Tony Gruenewald
Curt Flood
"I'm pleased God made my skin black. I wish He had made it thicker."
-- Curt Flood
It wasn't
just the nightly torrent of taunts
from fans and teammates alike,
or the Jim Crow restrooms,
restaurants, and motels during
the long rickety Southern League bus rides
that finally broke the 19 year old rookie from
the slums of Oakland in 1957.
It was between games of a doubleheader;
everyone stripped their sweaty, dusty flannels
and left them in a pile
to be quickly laundered
for the nightcap.
He watched the clubhouse attendant approach
the pile with a long stick,
fishing his uniform away
from his teammates' and
at arms length
carry it
to the Colored Only cleaners
across town.
While his teammates took the field
in their freshly laundered flannels
he sat alone,
naked.
impenetrable godwit bloodbath
(subject line of an e-mail spam)
What could this be, sent by
the mythical LaDonna Ott,
obviously an alias for a
counter terrorism super agent?
A warning about a fundamentalist
organization beyond the knowledge
of Homeland Security or even Fox News,
training in Starbuckistan or some other
former Soviet state desperate for some
world stage attention, its baristas
infiltrating, sneaking caffeinated
contraband past baggage check
to loose lethal intifada into
the lattes of Los Angeles,
Las Vegas, the Louvre or some
other L-place the codebreakers and
translators haven't quite been able to
confirm?
©2004 by Tony Gruenewald
