I'd spent way more years worrying about how to look like a poet -- buying black clothes, smearing on scarlet lipstick, languidly draping myself over thrift-store furniture -- than I had learning how to assemble words in some discernible order.
Most of what I learned about baseball came from great coaches, beginning with my father, then Bob [Buchelle], when I`d made it into the seated row of Little League in [Dorchester], then Dan Burke, [John Balfe], the great Henry Lane.