In high school in Brooklyn
I was the baseball manager,
proud as I could be
I chased baseballs,
gathered thrown bats
handed out the towels Eventually, I bought my own
It was very important work but it was dark blue while
for a small spastic kid, the official ones were green
but I was a team member Nobody ever said anything
When the team got to me about my blue jacket;
their warm-up jackets the guys were my friends
I didn't get one Yet it hurt me all year
Only the regular team to wear that blue jacket
got these jackets, and among all those green ones
surely not a manager Even now, forty years after,
I still recall that jacket
and the memory goes on hurting.
-- Bart Lanier Safford III, "An Obscured Radiance"
