I would like to take this opportunity to thank every member of the Chicago Cubs organization. From Sweet Lou Piniella on down to the lowliest trainer, one and all really worked hard to make sure my poem 2008 (On The Impending Centennial Of The Cubs’ Futility) did not become an anachronism before being republished in the upcoming Lovable Losers Literary Revue anthology. Many teams would have ignored the fate of a single poem in the pursuit of money and/or a championship. Fortunately the Cubs are not such a team. They know that life is fleeting but art is not and that true immortality awaited them among my stanzas not in any ballpark. Thanks guys!
Tinkers to Evers to what’s the chance
a hundred seasons could come and go
so fast you wouldn’t celebrate even one
Next year isn’t a mantra
it’s an elegy for wasted time,
wasted efforts, wasted hopes
and, for all those losses,
nothing is really lost
no one died from
heartbreak, no child went
hungry because Ernie Banks
never got his pennant
Instead we grew up
with hopes stunted
or getting ever larger
believing tomorrow will always
hold what today never can
Still going down to that damn
old park because we take defeat
as our due and know the team’s
reach never exceeds our grasp
Their wish – like our dreams – is
not of brazen prizes and spoiling
success but noon on a July day
when the breeze off the lake
might be just a little bit cooler
Three Fingers Brown, someone
asked you once if you could
have pitched better with all five fingers
I’ll never know, you said
So, what’s it like
to win it all?
(Originally published in Elysian Fields Quarterly)
Collateral Damage 
Three-Fingers Brown – all-time best baseball nickname, and Mordecai Brown, all-time best baseball name. And he could really pitch, too! A true three-tool player.
and all time best middle name — centennial — he was born in 1876.
Congratulations. It’s nice to know the anthologizers recognize the depth of your talent.