alone. A sports bar filled with frat boys
Is not a good idea. What you need is a cave,
No, what you need is a space shuttle,
So you can set the TV up in the cargo bay and bounce back and forth
While the bad thing begins to happen:
When your closer gives up a leadoff single
In the bottom of the ninth that turns into a hit-and-run
Then runners on first and third, one out, your team teeteringly up 2–1,
You can throw all kinds of heavy machinery
Into space, like oxygen tanks or bits of satellite, without feeling guilty
About smashing up the inside of a sports bar
Or paranoid about any snickering going on behind you:
When the catastrophic thing happens, you can throw yourself into space.
The catastrophic thing will happen, only it will take time:
It is in the nature of catastrophic things to strike
Not when you most expect them to
But just after, so do not give in to hope:
Hope will be the ruin of you, and you are already a ruin.
Back as far away from the TV as possible:
This will make the game seem as if it were taking place
In a distant foreign land, like Japan or Korea,
And even if the relief is only temporary, the catastrophe,
When it occurs, will take longer to reach you.
You may notice a paradox: yourself wishing for the catastrophe.
“Put me out of my misery,” you say, “I can’t take it anymore!”
And yet you can take it anymore, because no matter how miserable you get,
It is always better to be inside the game
Than out: even when the No. 9 hitter lines a sac fly to right to tie the game
at two and you feel your lungs
Fall into your stomach; or when the double-play grounder
Goes off your second baseman’s glove to put a runner on third in the eleventh
And you know this is the beginning of the end;
Or when the tiny shortstop reaches out for the low slider
And flicks it past your pitcher’s glove to send the winning run home
And you feel something twitch inside you like a needle
Skipping on a record, this is better than the post-game show,
When you have to watch the opposing team’s manager growling triumphantly
to his wife
Behind the backstop, and sit through the celebration of 67,000 fans
Whose conception of suffering in baseball is seeing neither team score
For three innings: your psyche is setting into place
Like a broken bone, you can feel your future being routed away from
happiness like ocean air
Into beige Midwestern office cubicles, every handshake, smile and kiss
From now on containing a little sag in it, a percentage of oof—
And these people are celebrating, a spectacle you can only endure
Because the post-game show, horrible as it is, is better than
The post-post-game show, which will find you suffocating
Not only in the emptiness of a dead season but a whole childhood of
longing unfulfilled:
All the hours spent unlocking box scores
At the kitchen table, all the nights spent listening to West Coast games
On the radio as you fell asleep, all the endless winter afternoons
Spent sitting at the foot of your bed studying the backs of baseball cards,
The players you didn’t know, the Bill Pecotas and Jaime Cocanowers,
Piecing together their seasons, their ascent through minor league towns,
Fort Myers, Jacksonville, Memphis, Omaha,
All the losses, so many losses endured, the pitching changes, errors, runners
left on base:
And then this, to see your team up by a run with two outs to go,
To get a glimpse of another life, and to sit there powerless as this life
Is slowly siphoned away from you and replaced with the one
You already have, the one your whole life has been preparing you for.
Bon Chul Koo and the Hall of Fame
Boston to Cleveland, ten hours with Dad in the car,
and I’m thinking, How am I going to get through this,
remembering the last time we took a road trip,
ten years ago, stadium-hopping through the Carolina League,
Class A ball, Kinston, Winston-Salem, Lynchburg
and, of course, Durham, back in high school
when I was writing the Great American Novel
about a starting pitcher on the Kinston Indians (which
began, “Ball four,” and went on for 147
single-spaced pages) and told him I needed to do
some on-site research, getting the exact dimensions
of fields, the colors of uniforms, the feel and flavor
of local crowds, as well as a few good player names
(such as Wonderful Monds, outfielder for the Bulls),
and he surprisingly agreed to take me, only to get
food poisoning on the second day of the trip
and spend the rest of it lying down in the backseat
of the car or, if he had space, right there in the bleachers,
never saying, Let’s go home, but not happy either,
sighing every few miles we’d drive in silence, as if to say,
I’m barely able to eat a nacho, going to all these stupid games,
and still I cannot talk to my son, and even though I knew this,
I didn’t break the silence, not even to say, Thanks,
Dad, I appreciate what you’re doing, or How’re you feeling?
and when he would break it, finally working up the courage
to ask me a question, as if I were a famous poet
and he a lowly MFA student at a post-reading Q&A,
articulating it in his head beforehand, getting the English
right, making slight clicking noises with his mouth
as he prepared to speak, building up the right tension
of tongue against teeth, he would go for too much,
asking, So, Jay, what do you see yourself doing in ten years?
or How come you hate your mom? and I would react badly,
almost violently, and he would go back to sighing again,
and I would drift away. I don’t want to repeat that
silence yet don’t exactly want to make the effort to talk,
would, truthfully, much rather be driving alone
listening to one of my favorite bands, the music coalescing
with my mind over the landscape, my body going weightless
with speed, so I feed Dad questions about Korean
political history, our family, subjects I know he can talk about
with pleasure and authority (and that I, now, am
genuinely interested in), letting him apply the gas
to the conversation while I steer it with just a light grip
of thumb and finger, enjoying the opening space
of two drives, and he’s supplying me with dates, telling me
he was born in 1945, went to high school in the early
’60s, served in Vietnam in the early ’70s, married Mom
in 1973 and moved to America in 1974, none of which
I knew, exactly, until now, growing up as I did not just
with gaps in my knowledge of family history
but a whole obliterating fog, and as he talks I realize
how greedy I am for this knowledge, the simple facts
of my past, notched in dates, the credentials of a 20th-century
personal history, as if my self were a hole finally filling
with the proper topsoil of information, the featherweight
seeds at the bottom abruptly catching into life,
and I feed him questions at greater speed, with more reach,
asking about the Korean War, how badly our family
was affected by it, whether we had to flee our homes,
whether anybody fought or (gulp) died, slightly afraid
that he’s going to reveal a whole substrata of slaughter
and suffering beneath my level of consciousness,
but he says, No, our family was lucky, the war never reached us.
Daegu was the last line of defense and it was never crossed.
Grandpa was a police chief so he didn’t need to fight in the war.
And I’m thinking, Whew! but at the same time, Is that it
wondering how I managed to evade history even in a country
literally split in half by it, almost disappointed
by the narrative, musing, This is not the Korean
American Experience publishers are looking for,
“may you never remember & may you never forget,”
that sort of thing, but digging Dad’s no-big-deal attitude,
the cool way he recounts all this, the partly surprised
expression he wears on his face, as if he hasn’t thought
about this stuff in years and is not exactly sure why
I’m asking. We’re driving through New York State,
both of us feeling pretty good about ourselves, Dad damn near
chatty, but I start to feel that old familiar tug
toward silence again, the not-quite-ease of the conversation,
the build-up of so many previous car rides in silence
to and from the airport, school, violin and tennis lessons,
the silence more a father than my own father,
when he asks, Do you want to go to Cooperstown?
and my immediate reaction is No, not really, but I can
sense how much it means to him, how he’s starting to believe
in the romance of the father-son relationship again
and needs to cement this feeling with a solid event,
and something tells me it’s now or never, that if we don’t go today
we’ll never go, and then I’ll have to take my son,
so I say, Sure—do we have time? since it’s Sunday, 3 pm,
the museum likely closes at five and we still have a good
seven hours to go until home, and Dad needs to work
tomorrow. He calculates, Well, it’s about twenty, thirty
minutes detour, and we have about thirty minutes to go before that,
which leaves us almost no time to see the museum
but we go for it, shooting through the countryside,
and even though it’s only supposed to be about a half hour
off our route, once we’ve made the turn for the museum
it seems to take an eternity to get there, our car proceeding
more and more into nowhere, no cars before or behind
us, and I joke, What genius put the Baseball Hall of Fame
way out here, trying to keep the mood light, since the landscape
is no Field of Dreams (especially under a light rain
during the off-season) and I know Dad’s sense of romance
must be fading; but I think we’re supposed to feel
we’re moving back in time to a “mythic” America,
leaving the evil of cities and the 20th century behind,
though all I feel is anxious and out of place, the growing
obviousness of our faces, and I’m half-hoping the museum
will be closed when we get there so we won’t be seen.
But it’s open. And Cooperstown itself is charming, all
the stores and restaurants baseball-themed—everything
bats and balls!—and I can imagine this whole experience
would have been less threatening to me as a child,
in the summer, in the sunlight. We approach the ticket
counter and I find myself bristling slightly at the man
who addresses Dad in a louder-than-usual voice, Hello, sir!
How can we help you today? But I’m determined
to feel welcome, so I smile, joke with him, ask
a few questions about the Hall in crisp English.
Then Dad surprises me: Could I have one adult, one senior citizen?
At first I think he’s trying to put one past this guy
but then I realize he is that old, and for the first time
since coming home I look him steadily
in the face, notice the skin is paler, blotchier
than I remember it, the already thin hair not just thinner
but weaker, the scalp more glazed. We take the man’s advice
and start on the second floor to make sure we see
the permanent exhibition before the museum closes,
the window display of history from the 19th century
to the present, all the browning artifacts, the long cool bats
of sluggers, Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, the homerun balls
notching a number, 60, 61, 714, the no-hitter balls all lined up
neatly together on a wall, some smudged and greasy,
others surprisingly clean, each bearing the whorled imprint
of its author somewhere in the cowhide and seams,
the tightening of a grip, fastball, forkball, slider, erosion
of oil and saliva; but as I’m looking at all this I’m struck
by how much effort of imagination it takes to get inside
the history, how groomed and clinical this history is,
the objects mute, almost helpless in their plexiglass cages,
robbed of movement, the real record of the game,
the signature of each swing and delivery upon the air,
the weight shifts, positionings, balances, the digging
of cleated toes into dirt, the pitch-to-pitch, inning-to-inning,
game-to-game, season-to-season accumulation of tension
and release in memory—so that I want to dump this all
into stadiums, foul the objects off into stands,
fleck them with beer, mustard, relish, the dirt and germs
from each grasping hand. Nothing feels organic, least of all
me in my black leather jacket and shoes, leaning in to read
each accompanying paragraph of information (I learn
a pop-up was once called a “skyrocket”), the objects
kept from me not only by the glass but by my image
on top of the glass and then my glasses on top of that.
Dad falls behind, fussing with his camera. He catches up
to ask if I can pry open the plastic packaging
on a battery and, when I can’t, goes downstairs to seek out
scissors. He returns, triumphant, then has me move station
to station to create a storybook of our lives against
the century: first, Cy Young (a Cleveland Spider),
Bob Feller (ace of the last Cleveland champs
in ‘48), Mickey Mantle (my favorite legend as a kid),
and then the Thurman Munson Yankees of the ’70s,
the team my parents followed when they lived in New York
and I was born. I think back to Cleveland, nights in the kitchen
when Mom would let me listen to the game on the radio
while she cooked, going over the heroics of Guidry, Jackson,
Lou Piniella (When he came up, we’d all go Loooooo), helping me
believe in a possible immortality for my woeful Tribe,
a time when I cared about each game with an intensity
that made Dad scowl (Jay, it’s just gayyym), praying before
every Cory Snyder at bat (who hit .236), not wanting to leave
games until the final pitch (even the 17–0 rout we attended
as a family), believing each missed moment took a brick
out of the next, that I could build out of baseball
an edifice of meaning to house my lonely, unimportant self.
I would have given anything then for Dad to do
what he’s doing now, taking me to Cooperstown!
but he always just seemed to be annoyed with me,
and Mom, if anything, was the more indulgent of the two,
and she was not indulgent. Now Dad needs this
more than me, and I try to wait patiently as he takes
one picture after another with his digital camera,
often asking me to repose when the picture turns out
badly. I look too tall in all the images, overdressed,
not awkward enough, and I start to wonder if it’s too late
for father and son, the Hall closing, a long drive through the dark
still ahead, but Dad looks so happy, oblivious to all
the disappointment dusting his shoulders, trusting
in his camera to lock our experience into glossy rectangles,
making me believe, for a moment, in the rightness of our presence,
the confirmation of the country around us,
until a rude old woman comes up to me and says, Sir, we’re CLOSING,
as I try to catch a glimpse of the inductee plaques.
I say, But we still have five minutes, and she says,
Don’t you want to go to the gift shop? and I storm out
thinking—I can’t help it—racist, small town, white trash,
where the hell does she have to be at this hour, just wanting
to get in the car and leave—but Dad wants to take
a few more pictures outside the museum. I stand there
stewing in the flash, thinking I’ll say something when
she comes out, like Don’t you understand going to Cooperstown
is a pilgrimage? But when she does come out, we’re still
taking pictures, and she doesn’t even look at us, just waddles
on her merry way home, and I look past her at the lights
twinkling the streets, the windowfronts softened by the rain,
and understand that confronting her would disrupt
this quiet passage home she likely looks forward to every day,
the clean pine air fresh on her skin, a comfortable couch
and a night of good television on up ahead, and the anger
of an Asian in this context just seems ridiculous…
I turn back to Dad, smile sincerely this time, defiantly, trying
to hold it as he troubles over the angle, the background,
and a car drives by and sees us Asians with a camera
These poems were previously published in Man on Extremely Small Island (Brooklyn Arts Press).
JASON KOO is the author of the poetry collections More Than Mere Light, America’s Favorite Poem, and Man on Extremely Small Island. Coeditor of the Brooklyn Poets Anthology, he has published his poetry and prose in the American Scholar, Missouri Review, The Village Voice, and Yale Review, among other places, and won fellowships for his work from the National Endowment for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and the New York State Writers Institute. An associate teaching professor of English at Quinnipiac University, Koo is the founder and executive director of Brooklyn Poets and creator of the Bridge. He lives in Brooklyn.